President Emmanuel Macron presented Tuesday during a trip to Sables-d’Olonne in Vendée in broad outline his “flagship reform” of the vocational high school, which will be “very progressive” and based on a consultation which “will start from the ground “. “I believe in the vocational high school, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t have decided to make it one of the flagship reforms. And when we see that we have a third of our high school students who go through the vocational high school, our duty is to make it stronger”, declared Emmanuel Macron, during a trip to the Éric Tabarly high school in Sables-d’Olonne, a high school for nautical, automotive and industrial trades. He came to present the major milestones of his reform, announced during his presidential campaign.
Lunch with high school students
Accompanied by the Minister of National Education Pap Ndiaye and the Minister in charge of Vocational Education and Training Carole Grandjean, the Head of State had lunch with high school students before visiting workshops and having a break. discussion with members of the educational team, students and a business manager involved in the establishment’s training.
The Head of State stressed that this reform would be done with “all the partners” of National Education, directors of establishments, teachers, students, parents, local authorities and businesses, and through local consultations. “In the coming months, there will be a huge work of consultation that will be done”, which will “start from the ground”, he assured. “We must not prevent it (the reform) from coming into force very gradually, with perhaps experiments that we will assume to look at in this or that region”, he continued.
Without going into detail, the president stressed that it was necessary in particular to “review the map of our training courses”, and to say to himself that “there are training courses which no longer correspond to needs, and therefore close certain training courses and open some others”. He then returned to his desire to increase the training times, after having already called at the end of August to develop them “by at least 50%”.
“A system that comes close to learning”
It is necessary “to have a system which is close to learning”, which “which supposes rethinking together a better organization of school learning time during the period”, by “perhaps splitting the classes better”, he said. he continued, emphasizing that he wanted to “give teachers more latitude and freedom”. Before the arrival of the presidential motorcade, a few dozen disgruntled teachers had tried to gather around the school, in particular brandishing a sign with the writing “No to the death of the vocational school”.
“What we are asking for is to have quality public training that allows each young person to fit into the world of work in a qualitative way” and not “not according to the choices of local employers”, explained to AFP David Moineau, unionized at the CGT, teacher in Letters and History in Sables-d’Olonne.
Why unions are worried about reform
Vocational education unions are concerned about this reform, and in particular the increase in internship time. In a rare inter-union unanimity, they denounced a “strong threat” and a “project to disorganize the school professional path”. They will meet again on September 22 for a possible mobilization.
The professional high school has already emerged from a reform, during the previous five-year term, with the organization into “families of trades”, hours of co-intervention between teachers or the production of a “masterpiece” in connection with the future profession. What arouse a strong apprehension at the idea of a new site.
“We are not completely reassured by this new reform because we have to define the outlines and know the consequences, and there we lack information”, underlines Bruno Bobkiewicz, secretary general of the main union of school heads (SNPDEN). “We want real consultation and above all a real review of the previous reform which did not even take place”.