The Britanny Comité consultatif can be defined as an experiment in decentralisation responding to a provincialist ideology. The experiment is not isolated, since at the same time in the South-West of France a network linking academics, specialists in folk traditions, regionalist notabilities and Vichy administrators was created. But no synergy emerged in Britanny, among other things because of the presence of activists for the cause of the autonomy of the region, who were aiming at taking control of school institutions. Thus, the following paradox: the Britanny Comité consultatif constantly undermining the Vichy civil servants to whom owed its legitimacy. The analysis of this failure shows that in the 40s expectations in favour of a decentralisation breaking with the educational doctrine of the IIIrd Republic were varied and plural.