pp. 685-709

It was within the framework of the Plan, the collective enterprise for economic development and modernization of French society, that the notion of training, promoted on behalf of the notion of education, was imagined as a measurable dimension, on which qualification could be based. The following article describes the social operations for defining, codifying and providing equivalences for phenomenons which until this point were considered as being distinctive and without necessary or systematic links. At the heart of these operations was the construction of lists of training which, developed for technical reasons, more particularly to forecast the population flow requiring education in relation to the employment forecasts for each level of qualification, prevailed over the lasting representations of the social world, which guides the public policies and the individual behaviour. The durability of these lists indicates the strength of representation and collective belief which are behind them, resulting from the actions led during the 1960s in different parts of society and of which the Plan made a synthesis. Such were the various steps at the origin of the expression « the training/employment relation » which today has become a common name designating an established fact.