French Muslim school re-allocated suspended state funding

By AFP

A French court ruled that a Muslim school could continue to receive state subsidies after local authorities in 2023 cut funding over alleged "serious breaches" of teaching rules, the court and its management said.

Private schools can receive state subsidies in France under a contract with the government, so long as they are open to all students, and follow the state's education guidelines.

The Averroes school, founded two decades ago in the northern city of Lille in the wake of a ban on the Muslim headscarf in schools, regularly scores highly in academic standards.

But regional state authorities in November 2023 said they suspected the Averroes school had received illicit financing, and noted a book referring to the death penalty for apostasy and gender segregation listed in a bibliography for teachers giving a Muslim ethics class.

Georges-Francois Leclerc, the prefect who suspended the funding in December 2023, told a parliamentary inquiry this month that he believed students were "in danger", and accused some teachers of having ties to Islamism.

The administrative court in the northern city of Lille on Wednesday however found that there had been insufficient proof of any "serious breaches" in education guidelines and that the procedure followed to cut funding had been "tainted with irregularities".

It said authorities had not managed to demonstrate any "lack of cultural pluralism" in reading materials, any breach of guidelines in Muslim ethics classes, or any "illegal funding".

The Averroes association that runs the school welcomed the verdict, saying it could now go back to "calmly continuing its work with pupils".

National school inspectors had said in a 2020 report that they found nothing at odds with national education guidelines.

The high school says it has seen its pupils drop from 470 to 290 since the funding cuts.

Without the extra funding, it says it was forced to double its fees and launch an online crowdfunding campaign to be able to cover its overheads for the academic year that started in September.

Under France's secular system, teachers and pupils have not been allowed to wear any obvious religious symbols, including the Muslim headscarf or hijab, in public schools since 2004.

The Averroes high school is a rare private school where the hijab is allowed.

France's authorities are eager to prevent any spread of extremist Islamist ideas in a country that has been rocked by a string of deadly jihadist attacks.