Cohésion scolaire et politiques éducatives

Abstract

The international comparaisons of school systems involve mainly the students' academic achievements and more rarely their behaviors. As part of greater research work on social and school cohesion, this article aims to start an exploratory analysis of the students' attitudes labelled as "feeling of belonging to a school" concept. First, based on data from several PISA surveys done with fifteen-year-old students, we will show that - depending on the countries - their attitudes are not similar in terms of the feeling of the school's usefulness, collaborative spirit and academic competition. Then, we will highlight the links between those attitudes and the structural characteristics of the systems like one school for all or separate courses of study, streaming strategies or resorting to repeating a year. Finally, to go beyond the schools' "hard" structures, the different attitudes will be linked to the characteristics of the schools' atmosphere as perceived by the students.