Ccatholic Schooling in France: Understanding “La Guerre Scolaire”

Surprisingly, France has one of the largest Catholic education systems in the world. In fact, of the 10 million students in school in France, more than 2 million attend one of the country’s 8,500 Catholic educational establishments. One out of three young people will attend a Catholic school at some point in their education and one out of two families will send their children to a Catholic school during their education. More than 140,000 teachers and nearly 50,000 nonteaching salaried employees serve these students. But even more surprising to foreign observers is that most of the 140,000 teachers are paid directly by the Ministry of National Education based on their unique status as “contractual agents of the State.” Their status is different than that of civil servants. They are salaried employees of the State under the supervision of the principal of their institution, which in most cases, is private. This situation, which may seem paradoxical in a modern France known for its rigorous implementation of the principle of secularism, is the result of a long historical quarrel between two types of schools: public schools and private Catholic schools. This dispute is known in France as la guerre scolaire or school war. This situation also involves extremely diverse regional realities, since in some departments and cities, the Catholic system educates the majority or near majority of students, while in others, it is virtually nonexistent.