In France, the interministerial instruction of 22 April 2009 established the framework for new policies regarding the prevention of early school leaving and the implementation of measures to support high school dropouts. In 2011, an interministerial circular clarified the measures advocated at regional level in the form of platforms for monitoring early school leaving and helping high school dropouts (Plateformes de Suivi et d’Aide aux Décrocheurs, PSAD). With poor organization at national level and considerable heterogeneity in regional implementation, these platforms more effectively establish inter-institutional commitment and involvement at the different levels of action. This framework is clearly in line with the recommendations made by the European Commission in the mid-1990s, which not only established combating early school leaving as a major objective of European policy, but also directly contributed to tackling this phenomenon by supporting local initiatives in Member States, including France, where the government had not as yet grasped the full extent of the problem (Dutercq, 2001). The tangle of resulting policies and institutions at first justified a desire for standardization and regulation at national level, later followed by an adaptation that better integrated regional specificities.

Within this context, our contribution concerns the link between national education policy and the adaptation of public action throughout France, based on the analysis of two dimensions: 1) the reorientation of national policies and their implementation by regional bodies of the French Ministry of Education; and 2) the actions and tools implemented by the regions to combat early school leaving, notably within the framework of the PSADs.

Our analysis falls within an approach inspired by neo-institutional sociology and the sociology of action systems, and notably certain notions that tend to problematize the evolutions in French policy regarding early school leaving. The notion of path dependence is thus based on the idea that even if a better solution to a current problem were to be proposed, it would not necessarily be retained because of force of habit and the cost for the actors concerned of implementing the necessary changes (Draelants and Maroy, 2007). North (1990) explains that path dependence relates more to the behaviour of officials of institutions than to technologies. European and French framework texts, however, consider that ensuring better effectiveness in combating early school leaving requires adopting new tools and practices, notably inter-institutional cooperation and networking. Path dependence and resistance to change on the part of officials are thus considered to be factors curbing the process.

Bernard and Michaut (2014) nevertheless argue that, within the framework of a policy of modernization of public action devoted to efficiency, the inter-institutional partnerships sought can be understood according to three logics: 1) an administrative logic of remediation; 2) a regional logic of local prevention; and 3) a co-educational logic of structural prevention. Partnerships already more or less exist, even if they function poorly and with the sole aim of remediation. Ministerial recommendations endeavour to bring these partnerships into line with a regional logic of prevention, the third and most cross-sectoral logic currently supported in France only by researchers and the associative world. However, the creation of inter-institutional partnerships inevitably comes up against variable and often strained principles and rationales (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999), especially regarding the necessity for the different actors of the national education system and those in the health or social sectors to work together (Derouet Ed. 2000). These tensions are due to divergences in the definition of the general interest as well as to the relationships of culture and power, expressed in action by differences in practices contrary to the homogenizing concept of public efficiency stemming from the European reference framework.

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