“We have the impression that the President of the Republic is counting on a general amnesia of the profession” reacted on franceinfo Thursday August 25 Jean-Rémi Girard, president of the National Syndicate of High Schools and Colleges (SNALC), after Emmanuel Macron’s announcements on the school system. A new reform of the professional sector, more internships and company interventions in colleges, a salary increase of around 10% and the creation of an innovation fund endowed with 500 million euros: all these measures, the trade unionist would prefer a “salary catch-up”notably.
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franceinfo: How do you judge the announcements made by the president?
Jean-Remi Girard: We have the impression that the President of the Republic is counting on a general amnesia of the profession, as if there had not been the previous five-year term. For example, he wants to reform the professional path when he has already done so under the previous five-year term. Staff find it difficult to trust someone who has disappointed them for five years and who now promises innovation funds to make flexible classes. Honestly, we have other things to do than discuss for four months to decide which class will receive digital tablets. Let these 500 million euros be invested in salary catch-up rather than asking us to carry out additional missions to earn more, when we are already unable to recruit.
More internships, more entrepreneurs who come to school from college, do you think that’s a good idea?
No. We have a school system that has enormous difficulties, we have difficulty with academic teaching in international rankings. There, the Head of State proposes to do less academic teaching and discovery of the business world in 5th grade: I’m not sure I understand the idea. This proposed half-day, when do we do it? What discipline is going to see its hours reduced so that we try to bring in entrepreneurs to speak in front of children who probably won’t have much to do with it. We risk wasting a lot of time in an inefficient way. These solutions are disconnected from reality: who will go to a rural college on a Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. to talk about their business?
Regarding salaries, Emmanuel Macron announced that no teacher would start their career below 2,000 euros net monthly, is this a central question for you?
We have been losing purchasing power every year for 30 years, so if there is no wage catch-up without compensation, we will not achieve anything. That doesn’t mean that you only need better salaries, but that would already be a better consideration and a better attractiveness of the profession. It will correspond more to the level of education and to the rest of the public service, too. To give a telling number : Category A teachers receive nearly 1,000 euros less per month than the average for other categories 1 of the State civil service. So, even if this 10% revaluation would take place, we are still very far from the mark.