Louise Sallé / Credits: NICOLAS GUYONNET / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 10:00 a.m., March 13, 2024
Has the war between public schools and private schools been relaunched? A large group of associations, unions and organizations representing the educational sector signed a forum at the end of January in The world, so that “public money goes to public schools”. Implied: we must cut the financial cord of private education under contract, represented at more than 90% by Catholic establishments and subsidized at more than 70% by the State, to the tune of 13 billion euros per year .
Among the signatories of this text, the main national education staff unions (FSU, UNSA, CGT, Sud Éducation, etc.) but also the Federation of Parents of Students (FCPE), the Education League, the League of human rights or the National Secular Action Committee (CNAL). Everyone gathered on Tuesday March 12 at a press conference to show their unity on this demand.
The State “maintains and finances” “school separatism”
They thus insisted on the fact that more and more privileged families are turning to Catholic education, which also enrolls three times fewer scholarship students than the public, and which welcomes a much less socially “mixed” public.
“The Nation’s priority for its school is to give priority to public schools, and to finance them as a priority,” says Frédéric Marchand, general secretary of the Unsa education union. “We cannot continue without saying anything to maintain and finance a form of educational separatism, which is becoming dangerous for our society,” he adds.
1.5 million parents have chosen private
On the side of Catholic education, these accusations are very poorly received, because the institution precisely needs this public money to accommodate more low-income families and continue to provide a public education service useful to the State.
“In France, 1.5 million parents have chosen Catholic education and private education under contract,” recalls Gilles Demarquet, president of Apel, the main association of parents of private education under contract. . “I think that it is not for nothing and that this freedom of choice, in order for it to be exercised, it must have the means to be exercised.”
But the anti-private revolt is not about to stop… A parliamentary report, which will be published at the beginning of April, plans to attack the funding granted to Catholic education and the insufficient state controls on this subject.
2024-03-13 09:09:14
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