ABSTRACT
PISA has given rise to an international space of circulation between science, expertise and policy despite increasing criticism. After shedding light on the genesis of the survey and its contribution to worldwide governing by numbers, sociology are particularly studied some processes of mediation and translation in national education systems. The chapter contributes to this emerging field of research not only by illustrating and situating the French case, but also by contextualizing the broader European space as well as the intermediary space of French education policy and politics. If PISA is a key component of the European lifelong learning strategy, to which many elements of French education system are related, the international survey takes place in a European political arithmetic of inequalities that reformulates and transforms the French imaginaries of equality of opportunities in mixing an epistemic governance, based on governing tools and knowledge, and an epistemic authority shared by national policy-makers and some interest groups.
