In recent days, the prefect of the North announced the end of the contract linking the Lille private Muslim high school Averroès to the State. An expected decision that the management of the establishment intends to contest before the administrative court of Lille. In fact, the consequences of the revocation of this contract must take effect from the start of the 2024 school year, in particular by stopping the payment of public subsidies to the establishment. Concretely, this implies repercussions well beyond the simple financial aspect with the risk of seeing Averroès close despite its incredible baccalaureate success statistics.
The Averroès Muslim high school was created in Lille more than twenty years ago, in 2003. At the time, the project leaders had received the approval of all stakeholders to get started: Lille public prosecutor’s office, town hall, rectorate and prefecture. The private structure outside of the contract was still small when it obtained, in 2008, the famous contract, broken by the prefect this week. The deal to move from the status of “out of contract” to that of “under contract” is that the establishment is obliged “to welcome children without distinction of origin, opinion or belief”. In return, “the State pays teachers, and public authorities must finance the operation of the establishment in the same proportions as they finance public educational establishments”.
Financial management “very dependent on public funding”
A godsend for Averroès who mattered at the time 90 students with an annual budget of 400,000 euros was devoted to three-quarters of the salary of teachers. It is also largely this contract and public subsidies that have allowed the high school to grow to accommodate nearly 800 students today. In 2012, Averroès also opened a college in the same spirit as the high school but for which the establishment of an association contract with the State was always refused.
The first challenge that the establishment will encounter is to deal with the loss of this funding. According to a report from the Regional Chamber of Accounts (CRC), dating from June 2023, Averroès presented a healthy financial situation until 2015, “before experiencing a sudden and continuous deterioration”. In this same report, the CRC noted that “the financial management of the Averroès association thus appears very dependent on public funding”. For the 2021-2022 school year, the total amount of public subsidies amounted to 593,536 euros, not including teachers’ salaries, covered by the State, for around 1.4 million euros. That is, almost two million euros to be found each year, knowing that tuition fees only represent 40% of Averroès’ revenue (1.13 million euros in 2021-22) for an average of 1,400 euros per student. .
Tuition fees, baccalaureate exams and program
For the students, the loss of the contract will not be without consequences either, in addition to a substantial increase in tuition fees. The high school will be considered “out of contract” and this “causes students to lose the right to take the baccalaureate as do students from the public or establishments under contract”, explains Anne Coffinier, president of the “Create your school” association. . According to her, “no point in continuous assessment can be taken into account” and Averroès terminal students will have to take “20 final tests instead of six”.
The last point which may discourage parents of students who would like to enroll their children at Averroès is the difficulty of moving from a “non-contract” establishment to a public establishment. The student must in fact submit to a “ admission exam [qui] covers the main disciplines taught both in the class attended and in the class in which the student wishes to continue his studies. If it fails, return to the “out of contract” box. Because if the establishment must “guarantee the acquisition of knowledge of the common core », On the other hand, he has no obligation to follow either the program or the timetables of public education.