Since being implicated in the handling of the school harassment case of which Nicolas, 15, was the victim, the Versailles rectorate has remained silent. Nothing filters through from the immense stone building surrounded by pretty gardens, in the city center of the city known worldwide for its castle. The parents of the teenager who committed suicide on September 5 after having suffered for many months from bullying from his classmates, accuse his services of not having understood their distress before the tragedy. In exchanges of letters between the family, the principal of the Poissy high school where the victim attended school, and the rectorate, the latter judged “unacceptable” the comments of the parents who would have “questioned” the attitude of the school staff. establishment. The agents asked them to adopt a “respectful attitude”, reminding them of the risks of a slanderous denunciation.
The tone used shocked even the Minister of National Education for whom “this letter is a shame”. “I will draw all the conclusions, including in terms of sanctions,” promised Gabriel Attal on September 16. This Friday, September 22, BFMTV reveals that another problematic letter was sent by the Academy of Versailles at the beginning of May. This letter follows the criminal complaint of parents after touching that their daughter claims to have suffered on the grounds of her school from an after-school activity leader in March. The director did not notify the police or the parents, which caused the latter to be upset. “The procedure in force in this case was entirely respected,” writes the rectorate. And to add: “Also, in the interest of your child and out of concern for setting an example towards him, I urge you to henceforth adopt a constructive and respectful attitude towards other members of the educational community and more broadly all staff of National Education who work to take care of your daughter and act as best they can towards her. Part of the mail is identical to that sent to Nicolas’s parents, according to BFMTV.
Although we will have to wait for the results of the current administrative investigation to learn more about the responsibilities of the different actors in the letter addressed to Nicolas’s parents, the Versailles academy is once again subject to a national scandal. She who, in recent years, has had a series of crisis situations and controversies between the underside of the drama of the death of Samuel Paty, the controversial appointment of the former rector Charline Avenel, or even her unconventional recruitment techniques.
Within the immense machinery that represents National Education, the Versailles academy, which encompasses the departments of Yvelines, Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine and Val-d’Oise, represents a “State in the state”. The first of its particularities is to be the largest in France since it has more than a million students (i.e. 9% of the total number of students enrolled in France), represents 4,070 establishments, and employs more than 100 000 people including some 81,000 teachers. Which also makes it the largest employer in Ile-de-France. Its heterogeneity is another of its specificities, since this body has on its territory both very posh establishments and others which welcome a very disadvantaged public. “Between the Pasteur high school in Neuilly and the Pablo Neruda college in Grigny, you have a bit of both extremes!”, summarizes this senior civil servant who in the past held important positions at the Versailles rectorate. “As a result, the social divide in educational establishments also leads to a social divide in the teaching profession. Alongside the battalion of contract workers or new starters assigned to the most difficult areas, you have the associate professors who teach in upscale neighborhoods” , continues former rector Bernard Toulemonde, for whom the key to success is maintaining a close link between school heads and educational inspectors. “They represent this backbone that allows you to act,” he insists.
Maintaining contact with those in the field obviously requires time and resources. “However, one of the major weaknesses of this rectorate is the under-dimensioning of its services, which weighs on the working conditions of a certain number of staff members,” says Sophie Vénétitay who, before occupying the position of general secretary of Snes-FSU, served as academic secretary in Versailles between 2017 and 2019. According to her, the services most in tension were those responsible for movements and transfers, or those responsible for management non-holders.
And for good reason, at a time when competitive exams are far from full, the use of contract workers is one of the major concerns of National Education, particularly in the Versailles academy where they represent 8% of the workforce in the second degree, and 3% in the first degree. “85% of contract school teachers recruited in 2022 are executives undergoing retraining, all graduated from bac +3 to bac +5”, takes care to specify its website.
Not enough to reassure parents who are wondering about certain hiring procedures that are disruptive to say the least. Already in 2016, the Versailles rectorate went so far as to ask the Uruguayan embassy, but also those of other Spanish-speaking countries, to relay recruitment announcements for Spanish teachers. In May 2022, he took on the practice of “job dating” in partnership with Pôle emploi. The condition to be met for candidates for the 2,000 contract positions to be filled? Hold a bac + 3 and pass your 30-minute interview. The process had aroused the wrath of teaching unions who feared a precariousness of the profession and a drop in level. “It was not the first rectorate to use this process but what surprised us was the totally assumed side and the fact that the rector at the time, Charline Avenel, boasted about it in videos broadcast on social networks”, says Sophie Vénétitay.
“We may prefer a more humanist conception of the function”
Last May, Charline Avenel left the civil service to join the private higher education group Ionis. “I like to do things and I have a taste for results,” she explained in an interview with the AEF Info agency. “I had the joy of being an entrepreneur in educational public policies, and will now continue this commitment in the service of education, with a temperament that is mine: entrepreneurship”. The personality and “managerial discourse” of Charline Avenel from the same ENA promotion as Emmanuel Macron, passed through Bercy before joining Valérie Pécresse at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, then being appointed general secretary of Sciences Po Paris, stands out. Since her appointment as head of the Versailles academy in October 2018, she has initiated a new form of management which is not to the taste of all civil servants. “Unfailing efficiency is good, but we may prefer a more humanistic conception of the function,” says a former senior manager of the house.
On October 16, 2020, the death of Samuel Paty, murdered and beheaded by an Islamist terrorist at the exit of the Bois d’Aulne college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in Yvelines, was obviously experienced as an explosion by the rectorate towards which eyes turn again. The role of certain actors, such as that of the “secularism referent” of the rectorate who describes as an “error” the fact of “having taken students out to spare them the sight of the caricatures”, arouses controversy. Less than two months later, an investigation report from the General Inspectorate ruled in favor of the Academy: “At the establishment level as well as at the departmental and academic levels, arrangements were made with responsiveness to manage the disturbance initially caused by Samuel Paty’s course on freedom of expression”. In the process, Charline Avenel will evoke in a video this famous report which, she says, “shows all the support and accompaniment from which Samuel Paty benefited both from the principal of the college, who was exemplary, and from the academy “. This speech shocks part of the teaching community which denounces, for its part, the solitude in which the professor found himself during his last days.
Another “anecdote” that is embarrassing to say the least: a little over a month after the tragedy, the rectorate posted a small ad on the Pôle emploi website aiming to recruit a history-geography teacher in Samuel Paty’s former college . A ten-month fixed-term contract with, among the required skills, good “stress management”. Outcry on social networks. The Versailles rectorate defended itself by specifying that it was not a question of filling the position of the deceased teacher since two experienced teachers had been appointed two weeks earlier to take charge of its students, while recognizing that “this announcement inappropriate” was “clumsiness”.
“There are errors and blunders in all academies,” explains Bruno Modica, the former president of the Clionautes, an association of history and geography teachers. “Afterwards, there is a statistical dimension: the more people these bodies have in their ranks, the higher the risk of blunders. And as Versailles is the largest academy in France…” continues this former teacher. In June 2015, he denounced an instruction sent to his colleagues by inspectors from Versailles. The correctors of the history-geography test in the S stream of the baccalaureate were asked to show leniency on the pretext that the hours devoted to this discipline were fewer in the scientific section than in the literary section. “Not only was this demand for a leveling down unacceptable but, in addition, teachers were threatened with sanctions if they refused to comply with these orders,” protests Bruno Modica. The text was, again, initially modified then deleted by the rectorate three days later. Gabriel Attal, who brought together the rectors on September 18 to remind them of the instructions to adopt in the event of school harassment, then announced an audit of all the situations reported last year. “Then you have to change what’s not working,” he added. The minister will go on Monday September 25 “to take stock with the new rector recently appointed”.