A world of solutions | “Everyone mixes together”

(Toulouse) Ain’t no mountain high enough… The voices of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell echo several times a day in the Collège des Chalets, to indicate the beginning and end of classes. In the corridors, students aged 11 to 15 mingle happily to the sound of music.

Narek Sargsyan, 14, is one of them. In the morning, he leaves his home in La Reynerie, a deprived neighborhood, to come to this school.

When asked if he knows why he attends a school located about ten kilometers from his home, he simply answers: “Because it’s a good school. It has a reputation.” Narek dreams of becoming a “fighter” (he loves combat sports), says he has adapted well to his school and has friends from various neighborhoods.

The idea that germinated in Toulouse almost ten years ago seems almost insane: in order for young people from different socio-economic backgrounds to rub shoulders, two middle schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods were gradually emptied of their students and one of them was completely demolished. The young people were distributed among a dozen more privileged middle schools in the city.

In his office at the Haute-Garonne departmental council, the vice-president in charge of education stands in front of a large, colorful map showing a complete redrawing of the city.

Over time, explains Vincent Gibert, Toulouse has seen the development of “ghettoized neighborhoods.”

“We said to ourselves that we had to find solutions. This is the mixed plan that we chose,” he says. A “risk” for an issue that was considered “non-negotiable.”

In dire straits, big remedies

This plan mobilizes large resources. Students who come from disadvantaged neighborhoods have shuttles at their disposal, morning and evening. In colleges that receive students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the groups of the youngest (in 6^e) are limited to 25 students rather than 30, as in other schools.

To ensure the link between teachers and families and to prepare the children who will leave their neighborhood next year to join this college, a teacher plays the role of “social diversity referent”.

At the Collège des Chalets, it is Ingrid Lavoignat, a French teacher, who has this role. She acknowledges that not everything is perfect in the “mixed plan”.

The “sticking point” is the commute, she says. For example, it is difficult to convince parents to come to school for meetings, even if the public transport fare is reimbursed.

For the rest, she only sees positive aspects in this reorganization of the school map.

The schools that were closed were “ghetto colleges,” she said.

“The students did not leave their living space,” confirms Mathieu Bourdel, director of the Collège des Chalets. For many, the primary school and the secondary school were only a few meters from their homes.

He considers the time spent on transport as “an airlock” for these students who, before, brought the problems of the college home with them. Of the 600 students in this college, about a hundred come from La Reynerie.

No matter, “everyone mixes together,” says Elya Taoui, 12. “My neighborhood is very quiet, but La Reynerie can be a little less quiet,” there are “more young people with motorcycles,” she says.

“These are questions of destiny humans »

Before being implemented, the diversity plan was prepared for a long time by extensive consultations that brought together a thousand people. Residents, parents of pupils, unions, elected officials, teachers, principals, school directors, associations: more than 130 meetings were held.

“It wasn’t easy,” says Vincent Gibert. He had to convince families from disadvantaged neighborhoods to let their children go to school on the other side of town, but also convince those from privileged backgrounds to welcome these newcomers.

“These are questions of human destiny. There are a lot of emotions,” says Vincent Gibert, vice-president of the Haute-Garonne departmental council. There have been “sometimes violent” speeches, he adds.

At the Collège des Chalets, some parents had to be convinced that their children would not be “pushed down” by the arrival of students from disadvantaged areas.

Parents “saw discipline problems coming,” says principal Mathieu Bourdel, who assures that the discipline problems of students at his school have nothing to do with their neighborhood.

Even recently, parents have “pointed the finger” at students from mixed social groups, blaming them for certain problems experienced at school.

It is enough to “refocus the debate”, says the deputy director of the establishment, Cyril Oury.

Today, it is difficult to say which teenager comes from which neighborhood, say the teachers we spoke to. Classes are heterogeneous and students who come from disadvantaged neighborhoods “are neither better nor worse students” than the others, assures Agnès Houbin, an English teacher.

“You don’t see the difference,” she said.

She chose to work at the Collège des Chalets because of the social diversity found there.

“School is not just there to learn things, to have a job: it is above all to have enlightened citizens who know the country in which they live. For that, we must understand that not everyone has exactly the same realities on a daily basis,” recalls Agnès Houbin.