This article provides an introduction to Jean Jaurès's testimony given on the 25th of February 1899 to the parliamentary committee responsible for reforming secondary education under the leadership of Alexandre Ribot. This work looks back at the context of the enquiry - competition from free secondary schools, which was unfavourable to state-run schools - and analyses the way in which Jaurès positioned himself on the various points addressed by the committee, such as the question of maintaining the baccalaureate examination, the upgrading of modern education, without Greek or Latin, and the opening up of secondary education to the middle and working classes, who were educated at primary level. Jaurès navigated between his attachment to the classical university tradition, of which he was a product, and his awareness of the need to develop secondary education to enable it to keep pace with modernity and become more democratic.