Aware that equal opportunity starts at an early age, Centrale Lyon is committed to helping middle and high school students discover the world of higher education. Cordées de la réussite, scientific careers discovery courses for young girls, hosting classes on campus... the École is developing a number of initiatives to help them discover scientific careers and project themselves into higher education. Last April, Centrale Lyon marked a new stage in its commitment by signing a partnership agreement with several Lyon high schools. The aim: to provide students and their teachers with the best possible information on higher education pathways, and enable young people from all backgrounds to express their ambitions.
Centrale Lyon's ambition: to ensure equal opportunities in career choices
- Stimulate the academic ambition of young people from all backgrounds, especially girls
- Encourage them to pursue ambitious higher education courses
- Fight against self-censorship, especially for the Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles
- Giving the best possible guidance in choosing a career path
- Making an engineering school an engine for social advancement
To meet this ambition, Centrale Lyon is putting in place concrete, structuring actions to strengthen links between the School and local middle and high schools, and thus better inform young people about careers and career paths.
Supporting students into higher education with Cordées de la réussite
Since the start of the 2022 academic year, Centrale Lyon has been involved in the Cordées de la réussite scheme with the cordée CAPIngé. Each year, it enables nearly 250 middle and high school students from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region to meet Centrale Lyon students and teacher-researchers as part of a variety of initiatives throughout the school year:
- Visits by student engineers to schools
- Welcome to roped-off students on the Lyon-Écully and Saint-Étienne campuses, id="eb90bf3ff289dddef90879419928feb9e">Joint projects between roped students and engineering students
- Cultural and scientific outings...
The aim is to inform and encourage middle and high school students, especially girls, to go into scientific studies through informed guidance choices. Since 2022, nearly 900 students have been able to take part in this program and benefit from special support.
Among the 7 educational establishments encorded to CAPIngé, 3 are located in sometimes very isolated rural areas, and 5 in Priority Neighbourhoods in the City.
In addition, Centrale Lyon ENISE is also a partner in the Cordée "Innov' ton avenir" carried out with the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Saint-Étienne (ENSASE) and L'École du Louvre. This is designed to support access for all students to higher education courses in art history and heritage.
Fighting self-censorship among young girls with the "Pour les Filles et la Science"
Too few girls go into the sciences. Reference points are lacking as much as role models. To combat this self-censorship among young girls, Centrale Lyon and L'Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon (INL) are partners in the For Girls and Science program supported by the L'Oréal Foundation. Each year, around 25 high school girls from the Rhône region are hosted by INL teams, alternating between the Lyon-Écully and La Doua campuses. On the program for their day: discovery of research platforms, hands-on manipulations around nanotechnologies, and exchanges with researchers, teachers, engineers and PhD students from the École's laboratories.
This welcome is part of a voluntary 4-day internship enabling the girls to visit several laboratories (Centrale Lyon, IUT Lyon 1, L'Oréal), meet scientists with varied profiles and take part in orientation workshops; so many decisive encounters to enable the girls to project themselves into the sciences.
Opening the doors of engineering to local high school students
SchooLab Ingénierie
On the occasion of Engineering Day 2026, the four establishments of the Collège d'Ingénierie have announced the launch of the "SchooLab Ingénierie" scheme. This will open the doors of our establishments to high school classes from the académie, enabling young people to discover our campuses and the diversity of engineering career paths. Centrale Lyon will be experimenting with these class visits on its two campuses from autumn 2026.
This scheme is in line with the actions offered each year to high school students on the occasion of Engineering Day, when classes and their teachers are invited to participate in scientific culture workshops and attend lectures.
Engineering challenge
Each year, Centrale Lyon ENISE invites around a hundred local high school students to challenge themselves on engineering issues. Working in groups of 6 or 7, coached by engineering students or CFAI Loire-Drôme-Ardèche professional license students, the students have two days to pool their skills around a technical challenge. In 2026, the proposed challenge was to respond to a population displacement issue by designing a low-carbon mobility solution through the design of a motorized cable car (urban or mountain), meeting precise specifications.
Beyond the technical aspect, this challenge enables us to promote engineering professions through a concrete, collaborative experience.
Demystifying the Classes Préparatoires-Grandes écoles pathway
78% of CPGE students say they are satisfied with their studies. This is the highest rate in French higher education. Yet every year, students who would have the ability to succeed in this stream do not attempt it because it is associated with often inaccurate representations. It's to provide guidance to those involved in orientation that Centrale Lyon is strengthening its links with local CPGE teachers and headmasters.
A first concrete action was set up this spring, in partnership with the Rectorat de la Région Académique Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and l'Union des Professeurs de Classes Préparatoires Scientifiques (UPS). Aimed at high school principals and teachers, this half-day meeting aimed to give a better understanding of the "Classes préparatoires-Grandes écoles" pathways, shed light on their realities and provide useful reference points to support students in their career choices.
On this occasion, partnership agreements were signed between Centrale Lyon and 3 Lyon high schools (Lycée International Jean Perrin, Lycée La Martinière Monplaisir and Lycée du Parc). The aim of these agreements is to encourage access to these demanding programs for all profiles, particularly girls and students on financial aid, through the implementation of concrete actions: sponsorship of CPGE students by engineering students, visits by teacher-researchers to the high schools, etc. Eventually, these partnership agreements will be extended to other high schools in the region, particularly those in rural areas.