From June 2024, general and technological second year students will be immersed in the professional world through a compulsory observation internship. Meeting with Christophe Mauny, the academic director of the National Education Services of Gard.
Since its announcement last fall by Gabriel Attal, then Minister of National Education, the establishment of the compulsory observation course for the approximately 550,000 general and technological secondary school students in France has become an imminent reality. . Scheduled between June 17 and 28, 2024, this two-week internship will take place within companies, administrations, communities or associations. A system which is part of the 54 hours dedicated to orientation in second grade.
“Opening young people to the world of business”
“The objective,” assures Christophe Mauny, academic director of Gard, “is to raise awareness and open young people to the world of business. The challenge is to arouse curiosity and immerse them in situations linked to different economic sectors.”
A compulsory internship which, without a doubt, resonates with a form of increasing permeability between the academic and professional world. And Christophe Mauny says nothing else: “It is an issue of primary importance with regard to our objectives, namely the synergy between the personal and academic path and the professional path. A synergy that takes on its full meaning when we talk about students who are approaching issues related to professional integration.”
A measure that raises concerns
A porosity that raises concerns. Several unions denounce the highlighting of socio-economic inequalities. “The main difficulty is above all that of finding an internship, which will once again exacerbate the inequalities between students. We already see a big difference between those who can rely on their parents’ network to find, and the others,” lamented last March, Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of the SNES-FSU teachers’ union, to our colleagues at the newspaper l’Express.
The challenge is to help students project themselves
However, “the school is integrated into its environment,” retorts the academic director of Gard. It is often said that it is the mirror of society, how can it be if it finds itself cut off from the world? To be the mirror of society, schools must open up, that is undeniable. And the young people we train over the long term will, at some point, enter the professional world. It is then necessary to ensure that the school project and the professional project are in agreement. The challenge is to help students plan ahead,” assures Christophe Mauny.
Harmonize the training offer to local issues
And the academic director continues: “In the Gard department, we organized four consultations between stakeholders from the economic world and those from education, at the level of the districts of the sub-prefectures: a meeting in Vigan, one in Alès and two in the district of Nîmes. Each territory presents its own local challenges, varying from north to south. The challenges in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, particularly linked to nuclear power, differ from those in the south of the department, in a town like Grau-du-Roi, for example. The objective is then to evaluate the adequacy between the training offer in the department and the specific needs of each territory. The immersion of second year students in the professional world is then integrated into this global context relating to the educational and professional issues of the region.
More than 600 offers in the 1st degree
Christophe Mauny also highlights his efforts to mobilize all partners with a view to offering internship offers to students in the department. “For example, I concluded a partnership agreement with the president of the administrative court with this in mind.” It also ensures that all State services are mobilized for this purpose. “We ourselves, moreover, are suppliers of offers. At the end of April, in primary education alone, we already offered more than 600 internship offers in Gard. To this should be added second-level offers, those from State services, partners and the business world,” he adds with satisfaction.
An agreement must be signed by the high school with the host structure, to implement this observation sequence in a professional environment. The compulsory internship agreement for each student will be dematerialized on the 1jeune1solution.gouv.fr platform.
Read also :
Nîmes – Teachers mobilized this Tuesday to say no to the “Shock of knowledge”: “It is a social sorting which does not say its name”
Discover the ranking of the best Gard colleges: Emmanuel D’Alzon comes out on top
