The concept of Production schools or youth workshops offers to young people a practice-based learning with a non-formal perspective. The key-words are “learning by doing” through the production of real goods and services for firms or real customers. Some countries in Europe as Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany or Slovenia, have such organizations. Those organizations work with young people from 14 to 25 that fit into the conventional educational system. Since 2012, those schools/workshops took place into an international organization, IPSO (International Production School Organization). In each country, due to their own national educative system, the production schools have different ways to recruit (injunction, school guidance, and free choice) and to support young people (from 1 month to 4 years). They try to guide them to formal vocational institutions or to find them a place in the labor market.

Even though ancient, this model is completely unknown in France. Founded in 1882 by a priest in Lyon (south-east of France), the production schools start actually a move of expansion, especially in the west part of France. This move is supported by big companies as Total and by local authorities (especially regional authorities). Some schools are helped by specific companies as PSA (mechanic) or Legrand (electricity). For now there is almost 25 schools all over the country. The oldest schools are around Lyon, and the new ones stand in the North (Paris, Lille) and in the West (Angers, Nantes, La Roche sur Yon).

The French productions schools welcome early school leavers without any diploma, unemployed young people, migrants, young people with disabilities, etc. The social dimension of this school model starts with its founder, the priest Louis Boisard (Seeley, 1992). Nevertheless, the National Federation of the French Production schools (FNEP) emphasizes the quality of this vocational training. At the end of the training (it means after 2 or 4 years), students take national exams according to the National VET requirement. Teachers are very good professionals, and chosen for their vocational quality. The production schools teach only some specific trades which have a lack of qualified workers (mechanic, machining, metal workers, wood workers, catering) in order to easily find a job for the students after the end of the training.

Our first goal was to describe this specific model of vocational training in order to place it in the broader context of the French vocational training system. It will be the first part of this communication. Our second question is about the curriculum of this model: the “real work” are presented as the best way of vocational training for young people in difficulty with the national educative system i.e. the “school form”. The “school form”, in the French theory of pedagogy, is described by Guy Vincent (1994) as a “specific and historic configuration”. For now, the French “school form” include specific space and time dedicated to education and training, impersonal rules, rationalization of the curriculum based on pedagogical studies, etc. But, do the production schools offer a specific curriculum as an alternative path to the traditional vocational school?

In relation with the theoretical framework of the sociology of conventions (Boltanski & Thevenot, 2006), this presentation aims to analyze the curriculum of the French production schools and to understand the recent expansion of this model. Moreover, it questions the efficiency of the vocational training and bring back to the debate between training at school or in firm (Gonon, 2009).

We realized a study about the French production schools by doing 5 monographies on 2 areas (around Lyon – south-east; and in the west part of France). They include visits of the schools (5), interviews (5 headmasters, 12 vocational or general teachers, 13 students), observations of vocational and general training (12) and documentations. We also used a survey (330 answers of students) in order to have a better understanding of the type of public and of their relation to the workshops.

The vocational path have a lot of difficulties: dropping out, unemployment after graduation, gap between training and labor market (Troger, Bernard, Masy, 2016). It welcome young people with a painful relationship with the school system and general education. However, some of them rebuilt a new relationship with knowledge and training (Jellab, 2008). It seems that the “production schools” model provides this positive return to the training. The results of the study show that this model of production school, initially inspired by Don Bosco, still have a social perspective. The articulation of social, educative and trade perspectives reveals some tensions: between to train for a trade or to take an exam, between to be a real firm (with real customers and deadlines) or to be a school (a place for teaching and training).

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