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SCHOOLS

Teachers’ strikes and protests planned across France on Tuesday

In protest against plans to 'stream' pupils into groups based on academic level, unions have called on French teachers to walk out and demonstrate again on Tuesday.

Published: 2 April 2024 10:47 CEST
Teachers' strikes and protests planned across France on Tuesday
Demonstrators shout slogans and carry placards during a march led by the Seine-Saint-Denis (93) departmental inter-union to denounce the government's current education policy and demand further funds for public schools, in Paris on March 7, 2024. (Photo by Guillaume BAPTISTE / AFP)

Teachers in France are taking to the streets again, with another day of strikes and protests planned for Tuesday in protest against ‘streaming‘ in lower-secondary school (collège).

Unions have called for teaching staff to “amplify the mobilisation”, with over 80 demonstrations planned across the country on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the last large-scale mobilisation on March 19th.

Unions representing teachers are calling for the government to abandon its plans for a ‘choc des savoirs’ (knowledge shock), which will involve separating pupils in collège based on their level in maths and French.

They say that the government has passed decrees that are “unacceptable and irresponsible and (…) in defiance of the general opinion from members of the profession”. Unions are also calling for an increase in salaries and more resources for state schools.

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

What’s the ‘streaming’ plan?

The proposal to stream students into groups based on their ‘needs’: one group that is ‘at ease’ with the subject, one average group, and one group that needs extra attention.

It will begin with the lower two classes, 6ème and 5ème (ages 11 and 12) in autumn 2024, and by 2025 be expanded to the older two grades, 4ème and 3ème, according to a decree published in France’s Journal Officiel on March 17th.

Ongoing protests in the education sector

Parents and parent associations have also got involved in the demonstrations, as part of ‘opérations collèges morts’, or ‘dead school operations’. These have involved keeping collège-aged pupils home from school.

Dozens of lower-secondary schools across the country have participated in the past few weeks, with at least  25 Paris-based collèges joining in, after an appeal from the Federation of Parents’ Councils (FCPE), French daily Le Parisien estimated.

On top of that, parents in the Seine-Saint-Denis district protested en masse on Saturday, calling for a €158 million ’emergency plan’ for schools in the area.

Parents and unions would like to see at least 5,000 teaching posts created in the département, as well as renovations of dilapidated school buildings. 

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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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