59

‪Why and how did a global organisation as influential as the Rotary Club, which is perceived as somewhat conservative and distrustful of the development of public services, become a partner of the Ministry of Education in France? In this country, unlike others, the involvement of private actors in the education system is largely ignored in public debate. The apparent neutrality of these actors masks the organisations that finance them and that define the forms their educational interventions take in schools. Therefore, this article, based on a survey conducted between 2017 and 2019 in two regional education authorities (“academies”), begins by describing this little-known organisation, the Rotary Club. It then analyses the actions it implements in schools using the example of two “Parcours” (pathways) developed in agreement with the education authorities. Invisible in the public arena, these actions are implemented on the periphery of the recently introduced curricula and are symbolic, under the guise of blurring the distinction between public and private.‪