French Minister Refuses To Comment On Sovereign Algerian Decision

The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, refused to comment on the sovereign Algerian decision to end the teaching of French in private schools and to apply the law in this regard, pointing out that her country’s authorities are in talks with their Algerian counterparts to open a second French secondary school in the capital Algiers.
The position of the French Foreign Minister came through a document of the French Senate dated October 18, 2023, which contains the content of a hearing dedicated to the discussion and study of the Finance Law of 2024, and it was in response to a question by Senator Didier Marie of the Socialist Party, through which he demanded to know the government’s position regarding what he claimed was Algeria’s decision to “suddenly stop” teaching French in private schools.
In this context, Catherine Colonna stated: “Regarding the ban on the teaching of French in private schools in Algeria, I have no particular comment to make,” adding that “this decision was taken by Algeria, a country with which we have good relations… I would add that a number of students residing in Algeria are registered with the National Center for Distance Education”.
As for Senator Helen Conway-Murat, of the Socialist Party, she raised what she said was a significant increase in the number of enrollments at the French Alexandre Dumas high school in Algiers, and that France had proposed to the Algerian authorities to open a second French high school in the capital, demanding to know where the negotiations on this had reached.
In response, Colonna said that France was already planning to open a second French high school in Algiers and that the authorities were discussing the matter with their Algerian counterparts.
French media had launched an intensive campaign against Algeria several weeks ago, following the Algerian authorities’ decision to ban the teaching of French curricula in some 500 private schools, while imposing the teaching of Algerian curricula in Arabic.
After that, the Minister of National Education, Abdelhakim Belabed, responded that the educational program is the identity of a society, values and culture, and that all laws impose the implementation of the national program only, pointing out that some institutions started foreign programs without a license (referring to the French curricula), and the state imposed adhesion to the national program. .
For his part, the Minister of Communications, Mohamed Lagaab, said “no program can be taught without an agreement between the two countries, and that there are foreign programs that were taught in some institutions, which must work within international laws and regulations”.