The measure was announced last fall by Gabriel Attal, when he was still Minister of National Education. “Yet, at the end of March, we still have very few answers from the government on the difficulty second-year students have in finding a two-week internship in just a few months,” criticizes Sophie Vénétitay, SES teacher in the Essonne and general secretary of the SNES-FSU teachers’ union. “And that puts teachers and families in a complicated position,” she tells The Express.
In detail, the 550,000 young general and technology second year students in France will have to, between June 17 and 28, 2024, complete a two-week observation internship within a company, an administration, a community or of an association.
An exemption will nevertheless be granted to all students who would like, instead of this internship, to carry out a cohesion stay or a mission of general interest within the framework of the Universal National Service (SNU) which Gabriel Attal announced he wanted to “generalize ” last October. “The objective is to improve the guidance policy for young people and to make the link between schools and businesses as well as all employers, public and private, ever more dynamic,” specifies the Ministry of National Education.
The struggle to find an internship
An initiative to which the teachers’ unions are not opposed in principle. But “this measure was once again implemented in the greatest haste”, denounces Sophie Vénétitay. For the moment, the grading methods for this internship, which could count towards the validation of the second year, have not been transmitted to the teachers. “As usual, without any anticipation, chaos seems inevitable” adds the Sgen-CFT of the Versailles academy on its site.
“The main difficulty is above all that of finding an internship, which will once again exacerbate inequalities between students” underlines the general secretary of SNES. According to this professor, “we already see a big difference between those who can rely on their parents’ network to find things, and the others.”
Same concern from the parents of students. “Faced with the difficulty of finding a two-week internship (not everyone is lucky enough to have a network), will students be forced to do an “SNU”? Is this what the school of equality?” asks the FCPE on its website.
The Teachers’ Union-UNSA, for its part, pointed out in September an inconsistency in the calendar: this observation course will take place at the same time as the professional baccalaureate course, compulsory at the same period. “There will be competition between two forms of internship: the students of the general and technological path who will be under observation, the others who will be in training”, worried Jérôme Fournier, national secretary of the union, on Franceinfo.
A website to help young people find an internship
The course of the internship over the same period for all high schools adds, according to the SNES-FSU, to the difficulty for companies to welcome students. In November, around 300 companies responded to the launch of the “My second year internship” operation by the former Minister of National Education, who then called on companies to mobilize to welcome young people. A visibly insufficient quantity, since the new Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet, called again in the pages of Echoes This March 22, companies will be “generally mobilized” to avoid students’ difficulty in finding a host company. Welcoming in passing to see that “the flagship companies – Airbus, Crédit Agricole, L’Oréal and so many others” are responding to the call.
At the start of the school year, the president of the FCPE, Grégoire Ensel, expressed concern to the AFP and requested “the establishment of a platform for internship proposals”, in the face of this internship which he denounced as ” a bonus for those who have a network and a sufficient employment pool.”
Wish granted: internship offers will be made available from Monday March 25, 2 p.m., on the government platform “1young1solution”. “Even if some companies have played the game, the number of young people who will find an internship thanks to this platform appears to be anecdotal,” Sophie Vénétitay nevertheless anticipates.