Entre refus de l’école et scolarisation à tout prix

This article is based on two qualitative surveys conducted in Cameroon, one in Yaounde, the capital city, the other in Maroua city in the north. It aims to report on the ways families manage schooling in the 21st century. The two contexts are very different: a fairly established school in the capital city and much more problematic schooling in the north, a more recently colonised area, heavily dependent on agriculture and predominantly Muslim. Apart from historical reasons, a comparative approach reveals the multiplicity of factors that shape school characteristics and determine practices of schooling, which range from school refusal to school attendance at any price: religion, culture, the need for labour linked to parental economic activity, the household demographic burden (dependent on the number of school-age children), the educational background of the parents, the cost of schooling, etc