Crisis and reforms: Teachers at the forefront of the discontented

The national event on Sunday October 19 in Paris "for the defense of public education service" was announced since September 3. But unions, across the board, except SNALC ( "apolitical"), had agreed on this initiative could not provide the financial crisis since mid-September, came to cloud the issue. Keep this article in your workbook. Subscribe to Monde.fr: € 6 per month + 30 days offered ON THIS TOPIC Archive Edition subscribers: Justice asks Delanoe to apply the minimum service in schools You live in a commune have already experienced. How do you rate this new device? ON THIS TOPIC The special edition economy in crisis Edition subscribers Archive: Teachers' unions rely on a "turning point" of the opinion Fiscal rectitude in education by going to be more difficult to accept? This event has, according to its impact, provide initial response. "We are witnessing a breakdown of substance in the priority given to the nation education", say organizers. Gerard Aschieri, secretary general of the FSU federation majority, highlights the "contradictions" between the "billions on the table" for banks and "investments are not made in education." The Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos, has so far managed to upset the world teaching without major clashes. A day of action on September 11, remained the most symbolic. And the call for a Sunday show also aims to overcome the difficulty to strike. But the accumulation of frustrations and concerns on important current issues, is evident. The reform of primary school. In primary education, which is played is accession or not teachers to a comprehensive reform of accomplished during the 2007-2008 school year. Translated into the official texts, it continues to be tensions. The new programs are accused of marking a "regression". And modalities of support to students in difficulty (placements of upgrading and times reached by removing the course Saturday morning) are deemed ineffective or even harmful. The announcement Sept. 26 that 3 000 teachers specialized on 9 000 working in networks of specialized assistance for students in difficulty (RASED) would be reassigned in 2009 in regular classes, has triggered an uproar. This decision seems difficult to reconcile with the objective stated by Mr. Darcos of "divide by three" school failure, heavy primary. The strike Thursday October 16 in the only schools in Paris was very well attended. The minimum service. The establishment by law of 20 August 2008, the "right home" in schools in the event of a strike has compounded the sense that the government played opinion against teachers. The refusal of the Paris City Hall Friday 17 October, under the guise of safety rules, implement in the future this law it deems "inapplicable", created a new front of tension with the government. Posts. The main bone of contention remains the abolition of posts: 8 500 in 2007, 11 200 2008 13 500 planned for 2009. The government has warned that the movement would continue. According to the unions and teachers in schools affected, the consequences of this policy are hard on the ground. The school "modular". The subject potentially more difficult for Mr. Darcos is its reform of high schools, which also elaborates in a few days. His goal is to complete the project in late December for an initial application in second class at the beginning of 2009. The broad outlines are well known: a drawing of lessons in half-yearly modules, allowing each student to build his career. A distinction between lessons "general", "complementary" and "support", according to proportions that were respectively 60%, 20% and 20% in second class, and evolve in the first and final. The schedule for students Weekly second would be reduced to 27 hours (as against 28 to 30.5 now). All unions had signed a memorandum of discussion, but some working hypotheses have sown panic. The physical sciences, history and geography, mathematics data were excluded from the core. The Economic and Social Sciences (SES) are already "cut" by the reform, philosophy threatened, and so on. The Ministry of denials have not raised concerns. After the CGT from mid-September, the SNES-FSU, the majority in secondary schools, left the discussions. The major risk for Mr. Darcos, in this case is that of a student movement that would catalyze and radicalize all these oppositions.