Toulouse. Mirail students educated in “privileged” colleges, does it work?
Through Anthony Assemat
Published on
Social diversity, everyone (or almost) talks about it, but policies to promote what is called “living together”, especially in schools, seem incomplete or little inclined to change the situation.
11 colleges and more than 1,100 students concerned
It is against this feeling of renunciation that the Haute-Garonne Departmental Council is trying to fight. In 2017, the local authority, which has the management of colleges within its competence, will then benefit from the closure of Raymond Badiou establishments (in force in 2020) and Beautiful fountain (for the latter, it will be effective in the summer of 2022), in the heart of Mirail, to bet on social diversity to give it a concrete reality.
“There is no loser in social diversity”
The idea: that the CM2 students who originally depended on these two colleges, be managed in class of 6e in so-called “more privileged” colleges in the Toulouse metropolis: Bellevue, Pierre de Fermat, Les Chalets In Toulouse, Jean Rostand to Balma and Leonardo DeVinci in Tournefeuille for Raymond Badiou; Michelet, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Emile Zola In Toulouse, Pierre Labitrie in Tournefeuille, Montesquieu in Cugnaux and Jules Verne at Plaisance-du-Touch for Bellefontaine.
“Social diversity is a political priority for us, a chance for academic success. It is a vector of republican integration and social lift and it makes it possible to fight against social determinism while there are ghettos in Toulouse, ”said Georges Méric, the president (PS) of the Haute-Garonne departmental council. “There is no loser in social diversity,” adds Vincent Gibert, vice-president in charge of education.
Four years later, while Georges Méric admits that there was “urgency” in front of “disappointing school results”, what are the first results of this experiment? The boss of Haute-Garonne pays tribute to the staff and to “11 colleges who played the game. The beginnings were difficult, we had to convince everyone”. The experiment involved more than 1,100 pupils and cost no less than 56 million euros.
94% of students entered high school
In June 2021, the first promotion to have received from the device carried out the Brevet des colleges, the first fire test before the baccalaureate. Here are the numbers:
“63% of the students obtained the Brevet where the proportion was only 50% of success for the students schooled in Badiou and 33% had more than 12 where they were only 11% in Badiou. 94% of the pupils entered high school, 3% chose other orientations and 3% repeated. 52% chose to enter general second “.
Still according to the academy, “four out of five students chose to enter high school in the sector attached to the host college, and one in five chose to enter into high school Rive Gauche in the historic sector”.
Nine students continued at Fermat high school
For example, out of the 15 students from Mirail and enrolled at Pierre de Fermat college, nine followed their schooling at the prestigious downtown high school at the start of the 2021 school year.
“Wherever I went, I had not seen such an ambitious program”, pays tribute to Mathieu Sieye, academic director of the departmental services of National Education. The latter met before classes of 25 students maximum which were designed to accompany this device, as well as the establishment of “social mix masters” to “make the link between the primary schools of the district and the host colleges” and ” diversity referents ”, responsible for providing personalized support for students. “It is a useful and important standard for a good understanding of the project. The results of the first cohort of students leaving college lead us to continue and install this system over time ”.
However, the obstacles were sizeable: material, first, for families whose children had to endure long travel times, in particular to reach, for example, the Mirail in Balma, from west to east. of the metropolis, morning and evening. Then psychological and social, to adapt to an environment different from the neighborhood of origin.
A bonus-malus system in the social mix system
In January 2019, the Haute-Garonne Departmental Council launched a financial incentive system – unique in France, according to the community – on the principle of the bonus-malus. “This measure consists of modulating part of the operating allocation allocated by the Departmental Council to colleges for the financing of educational projects, according to the rate of social mix of the establishments”, specifies the community.
In 2021, the educational portion varied between 22 to 70 euros per student, for an average of 54 euros. This year, 57 colleges benefited from a bonus at the start of the school year, only one having been applied a penalty. Private colleges are accepted in this process: at the start of the 2021 school year, none received a bonus, while 13 of them applied for a penalty.
The program will continue
This social mix system in colleges will continue. In September 2022, the opening of the new colleges of Saint-Simon and Guilhermy (with a capacity of 720 students each) will lead to the upheaval of the school map of these sectors. Consultation meetings are currently being organized, in October 2021, to finalize the new sectorization which will be voted in January 2022 by departmental elected officials.
By 2027, 22 new or rehabilitated secondary schools will arrive in the Haut-Garonnais landscape. Thus, it is almost the school map for the entire urban area of Toulouse (the rural environment will hardly be impacted) which will be reshuffled over the next six years.
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