Several teaching unions criticized on Tuesday December 31, 2024 the attitude of Élisabeth Borne during her visit the day before to Mayotte, accusing the Minister of Education of having failed to listen to the situation of teachers on the island ravaged by a deadly cyclone.
“The minister does not […] doesn’t answer, worse she avoids the debate”judged on X Guislaine David, spokesperson for SNUipp-FSU, the first union of primary school teachers. A reference to the behavior of Élisabeth Borne in a video filmed Monday in Mayotte, where we see the former prime minister turn her back on two teachers who question her about the local situation.
“State aid that does not arrive, staff who hold on at arm's length, sometimes with their funds or pots of money, the establishments which welcome families […] Élisabeth Borne cannot turn her back on this reality! “, Snes-FSU, the first secondary school union, also reacted on X.
Élisabeth Borne defended herself on Tuesday by denouncing a sequence “truncated” and who “does not reflect” the content of his exchanges with the two teachers.
“Committed to dialogue, aware and concerned by the seriousness of the situation, I spoke at length yesterday with management staff and teaching unions on the situation in Mayotte and the challenges of the start of the school year,” she assured, again on X.
Another television sequence made the rounds on the social network . An attitude also strongly criticized by Internet users.
Élisabeth Borne and other members of the government accompanied Prime Minister François Bayrou on Monday, December 30, on a trip to Mayotte where Cyclone Chido, according to the latest official report, killed 39 people during its passage in early December.
On this occasion, a support plan was detailed and includes sections on education in particular.
Of the “school tents” will be assembled this week before the start of the school year scheduled for January 13, “according to appropriate arrangements, establishment by establishment”. A plan to attract and retain teachers will also be launched.
However, these measures were considered too late and insufficient by the sector.
Jean-Rémi Girard, president of Snalc (colleges and high schools), has the impression that the start of the school year has been announced “before even asking ourselves if we could and how we could do it” : “colleagues no longer have a home, they should be able to find accommodation first” to come back to teach, he told AFP.
Another problem: many educational establishments have been damaged.
“Nothing has been said about the procedures for reopening school buildings safely, colleagues tell us that in some colleges the ceiling is soaked with water,” underlines Sophie Venetitay, general secretary of SNES-FSU, the leading secondary education union, to AFP.
“National Education has not given itself the means to inventory students, staff and the state of school buildings”she laments. According to the unions, only a third of the island's teachers have been contacted since the cyclone.
