NAfter just four weeks in office, France's new Education Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra has already been removed from her post. The trigger is the fact that the minister, after taking office, justified her children's private school attendance by citing the loss of too many hours at the state school. The minister then found herself exposed to a wave of criticism. As part of the replacement of some subordinate ministerial positions following the government reshuffle in mid-January, the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal also replaced the Education Minister on Thursday. His successor will be Nicole Belloubet, who was Justice Minister from 2017 to 2020.
However, Oudéa-Castéra remains Minister of Sports; the Ministry of Education was given to her as an additional task in January. As Sports Minister, she is already fully occupied with the preparations for the Olympic Games in Paris this summer and was generally recognized in this department.
“There was a problem,” admitted Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. “It was no longer possible to advance school reform under these circumstances,” he told the France 2 broadcaster on Thursday. The most important task for the new education minister is “to strengthen the authority in schools again (…) and the level of students,” he said. He reiterated that the government wanted to establish national rules for the use of screens.
In addition to school policy, Attal cited housing and access to medical care as the main concerns of his new government. He admitted that he was hesitant to accept the post of prime minister. “Of course I asked myself whether I was capable of it. I stand by that,” he said. In the National Assembly he wants to work with all parties, including the right-wing populist Rassemblement National.
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