Since the decentralization of the 1980s and even more since the strengthening of evaluation within educational policy in the 2000s, the functions of principals of secondary schools in France grew with regard to the supervision of the work of teachers. In theory, these professionals, who before focused mainly on office work, should now turn their action to the educational work of the school, following thus the performance of students. However, in practice, the strategies of the principals vary according to the context. Most of the time, these strategies articulate old and new forms of regulation. This article aims to analyze them on the basis of a qualitative study conducted in 2005, with 40 secondary school principals in northern France. Taking into account that evaluation is often described from systemic and macro social perspectives, it is necessary to understand what it produces in the daily lives of schools.
schools; principals; teachers; control; evaluation