This is his first controversy. Barely appointed to this position on Thursday January 11, the Minister of National Education Amélie Oudéa-Castéra was criticized the next day by the political opposition as well as by teachers’ unions. She indeed had to justify her decision to transfer her children from public to private.
“I’m not going to dodge your question. […] we are going to go to the personnel field,” she replied during a press briefing to a journalist from Mediapart, after visiting a college in Andrésy (Yvelines). This was his first trip as Minister of Education, alongside his predecessor Gabriel Attal, now at Matignon.
“My eldest son, Vincent, started, like his mother, at public (elementary) school in Littré (6th arrondissement of Paris),” she explained, before evoking her “frustration” as well as that from her husband, who “saw lots of hours which were not seriously replaced”. The couple “got fed up, like hundreds of thousands of families who, at one point, made a choice to seek a different solution”, she defended herself, specifying that it was a question of a “proximity choice” since they lived on rue Stanislas.
Stanislas, an establishment highlighted by the press
The Stanislas college-lyceum, also in the 6th arrondissement, in the heart of Paris, is a prestigious private Catholic establishment. At the beginning of 2023, the Ministry of Education contacted the General Inspectorate and launched a call for testimony after accusations of homophobic and sexist excesses relayed in the press targeting this establishment.
As revealed by L’Express at the beginning of June 2022, this elite Parisian college notably advocates female “modesty” in the face of boys’ “urges”, prohibits “small couples” and advocates natural contraception, without mentioning alternatives. Mediapart had subsequently documented, at the end of June 2022, with testimonies and supporting documents, “the sexist, homophobic and authoritarian universe of the Parisian middle and high school Stanislas, a private Catholic establishment described as ‘the best’ high school in France”.
“Lunar and provocative remarks”
The arguments put forward by Amélie Oudéa-Castéra immediately sparked political controversy. “Seven years that they have been in power, seven years that they have done nothing to restore the schools of the Republic. And they are offended today by the dilapidation of public education, as if they “were not responsible for it”, the leader of the RN deputies, Marine Le Pen, was indignant on X (formerly Twitter).
The head of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure judged the minister’s remarks on the same network to be “mind-blowing”, parodying them: “The public school of which I am now the minister was not good enough for my children so I sent them to school in a private high school whose values are, according to the surveys carried out there, far from republican values”. The Insoumis deputy Rodrigo Arenas, former co-president of the federation of parents of students FCPE, for his part announced that he would contact the rector of the Paris academy “to verify the denigrating remarks of the Minister of National Education regarding from the Littré school in Paris.”
Teachers’ unions also reacted strongly. “Lunar and provocative remarks, against the public education service and its staff,” commented on X Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the first secondary school union. The CGT Educ’action castigated a “lamentable and unworthy speech by the new minister”. For Jean-Rémi Girard, president of Snalc (colleges and high schools), it is “an interesting story because of what it says about the abandonment of public schools by our leaders”.
Unsa “will not fail to quickly remind the minister that its primary subject must be public schools, the only school of all and for all,” said the general secretary of the teachers’ union, Elisabeth Allain-Moreno. . “If replacements were not ensured in Littré it is because there were thousands of replacement positions eliminated,” said the spokesperson for SNUipp-FSU (main primary union), for her part. Guislaine David.