Monday, September 4 marks the first return to school for the new French Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal. While his political agenda has been focused on the controversy after his memo to school heads to ban abayas in colleges and high schools, the real issue of this return to school is quite different for teachers: the lack of teachers. , due to a lack of resources.
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Will all the students have a teacher this back to school? Nothing is less sure, when we know that, again this year, the competitions have not been full. And despite the use of contract workers, 2,000 teaching positions are still not filled. The situation is particularly tense in the academies of Créteil, Versailles, Guyana and Mayotte.
Will therefore arise the issue of replacements. Minister Gabriel Attal did the math: 15 million hours are lost each year and this weighs on the level of students. This situation is not recent and is explained by the lack of job attractiveness.
The famous teacher pact, which is one of the hot topics of the start of the school year, provides teachers who wish to receive remuneration in exchange for additional hours of work. For the teachers’ unions, it is ” to work more, to exhaust oneself more to earn more “: a significant nuance to the presidential promise to immediately increase all teachers by 10% without compensation.
In the facts, teacher salary increases will only be 5.5% in September, less than the rate of inflation.
Muslim high school girls split on abaya ban
But the government had wanted to impose the question of secularism as a central theme, according to Gabriel Attal. As of Monday September 4, the provision, announced by the Minister of National Education concerning the ban on wearing the abaya at school, will be applied and students presenting themselves with this garment will not be able to enter class, but will be welcomed by schools. They will then have to explain to them the meaning of this prohibition.
High school students, the first concerned, are divided on this subject. Example with three Muslim high school girls including two twin sisters. They have the same black pupils, the same well drawn mouth, they are twins, Muslims and are 14 years old.
The first, Maroua, wears the veil. The second, Safa, lets her brown hair wave. But they say with one voice that, unlike the veil, the abaya is not a religious garment: ” There are several styles, there are several colors, it creates a certain fashion and I think that’s also why many girls of our generation allow themselves to wear an abaya. »
In jogging and basketball, Nina, third student, converted to the Muslim religion. ” We’re not going to lie to each other, most of the people who put it on are people from the Middle East or sub-Saharan Africa, she confides. So yes, for me, it’s cultural and identity. But afterwards, it’s true that now people can’t tell the difference between religion and culture, so it’s a bit complicated. »
In this new school year, the abaya will be banned in high school, and the two twin sisters, Maroua and Safa, do not agree on this point: ” I think it’s a very good measure, because afterwards, on social networks, especially TikTok, we see a lot of girls who try to make a small revolution among themselves to put on the abaya on the first day of school and I find that a bit annoying. We are in France, a secular country, and we cannot afford to tarnish the rules », opines one of the two.
Her sister continues: I don’t agree at all with what my sister just said, I don’t agree with a measure that could prohibit someone from studying because of a simple item of clothing. »
On this subject, the high school girls insist on the fact that school officials must avoid aggressiveness and promote dialogue, in order to apply the measures with benevolence.
Muslim high school girls react to abaya ban
Some schools return to school despite serious damage during riots
In France, this year, five schools will not be able to accommodate teachers and students as planned, because these establishments have been burned during the July riots and restoration work is still in progress.
One of these establishments is in Petit-Quevilly, near Rouen, in the northwest. In this town of 20,000 inhabitants, the Robert-Desnos kindergarten is gone up in smoke. Then, students and teachers will return to another site. A whole organization had to be reviewed for the parents of pupils and the teaching teams.
The Robert Desnos school was ideally placed, just at the foot of Christelle’s building. But for this new school year, it is at the Jean-Baptiste Clément kindergarten that Imène, her five-year-old daughter, will go: “ There it will take me even further, it’s twelve minutes out and twelve minutes back, it still gives me a good trip. » « don’t worry mom Imene told him.
With this change of school, it’s a whole organization to review. Because it is impossible for Christelle to be on time at nursery school and primary school where her other children are educated. ” I will have to call on a friend to take my 8-year-old daughter to primary school while I have to drive my little one to the Jean-Baptiste Clément school, which is one kilometer away. »
Before this start of the school year, Imène asks herself a question: “ I don’t know how it is, the new school I’m going to go to next time. » « In that school, she had all her bearings and I’m afraid she’ll lose them in the new school. “explains his mother.
Séverine Muller is the director of the Jean-Baptiste Clément school. With her teams, she worked all summer to welcome the five classes of the Desnos school as well as possible, in order to make this somewhat special start of the school year look like any other: “ She is a little extraordinary, this return to school. We had four classrooms that weren’t occupied. And we had a very large extracurricular activity room that it was possible to separate and recreate an additional class, so that everyone felt good. »