The decision announced by the Minister of Education, Édouard Geffray, to schedule the openings and closings of classes over five rolling years constitutes a welcome step forward. The idea is simple: start from the needs expressed by the municipalities, bring them back to the rectorates then to the ministry in order to determine the means provided for by the annual finance law.
This more territorial approach responds to a long-standing request from the AMF (Association of Mayors of France), which has long denounced the unpredictability and lack of consultation of school map decisions.
We may be surprised that a common sense measure took so long to see the light of day and that it was only taken for 18 departments and on an experimental basis. But any good news is good news, because the demographic shock is now impossible to ignore.
A drop in the number of schoolchildren to come
Projections published by the Department of Evaluation, Foresight and Performance (Depp) on April 8 predict a 15% drop in primary school enrollment by 2035 (i.e. 933,000 fewer schoolchildren) and 13% in secondary education (i.e. 743,800 fewer middle and high school students).
The French are having fewer children, schools and classes will inevitably be fewer. In a very constrained budgetary context, it will be impossible to maintain the same structures everywhere with a sharply decreasing workforce.
The reform undertaken makes it possible to better anticipate this development. But planning closures alone cannot constitute an educational policy. We must now invent solutions.
What school offerings for tomorrow?
The essential question is that of tomorrow’s school offerings. However, the ministry’s projections say nothing about the evolution of the distribution between public and private education. Or rather, they assume that the current share of students enrolled in private education under contract will remain stable at 18%.
Does this distribution correspond to the requests of families? No, it results from a policy of supply unilaterally imposed since 1984 by national education, in disregard of the length of waiting lists for certain private establishments.
The 2026 school year illustrates this tension. In primary education, 125,400 fewer students (2%) are expected, and 36,000 fewer in secondary education. National education has required private schools to return budgetary resources (thus closing classes or even schools under contract), even if the numbers are full and parental demand is there.
For the State, it is a question of preventing numbers from falling more quickly in the public sector than in the private sector, in defiance of parents’ requests. In Paris, an establishment like Saint-Jean-de-Passy in the 16th arrondissement is asked to close three classes, even though they are full and there are even waiting lists to enter!
The phenomenon affects almost the entire territory (apart from a few exceptions such as the Academy of Guyana or Mayotte, so the numbers are increasing significantly) but in a variable manner: the Depp announces a drop of 29% in the numbers in Parisian primary schools in the next ten years, 21% in the Lille academy and 22% in the Nancy-Metz academy, compared to 12% in the primary schools of Nantes or Nice. Even the least affected territories will have to adapt.
Maintain a local educational offer
Faced with this reality, the sole logic of closure will not be enough. We must also encourage initiatives capable of maintaining a local educational offer. In rural areas in particular, community schools can help preserve an essential service to local life: strongly anchored in their municipality, mobilizing seniors and volunteers for certain activities, and based on simple management models with shared support functions to reduce fixed costs, these non-contract schools can offer more efficient and less expensive education than those of current small public schools.
Last September, 45 opened up to the rescue of rural areas, according to the Create your school census (association led by Anne Coffinier, Editor’s note). Behind the maintenance of local school provision, there is a major regional planning issue: when a school disappears, it is the village that dies.
Focus on complementarity for a quality school
The challenge before us goes beyond the traditional opposition between public and private education. The demographic decline forces us to think differently. The priority is no longer to defend acquired positions, but to guarantee families everywhere a quality school, close to home and adapted to the needs of the region.
The time has come to move from competition to complementarity between public education and private education, as invited by Guillaume Prévost, the new secretary general of Catholic education. In a France which will have fewer students, the challenge is not to know which school will win, but how to together preserve a lively, qualitative educational offer accessible to all.
About opinions
This text is signed by a guest author. He expresses his opinion and not that of the editorial staff. Our Live section aims to allow the expression of pluralism on religious, social and current affairs subjects, and to encourage dialogue, according to the criteria set by our editorial charter.
Share your opinion in comments or by writing to us at: readers.lacroix@groupebayard.com
