The Minister of National Education announced Monday, in Les 4 Vérités on Télématin, her intention to close the establishment. Nicole Belloubet denounces a problem of “opaque financing” contrary to the law.
After the Averroès high school located in Lille, another Muslim educational establishment is in the government’s sights. Invited this Monday, February 26 in the morning on the set of 4 Vérités on Télématin, on France 2, the new Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet, expressed her desire to close the Avicenne college, based in Nice. Opened in 2015, this establishment is, according to the minister, “not very clear about its sources of financing”, which is “contrary to the 2021 law, the anti-separatism law”. Nicole Belloubet even denounced “opaque financing”. The Minister of National Education affirmed that “on several occasions”, the establishment had been contacted in writing, but that “the responses were not satisfactory”.
What about the students currently enrolled in this establishment? Rest assured, they will be able to return to class at the end of the winter holidays. “We are going to announce the closure with a postponed implementation [to September] to be able to take care of the students,” Nicole Belloubet said Monday morning. In the event that the establishment closes definitively, because for the moment nothing says that there will be no recourse to prevent the closure, the hundred students of the Avicenna college, divided into four classes which range from 6th to 3rd, will be relocated elsewhere.
During a press conference organized Monday morning, the rector of the Nice academy, Natacha Chicot, stressed that the problem was the “legality of the financing”, and not the teaching provided there. who is implicated. And to insist: “At this stage, there has never been an alert about recruitment or radicalization phenomena.”