This system, launched in Marseille in September 2021, makes it possible to finance games and innovative furniture in schools, most of them in priority education. But for the Snuipp union, it creates “a two-speed school”.
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AT Marseille, the experimentation of “schools of the future” concerns one school in six, i.e. 82 establishments, compared to 50 schools at the launch in September 2021. Emmanuel Macron continues Tuesday, June 27 his trip to the cited
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More than 80% of Marseille’s “schools of the future” are in priority education. The projects funded are diverse: math games, purchases of furniture to refurbish classrooms and programs on sustainable development. Some of these were projects that had already been launched several years ago, but which find a budget substantial thanks to this system: the basic envelope is two and a half million euros. It will be replenished, assures the coordinator of the device. On the institutional side, we are pleased because the effects are positive on the functioning of the school and on the working atmosphere.
A third of the projects submitted have been validated
Since last autumn, this system of innovative schools launched in Marseilles has been generalized to the whole of France, within the framework of the national council for refoundation devoted to education. Principals can apply for project funding. Out of 6,500 projects submitted, a third of them have been validated. A pedagogical innovation fund of 500 million euros over five years has been set up.
But this Marseille experiment is far from unanimous. The majority of teachers’ unions oppose it. They denounce a two-speed school, with a lot of money for some and not enough for those who do not register in the system. “Teaching human resources have been supernumerary in these schools, Pointe Virginie Akliouat, from the Snuipp union in the Bouches-du-Rhône, while we have in the schools next door classes that are not replaced, for lack of teachers, and this for several weeks.
“This creates a break in the equal opportunities that must be offered on the territory to all students, wherever they are educated and it is high time to put an end to it”.
Virginie Akliouat, from the Snuipp union in the Bouches-du-Rhôneat franceinfo
The unions also criticize the fact that the directors involved in the experiment participate in the recruitment commissions for teachers in their school, with the risk of cronyism, even if it is then the classic scale linked to seniority that comes into play to decide between the different candidates.