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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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MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Dozens detained at Paris pro-Palestinian university protest

French police detained 86 people following an operation to remove students staging a pro-Palestinian occupation at the Sorbonne university in Paris, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Published: 8 May 2024 13:15 CEST
Dozens detained at Paris pro-Palestinian university protest

Those arrested in the police operation on Tuesday night were being held for a variety of public order offences, said the statement.

They include wilful damage, rebellion, violence against a person holding public authority, intrusion into an education establishment and holding a meeting designed to disrupt order. Some are also being held for participation in a group with a view to preparing violence or damage to property.

They can be held for an initial 24 hours, which can then be extended another 24 hours.

The day before police moved in, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said there would never be a right to disrupt France’s universities with such protests.

Police acted after about 100 students had been occupying a lecture theatre for two hours in “solidarity” with the people of Gaza, an AFP journalist on site noted.

Tuesday night’s police operation at the Sorbonne – and at another university on Paris’s Left Bank, Science Po university – followed interventions to end similar protests at the end of April.

Students at universities in several European countries have followed the actions on US campuses where demonstrators have occupied halls and facilities to demand an end to partnerships with Israeli institutions because of Israel’s punishing assault on Gaza.

Police have also intervened to clear campuses in the United States, Netherlands and Switzerland.

Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7th attacked southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel estimates that 129 hostages seized on October 7th, out of the 253 taken, are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run besieged Palestinian territory.

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