Since the development of the Sustainable Development Goals, extending the number of years of schooling has been widely acknowledged as a way to improve the quality of education regardless of the context. Regarding Madagascar, where the school enrolment ratio is still low, it is important to know how children with little education adapt to such an environment. This study investigates the trajectory of such children in rural areas from school to work and examines the extent to which education

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... eeds or fails in ensuring they have decent work. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data over a period of two weeks in February and March 2017. The participants were 6 head teachers, 10 groups of teachers, 9 groups of students, and 3 groups of parents from 6 primary schools, 2 lower secondary schools, and 4 upper secondary schools in the district of Miarinarivo in the Itasy region. The results revealed four major findings: ( 1 ) The combination of the high cost of education and growing negative perceptions of its outcomes, coupled with the comparatively strong economic opportunities outside of the school track, deviated the trajectory of children from its initial setting. ( 2 ) Children's aspirations change according to their environment. Very little help is given by the school or parents in shaping them. As aspirations grow into concrete plans, difficulties arise, ranging from precarious financial circumstances and parents' lack of motivation to a distrust in the system and society. ( 3 ) The austerity of the environment, the absence of career counseling, and the mismatch between education and the social context also prevent children from advancing in education that should lead them to a decent job. Conversely, those who succeed are pulled little by little away from their community at every stage of their education. ( 4 ) Those who stay become teachers. Teaching at a primary school remains a decent job that is easy to secure. Up to now, this has fit education budgets; however, the emerging policy of recruiting better-qualified teachers is likely to deprive rural people of this opportunity. the world despite the failure of many countries to fully achieve Millennium Development Goal 2 by 2015. Accordingly, expectations are higher and more nuanced, resulting in 10 new targets with 11 indicators. In addition, the main focus has shifted from Universal Primary Education (UPE) to "inclusive and equitable quality education [up to secondary] and lifelong learning opportunities." As a result, extending the number of years of schooling is being widely acknowledged as a way to improve education quality. However, in many contexts, such as in Madagascar, each step of education simply remains a means to access the next step; it opens up few career opportunities for the children who are compelled to stop before reaching a certain level. The length of schooling has always been a concern for Malagasy policymakers. In 1995, the Malagasy education system consisted of five years of primary, four years of lower secondary, and three years of upper secondary education. A change was made in 2004, fixing a total of nine years for basic education: five years of "basic education 1" and four years of "basic education 2." In 2008, in order to increase the time spent by children at school, an attempt was made to extend basic education 1 from five to seven years, and to reduce basic education 2 from four to three years and