Policies renewing the use of boarding schools were started up at the end of the nineties. The aim of the “Espoir banlieues” (Hope for impoverished suburbs) plan (2008) is to promote equality of opportunities by providing boarding school accommodation to students from underprivileged backgrounds. Given the considerable autonomy given to professionals for its implementation, this national policy disposition actually took on very different local forms. We will describe the evolution of this specific instrument by combining the results of a one-author two-year qualitative study (interviews and observation) of one of these boarding schools with those of a team’s study of seven different structures of this type. Because of the difficulties in implementing an innovative project during the first year of existence, the structure concentrated, in its second year, on the activities traditional to the school format for organising education. But the idea really central to the structure’s development is that of constant adaptation rather than that of pedagogical innovation.