Sadiki College
Several separate educational systems eventually resulted under the Protectorate. Serving French "colons" and Tunisians was a primary and secondary system closely coordinated with Metropolitan France, using the French language. From here students might attend a university in France. The government also directed a modern secular system of schools using mixed French and Arabic. The "kuttab" primary schools remained, keeping their religious instruction, yet enhanced by arithmetic, history, French, and hygiene; taught primarily in Arabic, the "kuttab" received government support. Thus Zitouna Mosque students might come from either the mixed secular or the "kuttab" religious schools. Zitouna education continued to expand, running four-year secondary schools at Tunis, Sfax, and Gabes, and also a program at the university level, while remaining a traditional Islamic institution. Sadiki College, however, became the premier "lycée" in the country, which offered to an emerging Tunisian elite a secular, well-developed, French-language program. These reforms set the stage for further advances made in Tunisian education since independence.