Practical work placements during training: which agreement applies?

A training provider plans a practical placement within a company as part of its programme, finds a template online, lands on a “convention de stage” (student internship agreement), and has it signed without a second thought. The document looks right: three parties, a duration, a pedagogical purpose. Except it isn’t, in principle, meant for an adult in continuing vocational training — and this mix-up, documented by sector legal experts as a genuine grey area, can prove costly in the event of an inspection.

Three legal texts, three different audiences

French law does not provide a single document for every period spent in a company as part of a training pathway. Three frameworks coexist, each built for a specific audience.

The internship agreement stems from the law of 10 July 2014 and articles L124-1 and following of the Education Code. It is tripartite — student, host company, educational institution — and assumes the internship is part of a curriculum delivered by a school or university, for a maximum duration of six months (924 hours). It is the tool for school or university internships, not for adult continuing vocational training.

The training agreement (article L6353-1 of the Labour Code) links the provider to the buyer of the training — employer, OPCO (joint skills fund), or other funder — as detailed in our article on the mandatory content of a training agreement. It frames the overall contractual relationship, but on its own does not suffice to formalise a beneficiary’s physical immersion in a third-party company’s premises.

The PMSMP (workplace immersion period), governed by articles L5135-1 to L5135-8 of the Labour Code, is aimed at jobseekers supported by France Travail, a mission locale, or Cap emploi. It is meant to discover an occupation, confirm a career project, or kick-start a recruitment process, for a duration of one day to one month renewable, capped at 60 days per calendar year. It is formalised through the standardised Cerfa 13912*04 agreement, bringing together the beneficiary, the host structure, the referring body, and, where applicable, the support structure.

The grey area for providers that are neither a school nor France Travail

The problem arises for the typical training provider: it is neither an educational institution under the Education Code, nor a body authorised to issue a PMSMP for someone who is not a jobseeker. An employee retraining, a self-employed professional in continuing education, or an individual self-funding their course fall into neither category — even though their programme may legitimately include a practical period with a client or partner.

Centre Inffo, a reference body on training law, has described this situation as a “legal grey area with serious consequences.” In the absence of a dedicated text, practitioners improvise, often by repurposing the internship agreement for a use it was never designed for. That repurposing is not without risk: a host company that benefits from a beneficiary’s work with no financial consideration and outside a recognised legal framework exposes itself to reclassification as undeclared work or unlawful labour supply if the activity performed goes beyond supervised observation or practice.

Which document to use, based on the beneficiary’s status

Beneficiary profile	Appropriate framework	Legal basis
Student enrolled in a school or university curriculum	Tripartite internship agreement with the institution	Education Code, art. L124-1 et seq.
Jobseeker supported by France Travail, a mission locale, or Cap emploi	PMSMP (Cerfa 13912*04)	Labour Code, art. L5135-1 to L5135-8
Apprentice at a CFA	Workplace period built into the apprenticeship contract	Coordination via indicator 13 of the National Quality Framework
Employee or individual in continuing education	Period built into the training agreement/programme, with a written agreement from the host company	Labour Code, art. L6353-1 (by extension of instructional formats)

The specific case of apprenticeships

For a CFA, the question doesn’t arise the same way: the apprentice is an employee of the host company, under their apprenticeship contract. There is therefore no separate internship agreement to sign for their time in the company. What a Qualiopi auditor checks instead is the actual coordination between the sequences delivered at the training centre and the skills developed in the field — a requirement directly covered by indicator 13 on coordinating learning in work-study programmes. A workplace period poorly aligned with the targeted skills framework is a non-conformity, even if the apprenticeship contract itself is fully compliant.

Securing a practical placement when no framework fits perfectly

For a continuing-education beneficiary who is neither a student nor a jobseeker, the most solid approach is to build the practical period into the training agreement itself, rather than have it carried by a document meant for a different purpose:

1. Describe the workplace period as an instructional format within the programme — location, duration, targeted operational objectives, supervision arrangements — on the same footing as a classroom or distance-learning sequence.
2. Formalise a written agreement with the host company specifying its role, the absence of a productive subordination relationship, and insurance coverage (the provider’s civil liability insurance, supplemented if needed by the company’s own).
3. Check accident coverage: a continuing-education beneficiary is not, in principle, covered by the workplace-accident rules that apply to school trainees, unless a specific scheme applies to their funding status (jobseeker paid by the regional authority, employee in training, etc.) — see our article on obligations following a trainee accident.
4. Track the period like any other instructional sequence: attendance records or proof of presence, assessment of the skills developed, feedback from the workplace supervisor.

Formalisation is not just a paperwork exercise

This legal framing connects to a pedagogical issue documented by research. A study by Jean-François Roussel, published in 2011 in the journal Travail et apprentissages, shows that transferring learning to the workplace depends less on the content delivered than on how the practical situation is structured and supported — a poorly framed period directly undermines its pedagogical value, independently of any legal risk (see the study). A study by Marion Oswald-Egg and Ursula Renold, published in 2021 in Economics of Education Review, points the same way from the employment-outcomes side: work experience gained during training significantly improves wages and shortens job-search time in the short term, but this effect fades after five years without sufficiently structured support. In other words, properly framing a workplace period is not only a matter of Qualiopi compliance — it determines its actual value for the beneficiary.

The most common mistakes

• Using an internship agreement template found online without checking that it is meant for a school or university audience — the only audience for which this document has a solid legal basis.
• Confusing a PMSMP with a standard internship: a PMSMP cannot replace an internship, and conversely, an internship cannot replace a PMSMP for a jobseeker.
• Signing nothing at all, relying solely on the general training agreement, with no clause dedicated to the workplace period and no written agreement from the host structure.
• Overlooking insurance coverage, when an accident during a poorly framed workplace period leaves the provider, the beneficiary, and the host company exposed to a coverage gap.

Take action

The Complete Kit Certif provides agreement, programme, and evidence templates to secure every instructional format, including practical workplace periods, across all 32 indicators of the framework (€297, 14-day guarantee). To structure your training offering from the moment you set up your organisation, the ebook Set up your training organisation in 30 days walks through the process step by step, and the complete pack bundles both resources.