The Minister of Education of France, Edouard Geffray, announced this Thursday the implementation of an emergency plan to respond to some of the demands of students and teachers, mobilized for days against the French educational system. The announcement comes just before starting a key meeting with the main trade union organizations in the sector, in a context marked by the call for a new general protest day on October 13, following the unions' criticism of the Government's inaction in the face of the crisis.
The immediate goal of Geffray is for this package of measures, focused so far on streamlining and improving the teacher replacement system, to be applied in a matter of "hours or days," awaiting the specification of new initiatives once the meeting scheduled for this afternoon concludes. All this occurs while protests continue in numerous cities across the country, where complaints range from overcrowded classrooms to the functioning of access to university through Parcoursup, questioned for the enormous "bottleneck" of applications it generates and for the difficulty teachers face in reviewing them in their entirety.
The meeting between Geffray and the unions will be marked by a strong atmosphere of tension following the speech delivered last night by the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu. The head of the Government urged the protesters to ease the pressure on the streets, while promising that the Executive would address their demands by the end of October 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 moving out of the crisis with announcements is, in a way, playing at temporizing in a somewhat irresponsible manner," she lamented.
Meanwhile, this Thursday the student protests continue, following the call made yesterday by the SNES-FSU and the other major teaching unions, which also express their discontent with the French Government's strong defense of police actions. This stance contrasts with the toll left by the mobilizations, with more than 300 injured among students and teachers and around 6,600 people detained.
In Paris, several thousand young people have been gathering this afternoon in the Place de la Bastille in a relatively calm atmosphere, following the example of the march held in Lyon, which brought together about 3,500 demonstrators. Although the schools remain formally open —only 157 of the 3,700 secondary schools in the country have closed today—, teaching activity is totally or partially interrupted in most of them.
From the Place de la Bastille, Sabrine Kharbach, spokesperson for the Student Union, has reiterated a new call to intensify mobilization ahead of October 13.
"I call on everyone to join the mobilizations more forcefully starting this coming Tuesday. A large demonstration throughout the territory that must be joined," she proclaimed, in a message later supported by the FSU, the national education union.