Gabriel Attal, on BFMTV, clarifies his comments on college “every day of the week” from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

POLICY – At college, every day of the week and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.? This Thursday, April 18, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal somewhat destabilized parents by announcing a new organization of middle school students’ schedules. Before finally clarifying (and qualifying) his remarks in the evening.

From Viry-Châtillon (Essonne), Gabriel Attal spoke about college students “schooled every day of the week, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., starting with priority neighborhoods and priority education networks”. Who is concerned ? From when ? What courses will be taught? Will these new timetables be compulsory and if so, what about the new organization required for school transport and extra-curricular activities – particularly on Wednesday afternoons?

So many questions that Matignon tried to answer immediately, specifying that the measure was not intended to be generalized immediately to all colleges as the head of government’s statement might suggest. What Gabriel Attal confirmed on the set of BFMTV: the measure, already tested in certain establishments, will initially only concern REP+ colleges (Priority Education Network) or 362 establishments at the start of the 2022 school year. “Then we will seek to gradually extend it”said the Prime Minister in the evening.

Not obligatory and “homework help”

Furthermore, these new schedules will not be obligatory but only “proposed” to parents. It will therefore not be school time, with proper lessons. Students will be offered a ” welcome “ with many ” activities “ : help with homework or cultural activities for example, detailed the Prime Minister, praising the “very beneficial effects” of this system in colleges, it is already in place.

The Prime Minister thus returns to what the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron had already announced during a trip to Marseille in June 2023. The Head of State presented it as a measure to fight against “ educational inequality (which) is created in these times when the child is sent home”. Already at that time, the idea had provoked a series of questions, in particular about the means granted to finance it: “ Will we have to enter into agreements with associations? Will we have a pool of partners to turn to? Will it be necessary to provide money so that speakers can come to the students? What about the means of surveillance? » reacted Julien Giovacchini, principal of a REP+ college in Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais) in our columns.

On the same line, the remarks continued after the declarations of Gabriel Attal in Essonne: “Who will keep the students between 17 and 18? AEDs? Those from whom 1000 positions are being cut? »ironically https://twitter.com/stylos_les/status/1780922920203628815 when several left-wing elected officials, the First Secretary of the PS Olivier Faure or the president of Seine-Saint-Denis Stéphane Troussel are instead calling for the replacement of absent teachers.

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