Paris (AFP)

"A real anger that is mounting": thousands of national education staff, joined by school nurses but also high school students and students, mobilized on Tuesday throughout France to denounce their working conditions and the management of the crisis sanitary.

According to the Ministry of Education, the strike rate for teachers at midday was 11%.

At the call of an inter-union composed in particular of the FSU, the CGT and the FO, parades were held in Paris and in many cities such as Marseille, Toulouse, Rennes, Bordeaux, Grenoble or Clermont-Ferrand.

In the capital, the demonstration left at the beginning of the afternoon from the Luxembourg gardens to rally the ministry rue de Grenelle, where a delegation of staff was to be received in the afternoon.

On the streets of Paris, Marion, 35, a French teacher in a college in Ile-de-France, denounced sanitary conditions which are "far from respecting the protocol": "we have to make half-groups at college because there is too much mixing ", she believes.

Away from their college for weeks, many students joined the ranks of the Paris demonstration to demand that they come back to class.

"I took over this week alternately, it's great to see people from college again. But overall, I feel very lonely, I had a month of insomnia because of the screens", explains Zoe, 19 years old, in the first year of a geography license at Paris 1.

Since Monday, first-year students can take face-to-face tutorials (TD) in half-groups.

Other levels should follow within a maximum gauge of 20%, provided however that the government does not order strict re-containment.

- "They bury us at home" -

In the demonstration in Marseille, Juliette Nigoghossian, 20, an Italian university student in Aix-en-Provence, explains that “a living language cannot be learned on Zoom but by exchanging, by speaking. Hui, everything is dehumanized with videoconferences all day long. We are buried at home ".

Education staff also denounced their working conditions, as well as their salaries.

"This is a crucial moment for education, there is a real anger rising among teachers who are very worried," assured Benoît Teste, secretary general of the FSU, with reference in particular to the "Grenelle teachers" launched by Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, which is due to end in February.

"What is being undertaken by the ministry is absolutely not satisfactory, it is essentially communication with a surface upgrading which is very insufficient", regretted Mr. Teste.

Under a small sign "I am as frozen as the index point", Julie, a school teacher in Bordeaux, is "fed up" with the working conditions in the national education system.

In Grenoble, Camille Vittoz, SVT professor, came to protest "against the communication of our minister" on salary increases which "about 70% of us" will not take advantage of.

In November, the ministry announced salary increases from 2021, mainly targeted at the youngest.

But the unions hope that a multiannual law, promised at the time of the pension reform, will enshrine lasting and substantial increases for the entire profession.

School nurses, who denounce the management of the health crisis, have also called for mobilization alongside teachers.

For Saphia Guereschi, general secretary of the National Union of Nursing Health Advisors (SNICS-FSU, majority), nurses in college or high school are monopolized by the management of the health crisis and must manage the "phases of screening and tracing" , to the detriment of supporting students.

"The serious consequence of this: our young people, who are doing very badly, can no longer be welcomed as it should during consultations in the establishments because we are not replaced, we must react very quickly", she warned .

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