“If you want us to meet again next year, which is not necessarily certain, I would like you to level up and tone down!” It is September 20, 2023 at the National Assembly, and National Rally MP Roger Chudeau is speaking out against the representatives of the teaching unions who have come to participate in a round table on the start of the school year.
In a very tense climate, the far-right elected official, who sat that day alongside his counterparts in the cultural affairs and education committee, did not hesitate to criticize the interventions of members of the FSU or Snalc as “ridiculous” or “totally inappropriate”, considering that “the bitterness of the remarks made makes this type of meeting ineffective”. Protest by interested parties who leave the room, which gives rise to a suspension of the session. “This outrageous outing left its mark and hampered parliamentary work,” confides a Renaissance MP. Subsequently, the unions refused to be interviewed as part of an information mission on the recruitment and training of teachers chaired by Roger Chudeau.
This “clash” will have contributed to straining relations a little more between the unions and the RN deputy for Loir-et-Cher who joined the ranks of the hemicycle in 2022. That same year, the elected official with the pepper and salt had written the education program for Marine Le Pen, then a presidential candidate, which has since earned him the nickname “Mr. Educ of the RN”. He is also the one who works on the school today alongside Jordan Bardella.
“We are ready to govern,” indicated the leader of the National Rally on Monday June 24 before rolling out his program. Regarding schools, the latter announced a “big bang of authority” from the start of the September school year, advocating the ban on telephones “in all educational establishments, including high schools”, the wearing of the uniform and dedication of teachers. Other measures announced: the establishment of “floor sanctions” in disciplinary councils, the creation of specialized centers for “disruptive and harassing students” or even the replacement of the single college by a ‘modular college'” in order to “direct more earlier and more efficiently.
“Traditionalist” educational approaches
Within the rue de Grenelle, we clearly recognize the “Chudeau paw” which, for its part, insists on the urgency of stopping the drop in levels. “50% of students entering 6th grade do not know how to read correctly – it’s not me who says this but the ministry! – which clearly proves that there is something wrong with the transmission of the fundamentals”, insists the latter.
This former associate professor of German, who became an academy inspector then general inspector before being appointed director of supervision at the Ministry of National Education in 2008, knows the house well. “We must recognize that he is a man who is both competent and rather pleasant in his dealings,” confides this inspector general who worked with him in the early 2000s. “He was also a very discreet person, even if he made no secret of his educational approaches, let’s say ‘traditionalist’, and of his already very strong ideas, whether on the wearing of the uniform or on the disappearance of the single college”, continues his former colleague of quite different sensibilities policy.
Between 2005 and 2007, Roger Chudeau served as advisor to the Minister of National Education Gilles de Robien. He subsequently joined the cabinet of François Fillon when he became Prime Minister. Christian Chevalier, former head of SE-Unsa who then served as technical advisor to the union, met him at the time in ministerial work meetings. “He had a diplomatic, even wall-to-wall, side. Not at all the type to tense or provoke, he was more there to test the waters without really taking a position openly,” recalls Christian Chevalier. Of his time in management, former colleagues remember him as “a rather abrupt man who did not shine with his negotiating skills”.
A shift “more opportunistic than ideological”
Today, Alain Boissinot, former rector of the Versailles academy, is one of those who fear the establishment of an “authoritarian functioning” when reading the RN program of 2022. The text evokes, among other things, the possibility of sanctioning school heads who are not sufficiently vigilant regarding the duty of political, ideological and religious neutrality of teachers or in the event that they do not apply the new “floor sanctions” which will be introduced for students. summoned to a disciplinary council.
“Risky! If there is one body with which we should not get angry, it is that of the management staff who have the capacity to block the entire system”, reacts another former rector, according to whom Roger Chudeau seems more concerned with sending messages to public opinion and reassuring the teaching staff historically classified on the left and very hostile to the ideas of the RN.
Many “educational experts” who have worked with Roger Chudeau in the past are surprised by the gradual shift of this “Chiraquien-Gaullist”, “old-style RPR” tendency, towards the National Rally. The turning point would have come after the Fillon affair which occurred during the 2017 presidential campaign and in which he was fully committed. A bolt from the blue for Roger Chudeau who turned away from politics for a while to retreat to his stronghold of Sologne where he indulged in his passion as a hunter. Member of the scientific council of the Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences founded in Lyon by Marion Maréchal in 2018, he will then get closer to Marine Le Pen.
“Roger’s ideas converged with those of the National Rally from the moment this party carried out a “de-demonization” operation,” analyzes this former inspector. While a senior official sees a shift “more opportunistic than ideological” . “What other career path did he have at 75? Becoming the “Mr. Educator of the RN” was the only real opportunity available to him,” asserts the latter.
“We will not obey”, warn certain executives
On his YouTube channel, Roger Chudeau does not hesitate to attack the former ministers of National Education in all directions, devoting a series of episodes called “the anti Pap minute” to Pap Ndiaye, representing Gabriel Attal with a hat donkey, or even making fun of Nicole Belloubet’s “trifles” (in reference to the term used by the latter when she stood up in 2016 against the restoration of authority and the wearing of the blouse). “Roger Chudeau has changed a lot and no longer hesitates to step up to the plate even if it means falling into certain excesses and a form of demagoguery intended to flatter public opinion,” attacks this senior official who does not hide his concern about the possible accession of the former deputy for the post of Minister of National Education.
More than 2,700 executives, school heads or National Education inspectors have also signed a petition “against the extreme right” in which they warn that “they will not obey”. “None of us will apply measures that would contravene the values of the Republic” if the National Rally comes to power on July 7, they argue.
“The RN has announced its intention to modify part of the programs. If it rewrites the History programs based on ideological rather than scientific foundations, we will oppose it,” says Jean-Charles Ringard, honorary inspector general of education, sport and research who initiated the petition, as an example.
“A scandalous position,” reacted Roger Chudeau on BFMTV on June 24. “If we come to power and if I have anything to do with education, I will write to these people and say: ‘You have a week to retract. Apologize publicly because you have violated all the principles and ethics of your function,” he warned. Before adding: “Otherwise, you will go to the disciplinary council.”
.