Gabriel Attal was appointed Prime Minister this Tuesday. He is leaving the Ministry of National Education after only five months. A “lightning spell” denounced by the unions.
In his eyes, education is “the most powerful weapon we have to change society”. And yet, he only made one return to the head of the Ministry of National Education. Five months and twenty days after being appointed rue Grenelle, Gabriel Attal took charge of Matignon this Tuesday, January 9. If the new Prime Minister promised that he would stay “always” alongside the teaching world, the unions bitterly criticize its results.
A mandate that served as a “stepping stone”
In the eyes of all the unions, the passage of Gabriel Attal on rue Grenelle has the air of “lightning pass”. And for good reason, it is the second shortest stay in this position under the Fifth Republic, after that of Benoît Hamon in 2014. Enough to push certain teacher representatives to wonder if the announcements made by the minister at the start of the school year about the bac and the abaya and its projects like the SNU and the uniform experiment “were not intended for political ambition”as Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, confided. “He very quickly tried to take the opposite view of Pap Ndiaye”, his predecessor,“through a strong media and political presence, a frenzy of announcements”notes the boss of the first secondary school teaching union.
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Same bitter observation on the primary side. Guislaine David, head of FSU-SNUipp, finds “surprising” that the former tenant of rue Grenelle remains “such a short time when he said he wanted to delve into structural reforms for the school”. For her too, this media presence and the multiplication of announcements were not “just a step stool” in the service of its ambitions. “We also knew he was there for his career.” An instrumentalization of which Guislaine David said “annoyed”, regretting the way in which they are treated “the Ministry of National Education and therefore all the staff”.
History will remember that a minister visited National Education to serve his future in politics… @FSU_SNUipp pic.twitter.com/srX5T21PDx — Guislaine David (@guislainedavid) January 9, 2024
Gabriel Attal, however, did not fail to have a word for his former ministry. During the transfer of power with Élisabeth Borne to Matignon, the new head of government promised to take with him “the cause of the school”. “I reaffirm the school as being the mother of our battles. As Prime Minister, I will give it all the means of action necessary for its success. It will be an absolute priority.”
Words that did not satisfy the unions. On the contrary. Catherine Nave-Bekhti, the general secretary of Sgen-CFDT, is concerned about the control of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister on educational subjects. “This does not bode well for the future Minister of Education”, she noted. Gabriel Attal’s successor will therefore have the heavy task of winning back the teaching unions, already in “anger”, according to Elisabeth Allain-Moreno, the general secretary of SE-Unsa. She says she is exhausted at the thought of “start everything from scratch”.
FS with AFP
2024-01-10 01:22:54
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