Toulouse: how the Raymond Badiou college, doomed to destruction, disappeared from the school map
Closed since the start of the 2020 school year, the Raymond Badiou college, which has seen generations of students from the Reynerie district pass, will be permanently razed as part of the urban renewal project piloted by the city of Toulouse.
If the departmental council of Haute-Garonne, which is developing its social mix plan in colleges, keeps the Bellefontaine college, which is hosting its last classes this year, the city of Toulouse will not do the same with the Raymond Badiou college. , closed since the start of the 2020 school year, at 1 rue de Kiev in Toulouse. Its definitive disappearance, for a long time by an association of inhabitants, seems to have been recorded as part of the “Reynerie urban renewal project” which was the subject of a single public inquiry from March 29 to May 4.
The establishment, doomed to be razed, is located in the Reynerie district plot. “This will free up the land necessary for the construction of new and diversified housing (individual, collective and intermediate), intended for social location or accessible to private property,” says the communication department.
8,000 inhabitants concerned
The urban renewal project, led by the Capitol, which concerns 8,000 inhabitants and 2,700 housing units (85% of which are social housing), has three objectives: to create new “attractive and” housing, the “requalification of the heart of the district of the place Abbal ”, finally the enhancement of the lake and the Reynerie castle.
During a previous press conference on the mixed school project, the president of the department Georges Méric had reaffirmed the track of a “destruction” of the Raymond Badiou college, owned by the city, but of the maintenance of the Bellefontaine college.
The establishment, 5 chemin Francisco de Goya, located, among others, host a central kitchen for charities, such as the Secours populaire or the Food Bank.
Alain Badiou’s indignation
The disappearance of the Raymond Badiou college? Quite a symbol in the heart of this priority area of the city. More than a year ago, the Association Parents-Inhabitants-Teachers had filed a letter with the Toulouse rectorate to ask “to suspend the closure of the local college”.
In April 2017, when the departmental council had just launched its social mix project in secondary schools – the principle being to educate children from the Reynerie and Bellefontaine districts in around twenty favored secondary schools in Toulouse and the Metropolis -, the philosopher Alain Badiou, son of Raymond Badiou (1905-1996), had sent an indignant letter to the president of the departmental council.
“I would like to say, in my name, and also in memory of my father, Raymond Badiou, the scandal that represents in my eyes the project of total liquidation of the college of Reynerie and which bears precisely the name of my father”.
The, which aims to “fight against the logics of social determinism”, first of all the targeted community whose college Raymond Badi the success rate for the national diploma of the patent (DNB) did not exceed 50%. The Reynerie students, hosted in “so-called favored” colleges will have the opportunity to study in the future Saint-Simon college, currently under construction on boulevard Eishenhower in Toulouse, one kilometer as the crow flies from Badiou college, and which should open its doors at the start of the 2022 school year.
Another establishment, in the Guilhermy district, replacing the Belelfontaine college, is also due to open in September 2022. The new school card will change the situation for many students next year.
A scheduled closure since 2017
In 2020, the Raymond Badiou college welcomed its last cohorts of students, in this case the 3rd. Since the start of the 2017 school year and as part of the social mix project piloted by the departmental council and the departmental services of national education, the establishment no longer welcomed new students in order to achieve a gradual closure. As a result, CM2 students from the Reyrie district have been managed, for 3 consecutive school years, in 5 colleges in the Toulouse metropolis: Bellevue, Pierre de Fermat, Les Chalets in Toulouse, Jean Rostand in Balma and Léonard de Vinci in Tournefeuille. . 461 neighborhood students have been involved since the implementation of this mixed school system. The final closure of the college was voted by its Board of Directors in February 2020, before receiving a positive opinion from the Departmental Council for National Education (CDEN).