The 1989 Convention on the rights of the Child (CRC) is one of the most ratified international treaties in the world. However, very few children know their rights (Philips, 2016). Switzerland ratified the CRC in 1997 and is not an exception. Swiss children have few formal knowledge about their rights and this is linked with a lack of possibilities to experiment their rights in their everyday life (Covell & Howe, 1999). One of the main themes addressed by the CRC is the children’s participation in all matter affecting them. Yet in each of his reports concerning Switzerland (2015 ; 2002), the Commitee on the rights of the child underlines the lack of implementation of participatory rights in the children experience, and notably in school.

School is one of the most important area in a child’s life, and concerns any Swiss child or almost. This should also constitute a central intermediary to educate children about their rights and guarantee them the possibility to experience them. Children have rights to, in and through education (Verhellen, 1999), which means that every child should be able to know and to experience his rights in a daily life basis, and especially at school (Philips, 2016). However, some of their rights, and particularly participatory rights are very little present in the school practices (e.g. Quennerstedt, 2016) and school settings (e.g. Gillett-Swan & Sargeant, 2018), as the education system give priority to an authoritarian and less participative mode of organization (Sargeant & Gillett-Swan, 2015; Jeff, 2002).

We can then ask ourselves why the traditional school system do not encourages pupils to experiment their rights. What do the school system do to implement children’s rights? What is done relatively to children’s rights education? Concerning pupils’ participation, what are the challenges, the limits and the opportunities of the school system? Why are the participatory rights that hard to implement?

To answer to those questions, our hypothesis is that the traditional school system constitute an obstacle to the real implementation of children’s rights and that it promotes the protection rights, but not the participation ones. Based on the Lundy’s participation model (2007), our research will contextualize it in the traditional school system and balance it with the organization of the traditional school system. Vincent (1980) developed a concept named the forme scolaire to characterize the traditional organization of school. This concept describes the traditional understanding of school which is defined by schedule, specific architecture, vertical relationship between teacher and students, disciplines, lectures, or separation from the outside world. He points out how static this system is for ages. This constitute a brake to the implementation of different form of paedagogical innovations as the integration of the different educations for (education for sustainable development, education of children’s rights, peace education, etc.) and of innovative approach and practices (Lebaume, 2015) linked with children’s rights principles. Compare the inherent needs to a real participation of children in school as described by Lundy (2007), and those of the traditional school organization allow us to show that the forme scolaire (Vincent, 1980) can be an obstacle to the implementation of a real participation of pupils. This will bring us to the consideration that the traditional school system will need several innovations to be able to implement children participation rights in its organization.

This contribution will present the results of a cases study research conducted in four primary schools in French-speaking Switzerland. This research is conducted in the context of a PhD thesis about formal and informal children’s rights education in primary school in Switzerland. The results presented for this contribution will focus on the pupils’ participation but they are part of a wider project. Cases study methodology allow us to understand the complexity and the diversity of implementation of children’s rights and of children’s rights education and more precisely of pupils’ participation. Relying on a mixed methodology, through non-participative observations, survey, individual interviews and collective interviews, we were able to collect the point of view of several actors included in the school context like school directors, teachers and pupils. Those points of view were nuanced with the data collected by non-participative observations. Analyse of official texts (law, curricula, school regulations, etc.) have also been realized in the aim to understand the official school settings. Data were collected in two public and two private school, selected because of their sensitiveness to children’s rights principles as presented on the public information available about them. This way to proceed provides data about the context and the posture of the different actors involved in the school system linked to children’s rights education and to participation. Such a method allow to observe the differences between the public and the private system and to highlight the differences between the two. This difference give the opportunity to observe two different system, in the first where the forme scolaire is very deeply implemented, and in the second which is more free to implement innovative approach and practices and to “break the rules”. This will question the school organization and its implications for the implementation of children’s rights and more precisely children’s rights education in the system. This research and methodology follow a strict ethical framework and they were accepted by the ethical commission of faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Geneva.

Comparing the public school system, strongly influenced by the forme scolaire, to the private system, the aim of this research is to underline the weight of the traditions in the implementation of children’s rights in the school system. We expect to show that the private system, by distancing oneself from the traditional form, allow a broader implementation of children’s rights, and especially participation rights, than the public system. More precisely, if we consider children’s rights and participation as an everyday practice, we identify characteristics of the forme scolaire as an obstacle to this implementation. Participation can express itself through pedagogic and structural way. Pupils can be active in their own learning and the wider learning process, and in the organization and the decisional process of the school system at different levels (classroom, educational establishment, educational policies, etc.). In a system organized by disciplines, where the roles of teachers and learners are very well defined and the pupils mostly considered as passive learners, were the links with the outside world are limited, and where the time and the space are strictly defined, those two kind of participation are hard to implement. To implement children’s rights and participation in an everyday basis, the traditional school system will need a deep innovation and change the codes at the core of its settings. This paper focuses on the definition of the pupils’ participation and the place of this in the children’s rights implementation in the school system. This participation will be contextualized in two different school system: the traditional one and a more innovative one, in the aim to question the traditional school system and its characteristic forme scolaire.

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