Researchers in France have tested the registration of pupils in private education establishments, using two fictive fathers who contacted more than 4000 such (catholic) establishments wanting to register their children, one of them having a traditionally French sounding name and the other with a North-African sounding name. The results of the situation testing showed the existence of racial discrimination as the latter of the two fathers received less answers in general and the answers he did receive were less often positive. In addition, the father of ‘French’ origin received more firm positive answers than the ‘North African’ father, who was more often told that he needed to come in for an interview before the child could be registered. One author of the study explains its results on French public broadcasting radio France-Info:
MPG’s project on Situation Testing aimed at raising awareness of the technique of situation testing, discussing its use for purposes other than litigation and concluding on the best way to expand its application to the public sector. The project included the handbook Proving discrimination cases: the role of Situation Testing, which provides a comparative overview of the use of situation testing in various cases in Europe as well as guidelines aiming at informing the targets of discrimination and their organisations on how to conduct situation testing.
Furthermore a series of trainings for the national NGO community on situation testing has been taking place in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The next training is scheduled for the first semester of 2014.