According to Max Weber’s categorization (2008), the French education system is governed by legal-rational bureaucracy. The Ancient Regime and Napoleon’s legacy shaped professional bodies like the “agrégés” (high skilled teachers) and the General Inspectorate maintaining a strong corporatism and defending their privileges against each minister’s reform (Lehning 2001). A professional bureaucracy in which civil servants apply rules edited by the Official Bulletin of National Education is often the description offered to lay people and foreigners who keep in mind the image of the mammoth popularized by a former minister of education, Claude Allègre.