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Threatened with closing L’school of Beaurain-lès-Noyon ? The mayor Daniel Hardier has good reason to think so. And he can’t bring himself to do it. “School is all we have left,” he explains. Mayor since 2008 of this village of 300 inhabitants adjoining Noyon, and before that deputy mayor for three other terms, he has seen his town change little by little. “We no longer have businesses. Until recently, we had the traveling baker, the fishmonger, but that’s over,” he regrets. Today, it is the existence of the school, comprising a single class on several levels, which is perhaps compromised.
Increasingly large groupings in the face of demographic decline
Obviously dependent on Noyon, by its close proximityBeaurain-lès-Noyon has however managed to maintain a school thanks to groupings with neighboring villages. “We had the first RPI (Intercommunal Educational Group) in the department,” remembers the elected official. At the time, Beaurain-lès-Noyon, Bussy and Genvry began working together within a SIRS (Syndicat Intercommunal de Regroupement Scolaire).
But it wasn’t enough. For the 2020/2021 school year, in order to respond to a demographic decline, this first SIRS of Oise merged with another SIRS, to form the Syndicat interscolaire de la Mève by enriching itself with the communes of Sermaize, Catigny and Campaign. That is six municipalities, for five single-class schools which cover all levels (Campagne has no school). The canteen and after-school services are located in Genvry. All served by free buses.
Still not enough?
But it could well be that this merger, although still recent, is still not enough. “Since the start of 2024, we have been talking about the elimination of a school in the SIRS,” reveals Daniel Hardier. “It was explained to us at the Academic Inspectorate that there was a drop in numbers on the SIRS, which is true. We were offered to group everything into 2 x 2 classes, which meant closing three schools in Beaurain-lès-Noyon, Bussy and Catigny,” explains the elected official. The argument used according to the mayor: “It is above all financial if we understand correctly. We were told that we no longer want single classes, partly because five schools require five directors, which costs more. By closing three classes, we would go down to just two directors.”
“When you are told that your schools are threatened, you have to sit tight,” he promises.
A fight to fight
Following this announcement, or in any case the first milestones laid by National Education towards one or more class closures, “we may not have been very reactive”, concedes the mayor of Beaurain-lès- Noyon. But today he appears determined. “After the start of the 2024 school year, we deliberated in council to express our opposition to a school closure,” says the mayor. Will it be enough? The mayor wants to do what he can against a closure which would rather affect his village: “In Beaurain, the teacher does not have tenure,” he explains.
Also, he now wants to work “to make the situation known”. In particular “to convince parents not to put their children in the private sector or in other schools, in Noyon for example, because if all the parents in the group put their children in our schools, there would be no problem », says the elected official. In Beaurain, things are clear: “I have always refused to sign the slightest exemption to let children leave,” he says. And he will continue on this path.
Fight over numbers
Because the fight is a fight of numbers, which pays little attention to affect. The mayor announces between “14 and 15 students on average per class. But to counter the arithmetic of National Education, he counts on the fact that the villages being located in the REP (Priority Education Network) zone like the Noyon colleges to which the schools are attached, the method of calculation differs for the levels CP and CE1 where the numbers are split, particularly for the basic teaching of reading.
Arguments that the mayor intends to put forward during the next meetings with the academic inspector. And there are others: “We have good schools here, we try to satisfy the teachers with good budgets, the teachers and students feel good there, and the school meets PMR standards: we try to do whatever it takes.”
“I am not a revolutionary,” concludes Daniel Hardier, “but when we announce this kind of thing to you, it hurts very, very badly, so everyone must realize that if everyone plays the game, including parents, we can do something”.
A mayor who would have great difficulty closing a school, where, he admits, he himself learned to read and count…
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