In the corridors of the National Assembly, the majority’s support for the new Minister of Education and Sports is discreet. The latest developments surrounding her son’s education have once again isolated the minister.
“When it’s serialized, it’s never good.” From the first day of her appointment at the head of a mega ministry combining Education, Sports and the Olympic Games, Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra was immersed in controversies. As the revelations continue, his popularity rating among the deputies of the Macronist majority continues to decline.
Latest example of this irritation in the presidential camp, this Wednesday, January 24 after a session of Questions to the government. In a particular ruckus, the minister responded to a question on school bullying.
A scene which was enough to annoy a member of the majority. He spoke to BFMTV as he left the chamber:
“Single-sex classes are a scandal,” he gushed, referring to the latest revelations from Médiapart accusing the minister’s children of studying in single-sex classes at the Stanislas establishment. A point that this MP regrets not seeing taken up by a fringe of the opposition, “what is the left doing in sessions like that? We don’t hear it”, he asks.
“Now she has to get out!”, concludes this majority member.
Gabriel Attal visibly “annoyed”
Still within the majority, a member of parliament is surprised by her nomination. “Every day, we learn a new trick. I wonder why no one did an inspection of her life before appointing her to this post! It seems that she is a friend of Brigitte (Macron, Editor’s note), he I’m fed up too.”
Within the presidential camp, we dream of a “media diet”, “a little silence”. We regret that the series of “very clumsy” responses to various controversies has nipped “good media news” in the bud.
During his time at the Ministry of Education “Gabriel Attal managed to reconnect with the teachers in 6 months and we will have to reconnect millimeter by millimeter”, underlines a deputy who regrets the emphasis on a “between self” that the group is “trying to chase away”.
Oudéa-Castéra: how the minister got mired in an endless controversy
This same Gabriel Attal would seem little seduced by the first steps of his minister. “I feel the deputies are rather tired. And Gabriel says nothing, but we can see that he is annoyed, it shows,” a majority executive confided to us. The seat of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra does not seem threatened.
“The President is not letting people go in the storm,” comments a parliamentarian. When he spoke on January 16, Emmanuel Macron had indeed evacuated the question, speaking of a “personal choice” concerning the schooling of the minister’s children in Stanislas.
Perrine Vasque with Tom Kerkour
