Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: FREDERIC SCHEIBER / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 9:30 p.m., February 1, 2024

Several thousand teachers and other education personnel, on strike, demonstrated on Thursday to raise awareness about their working conditions, their salaries but also to defend public schools after the controversial declarations of their minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. 20.26% of teachers were on strike Thursday according to ministry figures.

"I feel mistreated", "we are extremely angry"... Several thousand teachers and other education staff, on strike, demonstrated on Thursday to raise awareness about their working conditions, their salaries, but also to defend public school after the controversial statements of their minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra who had claimed to have educated her children in the private sector because of "the number of hours not seriously replaced" in the public sector.

“Oudea-Castéra 0/20, in the corner!”, “Oudea-Castéra gold medal for contempt”, “AOC: put on your sneakers (you will be less above ground)”, “Amélie Oudéa get out of there!”, could we read on signs of the Parisian parade, which brought together several thousand demonstrators Thursday afternoon in the direction of the Ministry of National Education, according to AFP journalists.

20.26% of teachers were on strike this Thursday

“The union organizations which requested it”, FNEC-FP-FO and ID-FO (heads of establishments), “were received at the ministry” in the afternoon, said the minister's office. There were also thousands of demonstrators in the streets in several other cities in France. According to figures from the Ministry of Education, 20.26% of teachers were on strike on Thursday. The Snes-FSU, the leading secondary education union, estimated the rate of strikers in middle and high schools at 47%, and the FSU-Snuipp, the main primary union, counted 40% of strikers in nursery and elementary schools.

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An important mobilization, but less for example than that of January 13, 2022, when Jean-Michel Blanquer was Minister of National Education. “The catalyst for our anger is clearly the declarations of Ms. Oudéa-Castéra, which we experience as a provocation addressed to public schools,” says Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes, in the Parisian demonstration, organized at the call from the main teaching unions (FSU, CGT, FO, SUD-Education, UNSA-Education, SGEN-CFDT).

“We don’t have tractors”

“It is important for us to demand better working conditions” and to “defend better salaries”, notes Guislaine David, general secretary of FSU-SNUipp. “The government's comments on educational policy, on the 'clash of knowledge' are completely disconnected,” she adds. Among the reforms announced when Gabriel Attal was still Minister of Education, "the level groups (which must be set up in middle school in French and maths at the start of the school year) are a disaster", protests Nicolas, maths teacher in a college in Villemomble in Seine-Saint-Denis.

“We know it doesn’t work, but they don’t care because they, their children, are in the private sector in Stanislas.” “Like all the young teachers I know, I feel mistreated, forgotten,” explains Célia, a 31-year-old German teacher. “We don’t have tractors, maybe that’s why people don’t listen to us…”

Amélie Oudéa-Castéra will speak on Friday

Elsewhere in France, at least 1,600 people demonstrated in Marseille, 2,500 in Lyon, 2,300 in Rennes, 2,300 in Nantes and 1,300 in Rouen according to the authorities, 1,200 in Brest according to the unions. There were several hundred of them in Toulouse, according to AFP, and 700 in Strasbourg, according to the police, chanting slogans such as "Attal, if you only knew, your reform, where are we going". “We are in total contempt for teachers and public schools in general,” said Natacha Pavillon, a librarian teacher, in Toulouse.

“It has gone too far, we are flouting the school,” said Fabienne Dubourg, headmaster and member of SNPDEN-Unsa, the main union of school heads, in Nantes, who denounces “the lack of resources” or “the groups level". Thursday morning, high schools were also blocked in several cities, such as Paris, Marseille and Montpellier. Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra will speak Friday morning on TF1, her office indicated.