The French Minister of Education, Édouard Geffray, has ordered the urgent incorporation of thousands of substitute teachers who will be activated within hours, as a first response of some significance to try to curb the massive protests of students and teachers, which experienced a new episode this Thursday and will continue on October 13.
In an intervention this evening on the TF1 channel, Geffray detailed that, starting this Friday, 3,000 substitute teachers will be allocated to 114 schools classified on red alert due to overcrowding and to another 400 centers located in orange zone throughout French territory.
The Education Minister also announced that he "will authorize university rectors to hire several hundred additional teachers, more than those authorized, where necessary," specifying that this decision "will come into effect between tomorrow and Tuesday."
With this package, currently focused on reinforcing the teacher substitution system, Geffray aims to reduce tension among students before finalizing new measures.
Student organizations are demanding a profound reform of secondary education, covering everything from reducing overcrowding in classrooms to, above all, revising the university access procedure (Parcoursup), which has been harshly criticized for the enormous "bottleneck" of applications it generates and for the difficulty teachers face in evaluating all the candidates.
Geffray's announcement came after meeting with teaching unions at the "Raymond Kopa" institute in Reims, in a meeting marked by distance following the speech delivered the night before by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. The head of the Government asked the demonstrators to put their mobilizations on hold, while promising that the Executive will address their demands by the end of this month or early November.
This timeline has provoked the outrage of the general secretary of the main secondary school teachers' union (SNES-FSU), Sophie Vénétitay. "It is difficult to draw conclusions from nothing. (Lecornu) has presented a blank document by postponing decisions until November. However, not even giving small signals that we are coming out of the crisis with announcements is, in a way, playing to temporize irresponsibly," she criticized.
This Thursday, students have maintained protests following the call made the day before by the SNES-FSU and the other major educational unions, also upset by the French Government's strong defense of police action, despite the toll of the marches: more than 300 injured among students and teachers and nearly 6,600 arrests since the start of the mobilization.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, only this Thursday at least 504 people have been arrested and 48 police officers have been injured in the student demonstrations, which have gathered nearly 80,000 young people and teachers in the streets across the country.
In a statement, the Interior warns of a rise in violence. Minister Laurent Nuñez "strongly condemns this violence and praises the work of the officers who systematically thwarted these acts" after denouncing an "increase in urban violence," although without incidents of extreme gravity and always "on the margins of peaceful student protests, undermining their legitimate expression."
The riot police have even used water cannons against the thousands of students concentrated in the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The protesters accuse the security forces, especially the highly questioned Motorized Brigades for the Repression of Violent Actions (BRAV-M), of excessive use of force since the start of the protests.
From the Place de la Bastille, the spokesperson for the Student Union, Sabrine Kharbach, has made a new call to maintain pressure in the streets on the upcoming October 13. "I call on everyone to join the mobilizations more forcefully starting this next Tuesday. A large demonstration across the territory that must be joined," she proclaimed, in a message later endorsed by the FSU, the national education union.