It is a “historic” strike which is announced this Wednesday in the schools of France. According to the first union, 75% of teachers will be on strike and one in two schools will be closed.
After two years of health crisis and school adjustments to successive waves of Covid-19, the educational staff can take no more and intend to let it be known. According to Education staff, a threshold has been passed: that of ” add disorganization to disorganization “.
This Thursday, January 13, it is therefore a dozen unions and representative organizations of the first and second degrees public or private, agricultural education and vocational high schools, who call to say stop. With the support of the Federation of parents’ councils, directors, nurses, supervisors and inspectors, a new political front is opening up, three months before the end of the five-year term, including the government would have gone well.
Because today, they denounce an indescribable mess, a feeling of abandonment or an untenable situation in French schools.
I no longer try to understand. The director spends her evenings and weekends dealing with all of this, it’s heavy, it’s stressful.
When leaving a school in Nantes, parents support this strike movement
“It’s madness in middle and high schools”
At the root of this anger, we find in particular the deterioration of working conditions and a constantly changing health protocol and impossible to apply. According to the teaching world, not only does it not protect students, staff and their families but, in addition, it completely disrupts the school and penalizes learning.
” We are told that we are adapting, but in fact it is the staff who must adapt, it is not the minister who adapts in his office. It’s madness in middle and high schools, the supervisors are really on the verge of breaking up. The teachers do not see the same students every day and there are quite a few teachers who are also absent because they are ill. Nurses are also totally overwhelmed », Testifies Jean Rémi Girard, professor of French at the high school and president of SNALC.
The entire educational community therefore wants the State to put its hand in the wallet. It calls for hiring, masks, tests or even co2 sensors.
“We are here to provide Covid daycare “
But it is also against the Minister of Education himself let the anger rise. School staff have the feeling that they are “ despised »By a minister who takes decisions without any social dialogue. Jean-michel Blanquer is pleased to keep the schools open, but “at what cost? Ask the teachers.
” We have the impression that we are not taken seriously in our work as a teacher and that we are there to provide Covid daycare », Explains Marie Breysse, coordinator of a program for pupils with disabilities in a primary school in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. “It’s not that teachers feel scorned by their minister, it’s that teachers are scorned by the minister. We have been for more than a year and a half in a school in which we have not invested », Adds Mr. Girard.
In the second level, the unions will also pound the pavement to ask for the postponement of the baccalaureate exams from March to June for more equality between the students.