Paris (AFP)

Three days before their students, teachers make their return Friday with a reform of the high school generating "stress" and "uncertainty" for teachers of Première, who fear dysfunctions in schedules and additional workload.

"It's my twentieth comeback, and this is the first time I'm in the total unknown," said Lionel Mendouse, a teacher in history and geography in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.

Like him, some 870,000 teachers perform their "pre-start" Friday, before 12.4 million students start Monday a school year where attention will be focused on high schools.

The new baccalaureate, which will take into account the continuous control, will not see the day until June 2021. But it prepares upstream and changes will intervene this year for the students of first, who will be the first to pass the exam in its new form.

The S, ES and L series are deleted and replaced by specialties which require special arrangements.

Lionel Mendouse deplores "the urgency, the precipitation, even the amateurism" of the reform. "The textbooks did not arrive until the month of June, leaving us little time to prepare our program and our return is anything," he says.

Mathieu, a teacher in a high school in Seine-Saint-Denis, did not want a first class to avoid "taking the lead with this reform." His vow has been granted. "The schedules will be a gas plant, so I'm very happy to know that I will not have it to manage immediately," said the teacher who wishes to remain anonymous.

- "Correct timetables" -

Before this pre-re-entry, teachers mobilized against the reform of the high school had gathered in summer school in the Bois de Vincennes for three days.

Among them, Michael, professor of economic and social sciences in Seine-Saint-Denis, had mobilized in July against the reform of the baccalaureate and is still in "uncertainty" before this year.

"This is a big reform but the return is the same as last year.We have no briefing on continuous monitoring, we hope to know more in the coming days," says this young professor .

He says he is "determined to continue" the mobilization against this reform but "prefers (s) to focus on the start of the school year, to start on a good basis with the students".

Whether for teachers or management teams of institutions, the past school year was agitated, especially in his last straight, with a tray tainted by a series of hiccups and a strike correctors opposed to the Minister's reforms.

"All school heads agree that it would be difficult to redo a year as chaotic as last year, the troops would not hold in the long term," said Philippe Vincent, secretary general of the SNPDEN, union of principals and principals.

"There are uncertainties and questions around the beginning of the school year for high school principals in relation to timetables." The distribution of students according to their specialty is complicated, but at this stage there is no message of "alert", assures Mr. Vincent.

According to Gilles Pécout, rector of Paris, "some deputies sacrificed part of their summer to work on these schedules". But he also assures that after calling "every head of establishment to make sure, there is no problem".

"They had late conditions to achieve schedules, the diversity of combinations choices could worry, but eventually they arrive at the correct schedules after a lot of teaching work," said Jean-Michel Coignard, Director of the Paris Academy.

The worry, according to him, is finally postponed already on "the preparation of the next year: it will be necessary to make the schedules with the specialties of first - that one will know how to make - but will add those of terminal, with perhaps too strong constraints ", he presumes.

© 2019 AFP