The promise of a modern educational environment in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is currently colliding with the reality of crumbling infrastructure and staffing shortages.
On October 9, shortly after mortar fire targeted the Édouard-Herriot high school in Lyon’s 6th arrondissement, Regional President Fabrice Pannekoucke declared that no high school in the region remained on the list of “insalubrious” establishments. Yet, as Tribune de Lyon reports, that official assessment offers little comfort to students and staff navigating facilities they describe as increasingly unmanageable.
The friction point between regional policy and daily life in schools centers on buildings that are failing to adapt to a changing climate. Even facilities that underwent recent reconstruction are proving inadequate during summer heatwaves.
At the Lycée Brossolette in Villeurbanne, which was entirely rebuilt in 2020, teachers report “delirious” temperatures that make learning environments nearly impossible to sustain. Mathematics teacher Adèle Kopf and philosophy instructor Rémy Gangnard warn that the site has reached its absolute capacity, with student numbers jumping from 800 to 1,200 without a corresponding increase in classroom space.
The issue is even more pronounced in older structures. The Lycée Marcel-Sembat in Vénissieux, built in 1973, features a south-facing glass façade that traps heat, driving internal temperatures to 40°C during the summer months. Beyond the thermal discomfort, deeper maintenance concerns linger.
Patrick Samzun, a philosophy teacher and union representative for Sud Éducation, notes that periodic testing for asbestos has not been conducted at the site since 2017. In 11 years here, I’ve seen the building degrade progressively,
Samzun explains, noting that even minor floor fissures could potentially release particles into the air.
Staffing shortages exacerbate these physical defects. In many schools, the maintenance teams—often older workers—are not replaced when they take leave, forcing remaining staff to cover larger areas.
Nicolas Kemoun, a professor of social and economic sciences at the Lycée Robert-Doisneau in Vaulx-en-Velin, describes the building as a sieve,
citing the lack of basic equipment like electric blinds to mitigate heat and the frequent absence of essential sanitary supplies like soap and paper.
Teachers report that regional investment is heavily skewed toward security measures, often at the expense of the operational budgets required for day-to-day pedagogical continuity. The resulting environment has led to a noticeable decline in social diversity at several schools, as families from the middle class increasingly look elsewhere, leaving the most vulnerable students to deal with high teacher turnover rates, which reached 40% in some institutions during recent school years.
Since 2016, the region has spent large amounts of money on construction projects, including the Lycée Arnaud-Beltrame in Meyzieu and the Lycée Charles-Mérieux in Lyon’s 7th arrondissement. However, the modernization of brick and mortar has not addressed the underlying issue of saturation.
At the Lycée Jean-Perrin, students like Nathan point out that even “privileged” or newly renovated schools are fundamentally ill-equipped for the climate realities. In all high schools, even those newly renovated, we see an inadaptation to climate change,
he notes.
