against the Belloubet-Attal reform, thousands of teachers in the streets

EDUCATION – “Macron, we don’t want your social sorting!” » Several thousand people demonstrated this Saturday, May 25 throughout France at the call of several teacher and high school student unions, urging “those who find themselves in the project of a public, secular and emancipatory school to demonstrate for public school and to say no to the clash of knowledge”according to a joint press release.

Announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal during his visit to rue de Grenelle then taken up by his successor Nicole Belloubet, the so-called reform of “shock of knowledge” is a host of measures intended to raise the level of students. One of them is particularly contested by a very large part of the educational world: the establishment of level groups, in French and mathematics, in middle school.

In Paris, a procession of a few thousand demonstrators set off from the Place de la Sorbonne at the start of the afternoon towards the Place de la Bastille. “We hope that this day is a step in building a vast movement of solidarity in our country with its public schools”FSU general secretary Benoît Teste told AFP.

Entry into force planned for the start of the 2024 school year

The level groups, called “of need” by the Minister of National Education Nicole Belloubet and which establishments will be able to implement with a certain flexibility, will come into force from the start of the 2024 school year for sixth and fifth grade classes, and from the start of the 2025 school year for fourth and third grades.

“Behind these measures, there is a stunting of the school, it is a desire to give up on democratization, on bringing everyone to the best level” because “most of these measures are actually aimed at ejecting students from the school system as soon as possible”denounces Benoît Teste.

“We won’t sort”

The general secretary of Snes-Fsu Sophie Vénétitay affirms that faced with the mobilization, “there is a certain excitement at the level of the hierarchies” with “training carried out by inspectors is very closed, often via video without the possibility of asking questions in the chat”. She highlighted the determination of the teachers: “In colleges, we will not sort our students. We will put in place organizations that will return to not sorting our students”.

On the parents’ side, “ the objective is to meet everyone, to become one with the teachers”explains Patrice Furet, president of FCPE 92. “We have organized many school days, colleagues, deserted high schools which have worked well, but we cannot always ask parents to keep their children at home, we must also mark other messages and a mobilization on a Saturday in the month of but when the weather is nice, everyone likes it”according to him.

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