The former co-president of the parents’ association reacts to Emmanuel Macron’s speech on education on Thursday. The candidate for re-election raised the specter of “working more to earn more”.
President-candidate Emmanuel Macron presented his program on Thursday from Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), where he discussed several measures relating to education, one of his major “yards”. He claimed that some teachers “[avaient] faded away” during the Covid and announced to wish “pay increase” teachers who would accept “new assignments”. It plans to give more autonomy to the directors of establishments for recruitment, by giving them the possibility of “reject profiles”. He also raised the possibility of “make the results of all assessments available” of a class or establishment for “disseminate good practices”. A program that could profoundly change the current school system. Rodrigo Arenas, former co-president of the Federation of Parents’ Councils (FCPE) and administrator of the structure in Seine-Saint-Denis, sees the arrival of “business logic” within national education.
Emmanuel Macron claimed that some teachers had “faded away” during the Covid pandemic. Do you agree with this observation?
The teachers have not disappeared. On the other hand, there are teachers who have resigned, this is the current trend. The state has been failing for five years to encourage vocations and to build loyalty. So it’s up to him to make concessions, and not to the teachers to question themselves. Today, the main reason why parents put their children in private is unreplaced absences. But Macron reverses the responsibility: if there were a sufficient number of teachers, there would be no need for contract workers to replace them. However, today the rate of contractuals becomes structuring in the human resources policy of National Education, with all that this includes in terms of non-training and level of remuneration.
Do you think that increasing teachers’ salaries if they accept additional assignments is the right solution?
His proposal on remuneration is not good. The malaise of the school on the subject is not there. What Emmanuel Macron says to teachers is basically: you are lazy, you go on vacation too much, so if you want to earn more, you have to work more. He considers that the teaching profession must be uberized. He is wrong. What is needed today is for teachers to be treated much better in society. They should, for example, like polytechnicians, be remunerated [pendant leurs études] to become teachers.
Do you consider that “make the results of all assessments available” achieved by a class or an establishment would be a good way, as the President of the Republic put forward, of “disseminate good practices” ?
What Emmanuel Macron is doing is applying commercial logic to public schools. The parents of students already classify the establishments, they use the best stratagems to put their children in the high schools which have the best results in the baccalaureate. As such, private schools already represent a form of unfair competition with a logic of competition and elite, where people are selected at the entrance. The universal school which welcomes all children without distinction, including those with special needs, is the public school. Emmanuel Macron is saying that he will organize, encourage and structure competition between establishments. And in general, with such a system, it is not the poorest who make it.