Care, education and schoolification of early childhood: aims under pressure. Elements for an analysis of the French école maternelle

Abstract

In the French context of the last 30 years, we show that the priority given to an academic logic of the justification of preschool as a public good goes hand in hand with a double institutional transformation of the relation between nursery school and compulsory schooling and of its programmes. The analysis of all these changes allows to understand how preschool, dedicated to care, education and preparation to school, has become a genuine «school in its own right». Facing this evolution, the recent programme published in 2015 tries to build a new compromise between these three goals: it emphasizes the importance of parents and children’s care and development and, at the same time, it still focussed on five learning areas which are assessed in terms of students’ competences.