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SCHOOLS

French teachers call school boycott day in streaming protest

French teaching unions are calling on parents to keep their children at home on Thursday, as part of a protest against plans to introduce academic streaming into schools.

Published: 21 March 2024 10:06 CET
French teachers call school boycott day in streaming protest
A protester carries a placard reading "With the shock of knowledge Macron and Attal rearm the private sector" during a demonstration of high school students and teachers in Marseille, southeastern France, on February 6, 2024. (Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP)

In protest against ‘streaming’ (groupes de niveaux), teachers’ unions and parent associations are calling on parents to keep their collège (aged 11-15) pupils home on Thursday.

They have named these actions opération collège mort (operation dead school) or opération collège désert (operation deserted school).

Teachers will technically would not be on strike – meaning they can accommodate pupils who could not stay home.

Unions are also calling for demonstrations in front of the entrances of schools, with several expected in the Bordeaux area, as well as in Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris.

The protests are about plans to introduce streaming or tracking of pupils – grouping them according to their academic abilities – for maths and French classes. At present streaming is not widespread in French schools, and the idea is a controversial one, with teaching unions saying that it undermines the principle of equality.

READ MORE: Why ‘streaming’ in French schools is causing controversy (and strikes)

There will also be a protest at 12pm on Thursday in front of the Prime Minister’s residence at Matignon in Paris.

So far, the actions have had varying support depending on the collège.

Last week, 25 Paris-based collèges participated in the opérations collège mort, after an appeal from the Federation of Parents’ Councils (FCPE), French daily Le Parisien estimated.

On March 11th, opérations collège mort saw 97 percent of pupils at the Raoul-Rebout collège in the Indre-et-Loire département absent, and prior to that 50 out of the 627 pupils at the Jacques-Prévert college in the Gironde département were absent during an opération mort on March 8th.

Why are people protesting?

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced plans to introduce streaming in December as part of a choc des savoirs (clash of knowledge) intended to help get mathematics and reading comprehension scores up.

The proposal was formalised in France’s Journal Officiel on Sunday, and starting September 2024 6ème and 5ème pupils (the first to years of collège) will be streamed in mathematics and French courses.

The plan has been met with outcry from teachers, teaching unions and parents who fear it will reinforce existing social inequality, with less advantaged students stigmatised and put into lower-level groups.

There are also concerns that sorting will not address greater issues within the school system, namely staff shortages and already overcrowded classrooms.

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PROTESTS

Two dead and hundreds hurt in New Caledonia unrest: France

Two people have been killed and hundreds more injured, shops were looted and public buildings torched during a second night of rioting in New Caledonia, as anger over constitutional reforms from Paris boiled over.

Published: 15 May 2024 09:00 CEST
Two dead and hundreds hurt in New Caledonia unrest: France

What began as pro-independence demonstrations has spiralled into three days of the worst violence seen on the French Pacific archipelago since the 1980s.

Despite heavily armed security forces fanning out across the capital Noumea, and the ordering of a nighttime curfew, rioting continued overnight virtually unabated.

Hundreds of people including “around 100” police and gendarmes have been injured in the unrest, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in Paris.

One person had been shot dead overnight but authorities were yet to establish the circumstances that led to the incident, Darmanin said, adding that dozens of homes and businesses had been torched.

The office of the High Commissioner, France’s top representative in New Caledonia, later Wednesday reported a second death in the riots, without giving any details of the circumstances.

President Emmanual Macron cancelled a planned domestic trip and moved Wednesday’s regular cabinet meeting to hold a crisis meeting with key ministers on New Caledonia, his office said.

In Noumea and the commune of Paita there were reports of several exchanges of fire between civil defence groups and rioters.

Streets in the capital were pocked by the shells of burned-out cars and buildings, including a sports store and a large concrete climbing wall.

“Numerous arsons and pillaging of shops, infrastructure and public buildings – including primary and secondary schools – were carried out,” said the High Commission.

Security forces had managed to regain control of Noumea’s prison, which holds about 50 inmates, after an uprising and escape attempt by prisoners, it said in a statement.

Police have arrested more than 130 people since the riots broke out Monday night, with dozens placed in detention to face court hearings, the commission said.

A night-time curfew was extended, along with bans on gatherings, the carrying of weapons and the sale of alcohol.

La Tontouta International Airport remained closed to commercial flights.

As rioters took to the streets, France’s lower house of parliament 17,000 kilometres (10,600 miles) away voted in favour of a constitutional change bitterly opposed by indigenous Kanaks.

The reform – which must still be approved by a joint sitting of both houses of the French parliament – would give a vote to people who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years.

Pro-independence forces say it would dilute the share of the vote held by Kanaks, the Indigenous group that makes up about 41 percent of the population and the major force in the pro-independence movement.

Macron urged calm in a letter to the territory’s representatives, calling on them to “unambiguously condemn” the “disgraceful and unacceptable” violence.

Macron said French lawmakers would vote to definitively adopt the constitutional change by the end of June unless New Caledonia’s opposing sides agree on a new text that “takes into account the progress made and everyone’s aspirations”.

The French leader has been seeking to reassert his country’s importance in the Pacific region, where China and the United States are vying for influence.

Lying between Australia and Fiji, New Caledonia is one of several French territories spanning the globe from the Caribbean and Indian Ocean to the Pacific in the post-colonial era.

In the Noumea Accord of 1998, France vowed to gradually give more political power to the Pacific island territory of nearly 300,000 people.

As part of the agreement, New Caledonia has held three referendums over its ties with France, all rejecting independence.

But the independence movement retains support, particularly among the Indigenous Kanak people.

The Noumea Accord has also meant that New Caledonia’s voter lists have not been updated since 1998 – depriving island residents who arrived from mainland France or elsewhere since then of a vote in provincial polls.

A New Caledonia pro-independence leader, Daniel Goa, asked people to “go home”, and condemned the looting.

But “the unrest of the last 24 hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France take control of them,” he added.

The main figure of the anti-independence camp, former minister Sonia Backes, denounced what she described as anti-white racism of demonstrators who burned down the house of her father, a man in his 70s who was evacuated by the security forces.

“If he was not attacked because he was my father, he was at least attacked because he was white,” she told France’s BFM TV.

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