It was a Toulouse college that made people talk about it two weeks ago: Stendhal college, Bagatelle district, where a CPE was beaten by students trying to separate two schoolgirls who were fighting. Part of the staff was on strike yesterday: 73% of the fifty teachers, the two CPEs and all ten supervisors.
The strikers gathered in front of the establishment with parents and students to denounce a deteriorating educational environment. The establishment now has the equivalent of ten supervisors and two full-time CPEs. Insufficient manpower for the strikers who are asking for the creation of a CPE post and two additional supervisor posts. Lionel Enjalran is one of the teachers mobilized: “The number of college students has gone from 320 to 580 in five years and we only had one additional supervisor. It’s complicated to ensure safety in these conditions.”
“Violence is daily”
Sami Mecabih, supervisor at the college since last February, agrees: “In a REP+ college, violence is daily, it’s something recurring that we try to contain, that we try to frame. But it’s still very complicated. I’m afraid that what happened past with the CPE happens again. Since then, there has been an easing, but I know that it’s a vicious circle, that it will come back. We want to be able to properly supervise the students to prevent it from happening again, because with a sufficient supervision, we can really prevent this kind of thing. I am going to give an example linked to the layout of the college which is not at all optimal: at lunchtime to go to the canteen, hundreds of pupils have to cross the whole main building. It mobilizes more than five AED: there are only one or two left in the courtyard, it is not enough.”
© Radio France
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Claudia Calmel
“We ask that the particularities of the establishment be taken into account”
Romain Bouvet has been a history-geography teacher at Stendhal College for seven years: “We are concerned for the safety of students and for the safety of staff. When we are faced with this type of violence at the start of the year, we wonder what will happen in the following months. With the current climate, a lot of social and economic tensions enter the school: that inevitably has repercussions on kids who may have other things in mind when they arrive. We are not asking for special treatment, but we are asking that the particularities of the establishment are taken into account. At some point, you have to stop just looking at the figures that fit into the nails: you have to take into account the specificity of the establishments.”
© Radio France
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Claudia Calmel
The movement continues
The teachers decided to strike again this Friday. The school life team (which includes supervisors and CPEs) will return to work but plans to go on strike again on Monday 10 October.
The rectorate, contacted by France Bleu Occitanie, spoke in a press release. The Haute-Garonne academy inspector says he is aware of the difficulties of the Stendhal college. He is pointing out that “the establishment benefits from all the means of reinforced priority education” and that “in view of the situation, and in order to support the establishment even better, we have decided to add means and assistance additional: the allocation of the establishment has been increased by 5 hours per week in order to allow the head of establishment to set up new systems with his teams for the benefit of the pupils.Training in crisis management for Educational Assistants and teachers was proposed and an establishment and school life inspector was asked to provide a diagnosis and support on the functioning of school life.
Teachers interviewed by France Bleu Occitanie claim that these measures are not new and that these proposals have “already made at a meeting last week”.