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"Under the leadership of Jules Ferry from 1879 to 1883, the French Department of Education reformed the recruitment of its employees and, in this way, fostered a differentiation between political, administrative, and pedagogical roles within the state. The study of this autonomization process focuses here on three categories of civil servants: central office administrators, their assistants, and primary schools inspectors. Drawing on the minister's speeches, administrative publications, and archives, the paper first shows how new recruitment procedures served political purposes, while appearing specifically administrative. It then analyzes the types of knowledge that these procedures evaluated in order to select civil servants; as compared to professional knowledge, secondary education proved to be of strategic importance. As far as these procedures are concerned, legitimate access to government roles relied on a school-based meritocracy rather than electoral competition or professional ability."