Barely appointed, the Minister of Education Amélie Oudéa-Castéra faced her first controversy on Friday by justifying her decision to transfer her children from the public to the private sector by her “frustration” at the “packages of hours” of teaching not replaced during teacher absences.
“I am not going to dodge your question (…) we are going to go into the personnel field,” she replied during a press briefing to a journalist from Mediapart, after a visit to a college in Andrésy (Yvelines).
This was his first trip as Minister of Education, alongside his predecessor Gabriel Attal, now at Matignon.
“My eldest son, Vincent, started, like his mother, at public (elementary) school in Littré (6th arrondissement of Paris),” she explained, before evoking her “frustration” as well as that from her husband, who “saw lots of hours which were not seriously replaced”.
The couple “got fed up, like hundreds of thousands of families who, at one point, made a choice to seek a different solution”, she defended herself, specifying that it was a question of a “proximity choice” since they lived on rue Stanislas.
The Stanislas college-lyceum, also in the 6th arrondissement, in the heart of Paris, is a prestigious private Catholic establishment.
At the beginning of 2023, the Ministry of Education contacted the General Inspectorate and launched a call for testimony after accusations of homophobic and sexist excesses relayed in the press targeting this establishment.
Mediapart had documented in June 2022, with testimonies and supporting documents, “the sexist, homophobic and authoritarian universe of the Parisian Stanislas middle and high school, a private Catholic establishment described as +the best+ high school in France”.
The arguments put forward by the minister immediately sparked political controversy.
“Lunar and provocative”
“Seven years that they have been in power, seven years that they have done nothing to restore the schools of the Republic. And they are offended today by the dilapidation of public education, as if they “were not responsible for it”, the leader of the RN deputies Marine Le Pen was indignant on X.
The head of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, judged the minister’s comments to be “mind-blowing” on the same network, parodying them: “+the public school of which I am now the minister was not good enough for my children so I educated in a private high school whose values are, according to the surveys carried out there, far from republican values+.
The Insoumis deputy Rodrigo Arenas, former co-president of the FCPE parents’ federation, for his part said he would contact the rector of the Paris academy “to verify the denigrating remarks of the Minister of National Education regarding from the Littré school in Paris.”
Teachers’ unions also reacted strongly. “Lunar and provocative remarks, against the public education service and its staff,” commented on X Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the first secondary school union.
The CGT Educ’action castigated a “lamentable and unworthy speech by the new minister”. For Jean-Rémi Girard, president of Snalc (colleges and high schools), it is “an interesting story because of what it says about the abandonment of public schools by our leaders”.
As for Unsa, it “will not fail to quickly remind the minister that its primary subject must be public schools, the only school for all and for all”, said the general secretary of the teachers’ union Elisabeth. Allain-Moreno.
“If replacements were not assured in Littré it is because there were thousands of replacement positions eliminated,” said the spokesperson for SNUipp-FSU (main primary union) Guislaine. David.
2024-01-13 06:20:11
#Minister #Education #explains #choice #private #sector #children
