A true private education institution in the Somme, the Montalembert high school in Doullens will no longer welcome students at the start of the school year in September 2025. The reason: a continuous and regular decline in the number of high school students.
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The news arrived via an email from Diocesan Education: there will be no start of the school year in September 2025 at Motalembert de Doullens high school.
Due to a lack of sufficient staff, the Diocese of Amiens decided to close the high school.
“It's clearly a question of numbers, explains Sylvie Seillier, director of Catholic Education in the Somme. Currently, the high school has 82 students. For the next school year, we have 83 registered with one class per level. But for a high school, it is a critical size, a size too small. It is not our desire to abandon the establishment. But we find ourselves faced with an indisputable fact: we have a high school with a division by level, 25 to 27 students per class, while the norm for a high school is 35 students per class. We would need at least three divisions per level to run the high school well. No general education high school has only 80 students.“
The drop in numbers is explained, according to Madame Seillier, by the particularities of the Doullennais basin: “it is a territory that is becoming depopulated. And who becomes impoverished, she notes. To enroll your child with us, there is a family contribution to pay to finance real estate and the specific character of Catholic education. This contribution also finances the canteen because meals in Catholic education are not subsidized as is the case in public establishments. When families make financial trade-offs, that obviously comes into play.“
This closure decision causes panic among parents and high school students. Especially those who have to take the baccalaureate next year. But some parents admit to being realistic: “We suspected it: when you run a high school with only three classes, there comes a point where it can no longer continue, explains to us a mother whose daughter goes to school in Montalembert in Terminale. We expected it, but not so quickly. It's brutal, honestly, but it's better to be warned now than in March. Because the longer we wait, the more complicated it will be to find another school.”
And all the more so since the geographical location of Doullens is hardly favorable to a local solution. The options are limited: the city's public high school or those of Catholic education in Amiens, Abbeville or even Arras, several tens of kilometers away. “This necessarily means boarding school because traveling several times a day or depending on school transport, it's complicatedcontinues this mother. And boarding school is not suitable for all children. And it's expensive.“
Whatever the parents' choice, Catholic Education in the Somme is committed to giving priority to the registration of students from Montalembert in its other establishments in the department. “The head of the Montalembert high school is ready to receive each family to consider the best possible solution for each child. I will also intervene to ensure that there is priority for registration in other establishments, guarantees Sylvie Seillier. It is really with regret that we made all these decisions. But we will support the students and their families. And we will do everything we can to find the best solution based on the places, the profile of the children and their specialties.“
If the college remains open, the high school is not the first structure of the school group to cease its activity. A few years ago, it was the boarding school that was closed: with three girls' boarders, and “four or five among the boys, we closed it because it became empty. Over the years, we no longer had any intern registrations. And you can imagine the cost of a boarding school when there are only three boarders“, explains Sylvie Seillier.
It’s not just the students who are impacted by the school closure. Certain teachers, those who do not give courses at the college, will see their volume of teaching hours decrease. They will have priority over vacant positions in other Catholic establishments. For administrative staff, no consequences on employment”since they also work on the college and the learning unit.“
“We cannot invent students when there are not enough of them, concludes a parent. We know very well that three classes is not viable and that all of this is not due to a disengagement of teachers or teaching. The proof: L'Etudiant ranked the high school first in the Somme last March.“
