Financing private education in Lebanon at a time of economic crisis: evolution of the public,affirmation of the educative niche, educational distinction

• In Event: Education, Social Class and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa

Proposal

“To educate as many Lebanese as possible, that's also its great vocation [as an MLF high school in Lebanon]. And I myself would like it to always be the sons of the middle classes who can come to our school.” (Agostini and Battegay 1975)
These were the words used by Matthieu Agostini, head of the French secular mission (MLF) schools in Lebanon, to describe the school population the Mission was to welcome to Lebanon in 1975 (Moummi 2024, 351).

Established in the country since the beginning of the twentieth century, these schools are symbolic of the long-standing manufacture of an educational market in the country (Hauser, Lindner, and Moeller 2016), in which French schools play a central role. They are thus part of a lively school economy, in which many foreign schools, French as well as American and German, are involved. How has the economic crisis that the country has been going through since autumn 2019 affected the school worlds of the French Secular Mission in Lebanon? This is the question I propose to answer here, mainly through the prism of social class and its evolution.

First, I'll analyze how the schools of the French Secular Mission in Lebanon are financed, and what this means in terms of the school clientele. Which families can the association welcome, and how is the crisis transforming this? The role of the Lebanese state in the shaping of this school economy will be revealed, by questioning its role as regulator of last resort (Messarra 1994, 116).

Secondly, I wish to explore how this crisis affects the social positions of the actors at the heart of the financial functioning of these school worlds: families and teachers. In so doing, I will be looking at changes in social relations within schools. The educational niche (Dupriez and Wattiez 2016) that the MLF constitutes in Lebanon must attest to its positioning around secularism and excellence, due to the consequences of the economic crisis, thereby reaffirming the conditions of its distinction in the school market but also the terms of distinction of its actors.

Using ethnographic data collected in Lebanon during the 2021-2022 school year and in a more fragmented way during the 2022-2023 year, the socio-educational reality of the French Secular Mission's schools in Lebanon will be interrogated. Through the prism of social class, the way in which private schools in the country are financed will be examined, without neglecting the role of the Lebanese state in this process.

Author

• Akhésa Angèle, Louisa Moummi, School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS)