Anne Genetet, Minister of National Education, previously had a completely different career: she once launched a company training domestic workers.
Anne Genetet is the new Minister of National Education. Appointed on September 21, she took over from Nicole Belloubet during the transfer of power two days later. The one who became the sixth minister in seven years on rue Grenelle presented her objectives for this position, assuring that “the ship will not change course”: “A movement has been launched, around strong ambitions such as raising the level of our students, the requirement of our teaching, but also respect for our teachers, their authority and that of the Republic, and the well-being of our students and our staff”. She also places emphasis on “student success”.
She summed up her ambitions as follows: “This is what I will focus on: preserving the school, protecting our students, building a space of serenity and stability (…) What I propose to you can therefore be summed up in a few words. Humbly taking up together the challenges of the school so that it can finally and for a long time reconnect with its primary mission: forging Republicans, building destinies, bringing happiness”. Major projects await the new minister: teacher remuneration, the crisis of attractiveness of the profession, the question of school uniforms, level groups or even the subject of school diversity.
A former commitment to the servants
The choice of Anne Genetet for the post of Minister of National Education and Youth may come as a surprise given her political career, which is more focused on international affairs, as she is a figure on the issues of French people abroad, of whom she has been one of the deputies since 2017. Aged 61, a medical journalist after studying medicine, she lived in Singapore for a long time.
There, she founded “Help Agency”, a company offering “consultancy in recruitment and management of domestic employees” for French expatriates, reports The Parisian. It offered lectures on “hiring a domestic worker in Singapore” and “the relationship with a domestic worker”. The agency, for example, provides some details on the salary that must be “adjusted at the start” in relation to the “capacity for future increases” and that holidays are “left to the employer’s discretion”. It also gives some advice to employers, such as avoiding negative remarks in front of witnesses because “a helper who feels humiliated becomes unmanageable: she will seek to change families”.
Anne Genetet also allegedly offered cooking classes for domestic workers, according to the Facebook page “Forum des Français à Singapour”. She also allegedly provided some for first aid. This revelation about the minister’s past made Sandrine Rousseau jump on X: “It’s stratospheric. Anne Genetet, Minister of Education, concocts recipes so that Singaporean domestic workers serve French expatriates properly”.
The minister did not wish to respond to the controversy. Her entourage defended that she had simply wanted to “allow these people to emancipate themselves through their work and to allow them to acquire additional skills through training financed directly by employers” and that she had “worked with people in great distress, very often mistreated workers”.
A rejection from the teachers’ unions
The appointment of Anne Genetet was also poorly received by the teachers’ unions. According to Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, “there is no good point in this profile, it looks like a casting error in view of the stakes for the school”. The same goes for Elisabeth Allain-Moreno, general secretary of SE-Unsa, who believes that Anne Genetet “does not know much, neither near nor far, about the school and the education system, this worries us a lot”. Guislaine David, general secretary of SNUipp-FSU, for her part, deplored this appointment, considering the minister to be a “clone of Gabriel Attal”.
Nor is it certain that she will find much support within the new government, having been critical of the Republicans, who will nevertheless surround her and even very closely, since the Minister Delegate in charge of educational success and professional education is the LR MP Alexandre Portier. “The LR have never wanted to work with us, it is not for lack of having reached out to them, they have hit us,” she had, for example, launched on the set of BFMTV, on September 20. She had also called for vigilance in the face of the probable nomination of Bruno Retailleau, who was finally chosen for the Interior.
Although she seems far removed from the educational environment, in 2022, Anne Genetet nevertheless got closer to the subject by being rapporteur in the National Assembly for the bill on the evolution of “the governance of the Agency for French Education Abroad” and the creation of “regional training institutes”. She also wanted to highlight her educational background. “I am a daughter of public school, from start to finish, from school to university”, she reminded AFP, a statement that contrasts with Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who had a short stint in this position due to a controversy over her children’s private education.