It’s that time of year again in Paris, when the cool breeze and light rain announce the arrival of the back-to-school rush known as the ‘rentrée scolaire’.

Every year, I am mildly alarmed at the sight of small schoolchildren carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. I watch them lurching head-heavy down the pavement, burdened by large backpacks stuffed with textbooks and school supplies. I wonder how on earth their tiny frames can possibly carry such heavy loads.

They have no choice. A list of compulsory school supplies (called ‘fournitures scolaires’) is sent to French parents and published as an official decree on a government website. At the end of August, parents in France can be seen making mad dashes in supermarkets, their trolleys filled with tangled heaps of pens, pencils, notebooks and binders.

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‘The hunt for supplies is brutal,’ a French parent told me. Many who scramble to shops at the last minute find empty shelves. Others frantically search for required items on Amazon. The average cost of school supplies per child in France is €200 (about £170).

It’s enough to drive a parent mad. But in France, the rule is inflexible. No child can show up for school at the rentrée without all the required supplies. A hassle for parents; a heavy load for children.

The heavy burden on the backs of French schoolchildren is, in many respects, the accumulated weight of more than 150 years of top-down bureaucracy. France’s massive education department – called the ‘mammoth’ – is notoriously fattened-up and stubbornly resistant to forward motion. Reform is virtually impossible. The French government........

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