Multiple weeks of strikes and protests ahead of the Olympic Games have involved teachers and parents in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, taking advantage of the media attraction to call for urgent measures to be taken for public school establishments in the most vulnerable regions. disadvantaged areas of France where several sporting events will take place.
Winding through a maze of construction sites, Saint-Ouen resident Zora Cheikh is unimpressed by the vast amounts of resources that have been poured into the Paris suburb ahead of the Olympics.
Located northeast of Paris, Saint-Ouen will host a large part of the Olympic Village this summer, as part of the immense infrastructure projects that the authorities have presented as a revolutionary legacy for the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, the most impoverished in mainland France.
Cheikh, however, is more concerned about the chronic teacher shortage, which has deprived her children of multiple hours of class throughout the academic year.
“When you see the amount of money they have invested in the Olympics, which will only last a few weeks, it is outrageous,” said the mother of five. “The education of our children is where our future lies.”
Cheikh pointed to shortages of replacement teachers, nurses and support staff at her children's schools, which have spent months without French, math or music teachers. He also lamented a nearly crumbling infrastructure, which leaves teachers and students facing pest infestations, leaks and classrooms without heating or ventilation.
These problems are not exclusive to Seine-Saint-Denis, but they are concentrated and exacerbated in that densely populated and working-class department, which has absorbed the migrant population and is home to the youngest French population.
“Children feel unappreciated when their school is a dumping ground. It is as if they were told “this is all you deserve,” said Cheikh, alluding to the ailments of parents and teachers in the department. new trois (9-3), as the region is known by its administrative number and zip code.
“We are not asking for special treatment,” he added. “We just want equal opportunities for our children.”
Promoting inequality
The promise of equal opportunities in the French republic has not been fulfilled and has been documented in parliamentary reportss focused on the discouraging situation of the schools of the new trois. Deputy Stéphane Peu, co-author of one of the reports from last November, said that “the schools in Seine-Saint-Denis are not fulfilling the republican promise: instead of reducing social inequalities, they exacerbate them.”
The growing anger atThe situation has resulted in an unusual coalition of parents and teachers unions. Together they have led weeks of strikes and protests across the department and in central Paris, calling for urgent action to help the schools that need it most.
At one of those protests in front of the Saint-Ouen town hall, Eva, an art teacher in the city, said that parents had widely supported the strikes, even though they mean more missed school hours for their children.
“Parents want to see teachers in every classroom, they are fed up with the lack of replacement teachers,” he said. “They also want respect and consideration for their schools and the community at large.”
The teachers unions put together a detailed emergency plan for schools in Seine-Saint-Denis, which would cost €358 million to implement, double the cost of the Olympic Aquatic Center built just north of Saint-Ouen. The plan calls for hiring 5,000 teachers and nearly 2,000 support people for students with disabilities.
Marie-Noëlle Vaucelle, local representative of the FCPE parents association, He said such measures were necessary to restore faith in French public schools, at a time when middle-class families are increasingly opting for the private sector.exacerbating social divisions.
He added: “One keeps hearing about the need for more social diversity, and yet the Republic's educational system is being attacked from behind.”
Vaucelle said the complex conditions in Seine-Saint-Denis mean difficulties for schools in attracting new teachers. As a result, they are disproportionately dependent on young, inexperienced, and lower-paying teachers, many of whom eventually quit.
“We have young teachers who are motivated and passionate about their jobs, but who work in impossible conditions,” he explained. “To mistreat our teachers is to mistreat our students.”
“Millions for uniforms, but no money for toilet paper or soap”
The Seine-Saint-Denis protest movement has converged with nationwide strikes against the educational reforms promoted by the Government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and frontally rejected by a union of unions.
The measures, announced by Attal last year when he was Minister of Education, They include a controversial plan to divide secondary school students according to their levels of French and mathematics. The Government also said it would trial mandatory uniforms, a move pushed by right-wing and far-right politicians, in dozens of schools in a bid to make them mandatory nationally.
The imposition of school uniforms, which the Government has presented as a way to reduce social inequalities and highlight French secularism, comes months after it sparked controversies in various areas, including Seine-Saint-Denis, over the ban on abayas, long dresses preferred by some Muslim teenagers.
At a meeting at a public elementary school in Montreuil this week, one of many gatherings in the eastern suburbs of Paris, teachers and parents sharply criticized Attal's plan as an expensive initiative and a distraction from the real problems facing schools. French schools.
In a room next door, students wrote postcards to the presidential palace, asking President Emmanuel Macron for a playground, a replacement teacher, salt for the cafeteria and not to be divided between “good” and “bad” students.
“The government spends a fortune on uniforms that no one wants, but there is no money for toilet paper or soap at my school,” said Agathe, one of the teenagers from the local high school who participated in the meeting.
His account of the lack of staff and decrepit buildings echoed a video that went viral on TikTok, filmed by students and teachers at the Blaise Cendrars high school in Sevran, northeast of Paris, giving a tour of the infrastructure school on the brink of ruin.
“We're in Blaise Cendrars, of course we have a bucket for leaks because we don't have a roof,” said one student in the video, which had more than a million views in a single day. “I'm a French teacher at Blaise Cendrars, of course when I was pregnant my students didn't have French class for six months,” added one of the teachers.
The teachers were quickly summoned by school authorities, in what unions condemned as a form of intimidation.
Take advantage of the Olympic Games
Olivier Gallet, a primary school teacher and member of the Sud Education union, said the success of the Tik Tok video highlighted the multifaceted nature of a movement that has already been more important and lasted longer than past protests.
He celebrated the “unprecedented cohesion between teachers, parents and students,” as well as the support provided by politicians and local authorities in cities like Montreuil, who have allowed parents and teachers to occupy school establishments.
On April 2, Montreuil and 11 other municipalities of Seine-Saint-Denis sent a formal notice to the French State requesting that it guarantee equality in public education. Adopting the recommendations of the unions' emergency plan, each city issued a decree ordering the State to pay 500 euros per day until it provides “resources proportional to educational needs.”
The decrees were invalidated by an administrative court in Montreuil, which ruled that the mayors had exceeded their authority.
Two days after the start of legal action, teachers' unions and the FCPE organized a protest in front of the new Olympic Aquatic Center in Saint-Denis, while Macron attended its inauguration – demonstrating his intention to take advantage of the media spotlight of the Olympic Games in an attempt to increase pressure on the Government.
Back at the Saint-Ouen protest, left-wing MP Eric Coquerel, leader of the National Assembly's finance committee, called for more action during the final stretch of preparations for the Olympics.
“The Olympic Games are in 93 days,” he said. “We must make it known that there will be no calm preparation for the Games until the new trois get what you deserve.”
This article was adapted from its original in English.
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