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School, Marine Tondelier

Funding of private schools: Public funding of private schools cut to 50%, conditional on social mix

Direction of change: decrease, 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.

« Réviser la loi Debré de 1959 pour diminuer la part de financement public à 50 % en contrepartie des frais de scolarité et la conditionner à des obligations de mixité sociale. »1

Translation by the editorsRevise the 1959 Debré law to reduce the share of public funding to 50% in return for tuition fees and make it conditional on social diversity obligations.

Encoding

Position linked to an option of the cost schedule, with no parameter to set: see the costing.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The programme does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

+€3.5bn

per year for the public accounts, saving.

The calculation

  • Share of public funding reduced to 50% of the resources of private schools under contract, with tuition fees in compensation (2022 resources held constant: €6.9bn public instead of 10.4), static costing without pupils returning to the public sector: Option costed by the source: a gain of €3.5bn per year.

Assumption by the editors. Reading adopted: the share of public funding (State and local authorities) in the resources of private schools under contract, 75% in 2022 (€10.4bn out of 13.8), brought down to 50%, tuition fees making up the difference at constant resources: €6.9bn of public money, i.e. €3.5bn less (2022 amounts). Static gain: pupils who moved to the public sector would carry their cost over to it. The social mix conditions have no cost.

Coefficient calculated by the editors from Assemblée nationale, rapport d'information n° 2423: the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.

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 Marine Tondelier

  1. Pour une prospérité écologique, programme des Écologistes, p. 92. Open the document at this page.

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