Chaired by the prefect of the North, an academic advisory commission voted, Monday, November 27, in favor of the termination of the association contract linking the Lille private Muslim high school Averroès to the State, Agence France-Presse was informed. (AFP) two sources close to the matter. Of its twenty-five members – including nine appointed by the State, the others being local elected officials and representatives of private education – sixteen voted for and nine abstained, these sources said.
Under the terms of this contract, signed in 2008, the establishment’s teachers are paid by the national education system and extracurricular staff by the Hauts-de-France region. The last word now goes to the prefect, Georges-François Leclerc, who must make his decision on the future of this contract “in the coming days”said one of the two sources.
The academic commission looked at both funding and “the educational aspect of the establishment”and especially “the content of the Muslim ethics course”explains a source close to the matter.
It met at the initiative of Mr. Leclerc. The prefect of the North is convinced that the high school no longer meets the conditions for maintaining this agreement with the State, of which he requests the outright withdrawal.
The commission’s referral report points out in particular the mention, in the bibliography of this teaching, of a collection of religious texts including commentaries advocating the death penalty for apostasy or segregation of the sexes. This report includes press extracts implicating teachers, and cites an inspection of the college, outside of the contract, during which an inspector noted that “the formulations used orally and included in the written records of the students, the use of the conditional, lead to a relativity of scientific facts in life and earth sciences”.
First Muslim high school under contract since 2008
The establishment of four hundred students, opened in 2003 with the support of the former UOIF (now Muslims of France), was founded in the wake of the ban on the veil in schools. In 2008, Averroès became the first Muslim high school to enter into a contract with the State, and has since regularly ranked among the best in the region. Today there are only two Muslim high schools under contract in France, with the Al-Kindi high school, near Lyon (174 students).
Denouncing in this affair a “total simulacrum”the school’s attorney, Joseph Breham, said that “if ever there was a decision to terminate (…) of course we would take legal action” administrative. The president of the region, Xavier Bertrand, greeted him “very important decision”believing that the “pedagogical content [de l’établissement] does not respect republican values”. Since 2019, Hauts-de-France has refused to pay the subsidy provided for under the contract, criticizing Averroès in particular for a Qatari donation of 950,000 euros in 2014.
” Nothing “ does not allow you to think “that teaching practices (…) do not respect the values of the Republic”had judged the general inspection of national education in a 2020 report. Contacted Monday evening by AFP, neither the Ministry of Education nor that of the Interior responded.