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POLICE

Parents release teachers after hostage taking

A group of dissatisfied parents have released several teachers they were holding captive inside a Catholic school in the south of France. They accused one of the teachers of incompetence and wanted him fired.

Published: 8 December 2011 10:49 CET

On Wednesday morning, parents released the headmistress and several teachers they were holding captive, after the local diocese agreed to fire the teacher in charge of the CM1 class (ages 9-10).

The “hostage-takers” alleged the children were falling behind in school and that the teacher, who was in his first year of teaching, was failing to maintain order in the classroom.

The headmistress of the Notre-Dame de Caderot school in the town of Berre l’Etang admitted relations with the teacher have been difficult. A new teacher is to instruct the CM1 pupils until the end of the year.

“We are relieved and we hope that the situation in the classroom and the school will calm down now,” said one the of the parents, Elisabeth Planes, according to daily France Soir.

French Education Minister Luc Chatel has said he regretted the incident and said the education system had its failings. Trade unions representing teachers condemned the hostage taking and said the parents’ methods were inconsiderate.

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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