This thesis aims at a better understanding of the challenging right to education emergence, often embedded within “social rights” or “debts” categories. This study is performed through the demonstration that the positive aspects of education are usually grasped using indirect references like the education public service and two civil liberties: education and conscience. These references remain the norm today despite the reality of the existence of a right to education since its supranational recognition and the recasting of education within the french domestic law. The conditions allowing for this new approach are studied. Furthermore the hypothesis of a gendered meaning of this right's absence within the French secularism context is developed.