This article aims at studying school guidance from a policy analysis point of view. Based on the observation of French educational guidance practices, it discusses Thomas Risse's logic of arguing thesis. Through focusing on the room left for deliberation within the micro decision-making process that is educational guidance in France, this analysis sets out to reveal the constraints that press upon a mechanism for, and a logic of, deliberation. Based upon a quantitative and qualitative study carried out in the Aquitaine region, it concludes that this procedure ultimately only rarely results in practices of debate that go beyond formalist commitments to open and equitable argumentation.