“Until the 1970s, each small town in Dordogne had its own school. Then, we noticed an obvious demographic decline, a rural exodus. This resulted in mechanical reductions in allocations. » Alain Barry, FSU-Snuipp 24 departmental co-secretary, coldly analyzes the National Education figures, available in open data (data open to all)…
“Until the 1970s, each small town in Dordogne had its own school. Then, we noticed an obvious demographic decline, a rural exodus. This resulted in mechanical reductions in allocations. » Alain Barry, FSU-Snuipp 24 departmental co-secretary, coldly analyzes the National Education figures, available in open data (data open to all). Since 1978, Dordogne – and its approximately 500 municipalities – has lost 196 schools.
Not linear
This evolution has not been linear. The most significant peak was reached in the mid-1980s. “This corresponds to the development of intercommunal educational groups [RPI] », contextualizes Delphine Labail. The mayor of Périgueux is also co-president of the education commission of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF). Alain Barry adds: “When three or four municipalities came together, one of them lost its school. » He adds a fact, significant years later: the mergers of municipalities.
The number of schools in the department has tended to stabilize over the past two years. This is explained by a double phenomenon: the doubling of CP classes, coupled with the possibility, since 2019, for a chief magistrate of a rural locality, to oppose the closure of his school. “Already around ten mayors have used this right,” specifies Alain Barry. The union representative is afraid that, in the long term, schools will concentrate on “big centers or the cantonal capitals”: “I always make the comparison with the Landes. There, there are big poles and then for kilometers, nothing. In Périgord, it is different: the habitat is very diffuse, not very dense. »
School buildings
Delphine Labaiils responds: “Yes, the first intuition is to put the school in the capital of the canton, but other configurations exist. We can envisage establishments distributed on both sides of the canton, not just in the center. We come together, or we explode. » The councilor of Périgueux pleads for his peers to look at the fabric of existing school buildings: “The decline in the school population is correlated with the aging of the population. We can consider developing service centers there to ensure the maintenance of public services. »
Prospective
Upon returning “from a study trip as part of the Erasmus program”, organized in Finland in November 2023, elected Périgord officials and state services set up a Departmental Education and Rurality Council (CDER). “We carried out projection work with the services of INSEE [l‘Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques], indicates Delphine Labail. We met with a forecaster in order to anticipate and work on the department’s network. »
She adds: “The academic director of the National Education Services [Dasen], Nathalie Malabre, is very attentive. We want to maintain the public school network with bearable travel, in order to maintain educational dynamics. Fewer and fewer teachers want to go to a one-room school. »
#French
