From 1945 to 1981, the unions from the FEN (Fédération de l’éducation nationale or State school system federation) representing secondary school personnel, and in particular the SNES (Syndicat national des enseignements de second degré or National secondary school union), defended the existence of a kind of student cum educational supervisor, as either maître d’internat (boarder supervisor) (MI) or surveillant d’externat (day-pupil supervisor) (SE), whose job definitions and statuses had been elaborated or modernised in 1937 and 1938. The SNES, committed to defending the quality of the transmission of knowledge as well as the democratisation of professor recruitment, refused the creation of a permanent category of facilitator- supervisor. Nonetheless, starting in 1968, and going back in this to ideas first explored just after the war, the union started elaborating a new policy regarding the supervisory function in schools, emphasising its educational aspect. This did not go anywhere, for a number of reasons: student-supervisors showed decreasing interest in the teaching profession – for which supervising had long been a kind of antechamber, used by students of modest social origins --, changes in the concepts of authority between pupils and adults, constant decrease in the number of supervisors as well as in the number of them belonging to a union… not to mention the power struggle between the unions belonging to the Fédération and its currents.