Introduction

The analysis of youth participation in France, whether directed towards political, associative or protest practices (Roudet, 2004; Becquet, 2009b; Muxel, 2010) or towards institutional programmes (Becquet, 2005a, 2006, Loncle, 2008) often leaves aside participation in schools. Yet school participation involves a wide range of young people: the pupils in secondary schools. These young people often combine in school participation with out-of-school participation, or move from one to the other (Becquet, 2005b; Guillaume and Verdon, 2007). Moreover, opportunities for participation have been developed in school since the 1990s, principally through the increase in pupils’ rights and in the number of pupils’ representative bodies. These different levels of interest in pupil participation reflect the historical conception of the school's role in citizenship training.

First of all, in France, and particularly since the Revolution, the ambition of school has been to form future citizens through a model of political socialisation aiming at the transmission and achievement of knowledge to be used once voting age is attained. Secondly, at the same time and over the centuries, all of the informal upper secondary school pupils and students participation practices (associations, thinktank, congregation, newspapers, folk parade, etc.) were and are either controlled or prohibited by the school authorities. Two reasons are advanced for this state of affairs. On the one hand, informal participation was considered more as a problem for authorities than as a contribution to daily school life. Restricting it was a means of preventing the pupils from getting out of hand (Caron, 1991; Legois et al, 2007). On the other hand, pupils were not considered to be active participants in their schools, thus informal participation had no place in school and was not encouraged.

This lasting conception of the role of the school and the place of the pupil explains the resistance that goes hand in hand with the development of pupil participation in secondary school, the minor legitimacy it is granted, and the preference for formal participation. Consequently, while political discourse concerning school makes widespread use of the notion of citizenship, the schools themselves have difficulty in allowing it to be exercised.