“I am mobilizing tomorrow because I refuse to be part of a national education which practices school segregation”

Many schools will not open their doors this Thursday, February 1 at the call of the FSU, Fnec-FP-FO, CGT and Sud education. From kindergarten to high school, the inter-union movement should be assiduously followed. Salaries, positions, working conditions… Three teachers explain to us why they will be on strike.

Three teachers with different functions, one in kindergarten, the other a specialist teacher and a director agreed to testify to explain the “reasons for anger“. All three union representatives, they explain to us the complexity of their working conditions and their concerns for the future of their profession.

For Muriel, a nursery school teacher in Pantin in Seine-Saint-Denis and member of FSU-Snuipp 93, mobilization is a way of alerting people to staffing problems within classes. “At my school, we had another class closure this year. There was already one last year. Every time one class closes, another ends up with more students. This makes our job even more complicated. Students need individualized monitoring and the larger the class, the more complicated it is for the teacher to set up.“, according to her. The school teacher will be part of the 55% of teachers on strike in nursery and primary schools in the department on Thursday according to union figures.

Supporting students is also the daily life of Agnès Guichard in Romainville, also a member of the largest primary school teaching union. She is a RASED teacher. RASED is the Specific Assistance Network for Students in Difficulty. “This network is made up of two specialist teachers. One for educational assistance and the other for relational assistance. We also have a school psychologist on the team“, she defines. She notes that in certain places in Seine-Saint-Denis, this device “cannot be implemented because there is a lack of school psychologists” According to her, this creates a lack of links between schools and medical-social centers which welcome students affected by the system.

For her part, Catherine Da Silva is the director of a school in Saint-Denis. Like 150 other schools in the department, his will be closed on Thursday. “I am mobilizing tomorrow because I refuse to be part of a National Education which practices school segregation by sorting its students. As management staff, we will have to create level classes between CM2 and 6th grade based on the results of our primary school students and I refuse it..” Catherine Da Silva indicates that she refuses a “liberal school in which everyone is assigned to their social category and where children from the working classes could not find their way“.

This strike will be followed by 65% ​​of nursery and primary school teachers in Paris according to the Paris branch of FSU-Snuipp. For Léa Dubresseuil, departmental co-secretary in the capital, this movement includes several demands. “We are angry. We first ask for 300 euros more salary for all teachers“, she indicates. The question of the attractiveness of the teaching profession also arises. “In Paris, many teachers feel under pressure because the system is dysfunctional and we need more recruitment to respond to the problems of replacement and massive job cuts.“, indicates the union representative.

According to her, this lack of attractiveness is linked to the deterioration of working conditions. “Firstly, there is a difficulty in accessing training. Then, the government takes us towards increasingly formatted programs with less and less pedagogical freedom for teachers. Since 2017, our profession has been under constant attack“, deplores Léa Dubresseuil.

It targets in particular the labeling of school textbooks and national assessments in CP and CE1. “These become steering tools for the government. Depending on the results, there is more and more interference in the work of teachers“, she concludes.