Bouncing between Public and Private: Exploring the Subjective Experience of “School-Swappers”

International audienceThe presentation discusses findings from an ethnographic study of “school swappers” in Brittany, France: these are students who go to a private school and then to a public school and those who move from a public school to a private school. The French school system is made up of two sectors of education: the public or secular sector and the private sector in which the catholic faith schools represent ninety-five percent. Structural modifications have changed the double schooling system and the place of each sector in French society. Since the 1950s, private education has known institutional transformations which have moved it closer to public education, especially since the 1959 law known as the “loi Debré” with the state contract: private education is identified as a “private service of public utility”. The function of private schooling changed again in the eighties: though its main vocation remained religious instruction, it was being used more and more as a “second chance” by parents of pupils encountering difficulties in public schools (Prost, 1982). At the same time, in a study on family choice, Robert Ballion (1982) observed changes in families’ behaviour: he underlined the increased demand for the best education possible and interpreted it as a “strategy” comparable to the one used by an informed and consumer actor. Reasons of geographical proximity or teachers’ availability also explain the choice of schools by families (Langouët & Léger, 1997; van Zanten, 2009).A larger part of the private sector is today dominated by state-subsidized and state-supervised catholic educational institutions. In the past and increasingly today with the introduction of more flexible catchment areas, private schools are part of the ordinary school landscape. The reconciliation of the two sectors creates favorable conditions for transfer students. The recourse to “school-swapping” hasn't stopped increasing: approximately 40 % of the students go at least for one year to a private school in France. Although “school-swapping” affects a high proportion of pupils and families, this issue is not widely-explored in the research and when it is addressed; it is often through quantitative and macrosociological methodology (Langouët & Léger, 1994; Reddy, 1994). But why do students change schools? How does each student live the change of school sector? What differences do they perceive? So our research questions the lived school experience of “school-swappers”, focusing particularly on the effects of the schooling context (Duru-Bellat & Mingat, 1988; Dubet & Martuccelli, 1996; Leroy-Audouin & Piquée, 2004). Indeed the context plays a fundamental role and has a strong impact (Hofman, Hofman, & Gray, 2008). What are the conditions for achieving school success? To what extent does the internal organization of education, notably through "relational styles", influence the subjective experience of “school-swappers”?Our methodology seeks to study the lived school experience of “school-swappers” and analyze the logic behind the functioning of each sector of education in Brittany. The fieldwork takes place in four secondary schools of different sizes located either in the country, or in semi-urban environment. The data collection consists of interviews with the students who have changed school and observations in class and on the playground for example. The ethnographer goes into school space during one school year. The immersion into the students’ and school actors’ daily life enables the researcher to find support, confidants, and informants (Woods, 1990; Reed-Danahay, 2007). The investigation becomes deeper with the interviews, when the actors explain their actions, their daily activities, their relationships with the other people. The repetition of some expressions, of some words in the interviews is an indicator of the actors’ experience. Also, these two bodies of data enable us to create links between the actors’ declarations and their practices.The school experience of students is singular. The change of school, chosen or not, perceived as a strength or a weakness by students, affects differently their subjective experience. Students perceive differences between schools, not necessarily between sectors. Beyond their individual characteristics, the school environment influences students’ lived experience. Relationships with teachers and peer group prove central in defining the school experience of students. Each school is a “world”, with a universe of speeches and practises. Each school is marked by its geographical and social location, its culture, buildings, the interactions between actors, the management style, and also other dimensions which are common to schools of both sectors, but every dimension has a particular position. This combination of elements can explain pupils' differentiated subjective experience