In a context of heightened economic incertitude and growing pressure for public and private expenditure in education and training to be more “efficient”, political actors regularly undertake reforms which proclaim the most often to be the bearer of more justice and effectiveness. Their legitimation frequently convokes the “success” of systems and processes implemented in other countries. European Union policies have developed an institutional framework which is favourable to the hybridisation of national systems (Normand et Derouet, 2016). Whatever the effectiveness of these reform - between the emergence of new discursive directories and the real implementation of new systems of action -, this growing hybridisation has given rise to institutional compromises of a reach which is eminently variable from one case and from one period to the other. This contribution shall defend an approach in terms of education and training schemes: an educative system, whatever its scale, does not arise from a unique societal and stable logic but from an historical succession of compromises between different political conceptions (Verdier 2017). This perspective has been built in the articulation of the model of economies of worth (Boltanski et Thévenot 1991) and the work of François Eymard-Duvernay on the conventions of the quality of work (2001). He shall discuss three types of parameters regarding value, inequalities and the renewal of ordeals both individually and collectively. In this regard, Eymard-Duvernay (et al, 2006) highlights with great acuteness that “coordination is an ordeal which is fulfilled in the horizon of failure and in particular of conflict and criticism” (2006, p.19). This last dimension appears crucial, as education is increasingly at the heart of social and media, and therefore political, critique.

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