Staff and pupils at Averroès high school in Lille are concerned about their future following an announcement by French authorities that they are cutting off state subsidies due to management and teaching problems seen as contrary to French values, RFI reports.
Vincent Pieterarens has been teaching history and geography at Lycée Averroès for 15 years, ever since it started receiving French public funding.
“I was marking geography homework and asking myself: ‘Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s the point?’ I’ve just heard I’m a Salafi, a convert – me, over here marking geography papers. And I said to myself, well, so that’s what they’re accusing me of…”
Averroès first opened in 2003 as a private Muslim institution, originally housed in a mosque. It was established after the government cracked down on so-called “ostentatious” religious symbols in state schools, including a case in which 17 Muslim girls were expelled from Lille lycée for wearing a headscarf in class.
The northern city has a large Muslim population, and Averroès sought to offer students a place where they could practice their religion openly while following the national curriculum.
By 2008 lycée signed a contract with the French state, which subsidises public schools that agreed to follow national education principles, be subject to greater scrutiny and accept pupils and teachers of all faiths.
Now Averroès, which regularly tops regional and national league tables, is facing the loss of state funding of between €300,000 and €500,000 a year.
In a decision released on Monday, regional authorities revoked the contract with the high school, citing irregularities in its management and concerns that its teaching elements did not respect French values.
According to Le Parisien, in a letter addressed to the school, the local authorities identified “serious shortcomings”, including a lack of resources on gender equality and LGBTQ+ issues, as well as an overrepresentation of religious Islamic literature. The prefecture also singled out the Muslim ethics course, which it said contained elements “contrary to the values of the French Republic.”
The letter, signed by Georges-François Leclerc, prefect of the Northern department, criticised the school’s administration for a lack of transparency and financial dysfunction. However, the condemnation is based on the findings of a local committee rather than national school inspectors, who stated in their 2020 report on Averroès that they found nothing to indicate its teaching was not in line with French values.
Eric Dufour, the school’s principal, told RFI:
The school has been around for 20 years, so obviously over the years things get better, more professional. We are now fully committed to meeting all requirements.
Averroès plans to challenge the prefecture’s decision in court. The school has already faced disputes over funding: the conservative council of the Hauts-de-France region in Lille has refused to pay subsidies for each of the last three school years, citing a grant the school received in 2014 from an NGO in Qatar.
Dufour claimed he had personally removed an Islamic text from a classroom reading list that he felt did not align with the school’s ethos.
However, some in the school community say the authorities’ attention goes beyond oversight, claiming the institution is being subjected to a “witch hunt.”
Averroès is allowed to continue operating on a private basis, but without public funding it may be forced to raise tuition fees for its students whom teacher Pieterarens considers “extraordinary,” including Oumaïma and Noha, two students studying for a bachelor’s degree. The high school’s pass rate on the final exam hovers around 98 per cent.
“We’re just here to work and get our bac. That’s really the goal. We feel there’s something weighing on us. Everything being said outside school, we feel it.”
Oumaïma voiced fears that consequences will continue after graduation.
If we go for an interview for instance and we say we went to the Lycée Averroès, we’ll still keep that label afterwards. That’s what’s so complicated too.
