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School, Bruno Retailleau

Funding of private schools: End of school catchment rules and of the unwritten 80-20 public/private rule

Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.

The lever. Public funding of state-contracted private schools and the obligations attached to it: social mix, oversight, school catchment rules. Direction rule: ↑ more public funding of private schools.

« Supprimer la carte scolaire et mettre fin à la règle non écrite du 80-20 »1

Translation by the editorsAbolish the school catchment rules and end the unwritten 80-20 rule

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

€0bn

per year, direction to be read in the quote. « Sans dépense nouvelle. » [“With no new spending.”]

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

not costed

End of school catchment rules and of the 80-20 rule: an organisational measure, with no amount or official costing found.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Loi Debré of 1959: association contracts. The State pays the 142,000 teachers in private schools under contract (programme 139). Local authorities pay the forfait d'externat (per-pupil operating grant), set on the cost of a state-school pupil. More than 2 million pupils, i.e. 17.6% of enrolment.

Horizon. full year 2032, €bn/year

Limits. The static gain of the first option is fictitious. If pupils return to the public sector, their cost shifts there (private schools cost the State less per pupil), and the net gain may become zero or negative. Amount: €10.4bn of public money in 2022 (€8.5bn from the State and €1.9bn from local authorities, DEPP assessment taken up by information report no. 2423 of the National Assembly); a single source for this scope, no range. Other benchmarks, with other scopes or without a written source, not counted: €8bn for the State alone in 2022 (programme 139, Cour des comptes), more than €9bn for this programme in 2024; « entre 10 et 12 milliards » [“between 10 and 12 billion”] is an oral statement by one of the rapporteurs at a press conference, absent from the report, which judges the real public effort to be « bien supérieur » [“well above”] €10.4bn. Social modulation is cost-neutral if done within a constant envelope. The amount of programme 139 in the PLF 2026 has not been checked (only its 0.7% decrease has). Option financement-public-50-pourcent (rule on public bases, 18 October 2026): in 2022, private schools under contract received €13.8bn, of which €10.4bn of public money, i.e. 75%; bringing this share down to 50% with constant resources, families paying the difference, leaves €6.9bn of public money, i.e. €3.5bn less (editors' calculation, 2022 amounts not updated). Another reading, half of current public funding (€5.2bn), would concern a different object from the share in resources. Same reservation as for abolition: pupils who left for the public sector would shift their cost there.

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for Bruno Retailleau

  1. Projet Retailleau, mesure n°13 « Rendre aux familles la liberté de choisir l'école de leurs enfants ». Read the programme page.

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