Use of Statistics and Public Actions : Policies to Fight Against School Dropout in Quebec
This article examines the production and use of statistics in a strategic sphere of public action in Quebec, education and, in particular, the fight against school dropout. To do this, we analyze the documents of programmatic character produced over the last forty years. Until 1990, the dropout issue was subject to a growth in enrollment. The situation changed in the early 1990s, the academic success becomes the central objective of education policy in a context where the State focuses on the efficiency of public action. Quantitative targets for graduation are then fixed and innovative instrumentation, marked by a desire to decentralize the use of statistics is established. If the use of statistical data remains low for the entire studied period, the reorientation of educational policy in the early 1990s, however, changed the modes of production of statistics on school dropout. The production of statistics on the dropout does not precede, chronologically, the emergence of it as a problem requiring public action ; it appears mostly in conjunction or as a result of public action in this area.