The Minister of Education has maintained his vacation in Spain at a time when France is going through one of the worst waves of covid-19 contamination.
The Minister of Education accumulates the odds in this period of health crisis. Already criticized for his methods of communication, he risks having to give other accounts on his way of managing his function as minister in a sector particularly hard hit by the pandemic.
It is the investigative media Mediapart which reveals the information in an article published Monday, January 17. The survey in question explains behind the scenes of the Jean-Michel Blanquer interview by The Parisian, the day before the start of the school year. Remember, on Sunday January 2 at the end of the day, the French discovered in dotted lines the new measures of the school protocol at school. The information had been published in a paid article of the Parisian at the end of the afternoon. It was only after a wave of protest on social networks that the article was made public and free.
The Minister of Education had to face an outcry from both parents of students and educational staff. Jean-Michel Blanquer was criticized for not having anticipated and above all for disrespecting teachers, parents but also students, who were entitled to know in advance what awaited them at the start of the school year in January. All exhausted by the management of contamination and class closures, they did not appreciate the government’s methods.
Jean-Michel Blanquer working remotely in Ibiza
Thus in this Mediapart article, we learn that the interview with The Parisian was carried out remotely, quite simply because the Minister of Education was not in France. At that time, he was spending a family vacation in Ibiza, a Spanish island. The interview of Parisian did not reveal this information. The day after the announcement of the health protocol, it was Jean Castex, who in place of Jean-Michel Blanquer had come to reassure the teaching staff.
Beyond the conditions for announcing this very restrictive protocol, there is frustration among many French people who have been depriving themselves of vacation since the start of the pandemic in 2020. To learn that their minister is not returned from abroad to assume his responsibilities makes one cringe.
“The minister is working, it is not because he would have been in the office that it would have changed things (…) the team was there and he was permanently in contact with us by telework”, estimates the entourage of Jean-Michel Blanquer in the Mediapart article.
The last health protocol had triggered a strike in education on January 13. It has been widely followed, especially by teachers in the primary sector. A call for a new day of action on Thursday January 20 was also launched. This information about Jean-Michel Blanquer could strengthen mobilization.