Nearly one in two primary school teachers (nursery and elementary schools) are expected to be on strike this Thursday, February 1, to demand salary increases and better working conditions. According to feedback from its representatives in Paris and the region, the FSU-SNUipp, the main union in primary education, is counting on “an average of 40% of strikers in the territory”, with “65% of strikers in Paris, more than 50 % in Val-de-Marne, Drôme, Ardèche or even in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques”, he indicated in a press release Tuesday evening.
A “warning” to the government
The teachers thus want to issue “a warning to the government”, which “remains deaf” to their difficulties. “For several years, the school has been in crisis” and “working conditions for staff and learning conditions for students have deteriorated,” writes FSU-SNUipp. Teachers “are no longer replaced and at the start of the 2024 school year, the elimination of 650 primary school positions will lead to multiple class closures throughout the country”.
Most teaching unions (FSU, CGT, FO, SUD-Education, UNSA-Education, SGEN-CFDT) called for this day of mobilization. In Paris, a demonstration will leave at 2 p.m. from Luxembourg (6th arrondissement) towards the Ministry of National Education (7th). Demonstrations are announced in many other cities.
Oudéa-Castéra in the viewfinder
This strike comes three weeks after the reshuffle and while Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the new Minister of Education, Youth, Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, finds herself under fire from criticism. She has made several blunders since taking office on rue de Grenelle in mid-January, including her comments justifying the registration of her children in the Stanislas private school by “the number of hours not seriously replaced” in the public kindergarten that her eldest son dated for a few months.
“The situation worsened with the appointment of a part-time minister who discredited herself from her first speeches by attacking public, secular and free schools,” comments the FSU-SNUipp union in the press release. .