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Photo: Demonstration of January 30, 2021 / Collectif Aubrac.
“The hunger strike is only the reflection of what we experience on a daily basis: a weakening of the school”. This is what Leila, plastic arts teacher and hunger striker, declares in one of the videos posted by the Aubrac Collective, who is fighting to obtain additional resources and the REP + classification from the Lucie Aubrac college in Givors.
Faced with the deterioration of the school climate and the worsening of the difficulties encountered within the establishment, already classified REP (Priority Education Network), the teaching team has in fact been increasing its actions and appeals to the academic authorities since 2015. , without any of their claims having been successful. It will be necessary to wait until four teachers are successively victims of assault for the academic inspectorate to grant lip service in January 2020 the creation of a second post of CPE and a post of AED in the establishment. Resources still largely insufficient to meet the needs of teachers, but especially of students and their families.
“It is for children that we are looking for solutions”
Following the visit of the rector of the academy and with the aim of “Take the step above and hit it big!” “, Leila and Pierre started a hunger strike on Monday January 25. Organized by the teachers of the Lucie Aubrac college, massively resisted, this action “Is part of a strong collective approach which is old”, with, at the heart, another project for their college than that imposed by the increasingly austerity measures of the National Education.
For the teachers mobilized, it is not a question of obtaining more means to control and repress the students within their college, but rather of being able to build jointly, with the children and their families, a project. which meets the real needs of the basin. “We need time, we need the means so that families can build a viable educational project with us, with the students”, says Leila, while another teacher from the college puts forward concrete demands: “We talked a lot […] security in our classrooms. But we want to keep our educational role above all, by having fewer children per class (18 to 20) […] which allows us to be much more available to them, to look at each one for a moment […] by having more staff to assist them ”.
The hunger strike, an action revealing the extreme distress of the National Education
If, as Pierre, also a teacher, points out, the hunger strike “May seem a little excessive” or extreme for « profs », it has the merit of taking into account the deep distress in which the staff of National Education find themselves today, but also the combativeness and the spirit of resistance that persists within the profession.
Even though the social and economic difficulties of the most precarious students and families have worsened in recent years, job cuts are piling up in National Education. At the start of the 2021 school year, between 1,800 and 2,600 teaching positions should be eliminated in middle and high school, while 28,000 additional students are expected. Likewise, the establishments classified REP and REP + have gradually seen the additional resources allocated to them dissipate. and are now in the process of disappearing, replaced by “establishment contracts” linked to “projects”, and no longer to the socio-economic conditions of the public welcomed. It is thus generations of students and teachers who are sacrificed, with the aim of always saving more money.
Jean-Michel Blanquer, current Minister of National Education, can thus boast of having made the choice not to use the entire budget allocated to it for 2020, thus saving more than 200 million euros at the expense of staff and students, forced to always do more with always less. As a reminder, at the same time, the government did not hesitate to give away more than 100 billion euros to the big bosses, as part of a recovery plan that neither prevented layoffs, nor limited the profits of CAC 40 companies and shareholder dividends.
The action of the Aubrac collective thus highlights the need to organize ourselves in our establishments to reverse the trend and propose another project for the public education service, which includes our students and their families, and takes their needs into account. real. Likewise, this action raises the question of the balance of power to be built in order to obtain the means necessary for the exercise of our professions, in fulfilling conditions for both students and staff. The health crisis must invite us to become aware both of the essential role of school, but also of the possibilities open within the profession. Because they play a central role in the current functioning of the economy, teachers must now come out of isolated fights, to build massively a balance of power that goes beyond the framework of days of strike or actions. punctual.
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