Striking French teachers pile pressure on embattled education minister

Teachers were striking across France on Thursday to demand better pay and conditions, increasing pressure on an education minister already embroiled in a series of controversies.

A demonstrator holds a placard reading "Contempt for public schools, Enough !" during a rally after a call for strikes and protests by teaching unions over pay and conditions, in Bordeaux, southwestern France, on February 1, 2024. AFP - PHILIPPE LOPEZ

The walkout is a warning to the government about teachers' "daily life, suffering at work and lack of recognition, especially in their pay", said primary school teachers union FSU-Snuipp, predicting that hundreds of schools will be closed.

The union said the situation has been inflamed by the appointment of a "part-time minister who has forfeited her credibility".

With former education minister Gabriel Attal promoted to prime minister, Amelie Oudéa-Castéra was given the key education brief alongside sports, including this year's Paris Olympics, and youth.

Thursday's strike, which coincides with ongoing protests by agricultural workers, had been planned since before the government reshuffle that put Oudéa-Castéra in place.

But she set teachers bristling from the moment of her nomination, claiming she had put her son into an exclusive Catholic private school because there was no proper replacement teacher at his state-run primary school.

The former teacher of Oudéa-Castéra's son then came forward to contest those claims.

'Out of touch'

Some 47 percent of middle and high school teachers were on strike Thursday, the leading Snes-FSU union said, while FSU-Snuipp tallied 40 percent in primary schools.

Teachers had returned from the holidays to "yet another change of pilot and ... the nomination of a minister who had a catastrophic start," said Elisabeth Allain-Moreno, secretary-general of teachers' union SE-Unsa.

Marches were due to take place in major cities including Paris, Marseille, Rennes and Nantes.

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"I'll be on the street to express my profound disagreement with ... what the minister said about public schools," said Anne, a maths teacher from Nice, who did not give her surname.

"I feel wounded and humiliated by a minister who's completely out of touch."

Meanwhile Benjamin Marol, a middle school history-geography teacher from Montreuil, east of Paris, complained the government was toying with ideas like imposing school uniforms and dividing classes by ability, rather than tackling more fundamental issues.

"For a long time I've had mixed feelings, but always anger, exasperation and incomprehension," he said.

(with AFP)