Les élèves de l’élite scolaire : une autonomie sous contrôle familial

Our article studies how the very good students of French high schools build their higher education careers at a time of uncertainty and hard competition concerning access to high quality qualification and professional status. The findings of our research regarding the students in the final year of secondary school or in the preparatory classes for “grandes écoles”, reveal that parents from different social milieu are deeply involved in the construction of the career’s choices of their children. Parents follow their children’s career since their very young age in a strategic manner through schooling initiatives and a “pedagogisation” of leisure. More precisely, our study bears witness to parents’ control, which is replaced lately by students’ autonomy regarding their learning process and their career’s choices, as well as students’ responsibility, self-confidence and personal fulfilling. This dominant model presents two configurations according to students’ social status in search of individual and professional gratification