A major project in perspective. The government unveiled, Monday, November 2, the list of 200 high schools considered priorities for renovation, in a document sent by Matignon to France Télévisions. These schools were selected based on the number of reports made on the online platform Agora, set up by the executive from October 6 to 23, in order to respond to the anger of high school students. Dilapidated buildings, unsanitary toilets, faulty heating, lack of furniture... Is your high school one of the 200 selected? You can check it in our search engine below.
These 200 high schools represent less than 10% of all these educational establishments in France, but they concentrate almost 40% of reports, according to the government. A specific monitoring unit will be set up by the Ministry of National Education, in order to work with the regions to implement this renovation or adaptation work. Private high schools, whose buildings are the responsibility of their management organizations and not the regions, were excluded from the ranking, specifies Matignon.
20% of Corsican high schools are on the list
The first regions affected by this dilapidation (as a share of the selected regional park) are Corsica, with more than one high school in five on the list, then Occitanie, with 26 establishments to renovate, or more than one in eight. Next come the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Hauts-de-France regions.
On the podium of the most dilapidated establishments, we find the Charles-de-Gaulle comprehensive high school in Longperrier (Seine-et-Marne), with 369 reports, followed by the Coulommiers school campus, in the same department, with 355 reports, and finally the Hélène-Boucher high school, in Thionville (Moselle), with 302 reports. The general deterioration of school buildings is repeatedly denounced, as well as heating and sanitary facilities.
If dilapidation is a national problem, certain problems are more specific, such as heat in summer, recorded in more than half of the reports from high schools in Occitanie and Paca, compared to 31% in Ile-de-France. Work to adapt to global warming must be launched there, according to the government. The obsolescence of sanitary facilities is singled out mainly in Hauts-de-France, Paca and Ile-de-France. “The renovations will be initiated very quickly in the establishments concerned,” specifies Matignon in this note.
A criticized methodology
This list of priority establishments, however, raises eyebrows. In fact, no weighting of the number of reports in relation to the number of students in each establishment was carried out. Large high schools could thus be favored, just like those where students have mobilized to participate in the platform set up by the government. No checks have been carried out to verify that the person responding to the questionnaire is indeed a high school student.
Enough to question the relevance of the list presented by the government. “The ranking of the 200 high schools (...) alone does not measure the seriousness of the difficulties or the urgency of the work. Without data on the number of respondents and the numbers in each establishment, this count cannot serve as a diagnosis,” reacted the Grand-Est region in a press release published Tuesday, November 3. In New Aquitaine, the vice-president of the Regional Council, Jean-Louis Nembrini, denounced “a crude methodology” in Sud-Ouest. According to the elected official, "the government therefore considers that we do not know our establishments. We are investing a lot, we have built high schools, we have renovated some, but yes there is still work to be done."
The Régions de France association, which brings together the presidents of regional councils, denounces “an exercise in demagogic communication”. “Elementary checks would have allowed you to detect in this list high schools that have been completely renovated (as in Martinique) or which have even recently received an architecture prize (as in Sartrouville),” she scathed in a letter sent Thursday to the Minister of National Education.
