A room with a scale, cube games, numeration, equipment to help children understand mathematics… It is to create this “math laboratory” that Marie-Laure Mercun, director of the nursery school Menpenti in Marseille, responded to the call for projects launched by Emmanuel Macron last September. The teacher appreciates the margin of manœadditional work provided by this new device. “We always have axes to respect to make school projectsshe explains, whereas there, it was really freedom so that we could choose something, edit it from A to Z. Clearly, we would not have had the financial means to have all this material.
Nearly 59 schools responded positively to the call for projects – half of them in enhanced priority education – out of the 472 in Marseille. Nearly 2.5 million euros were specifically released by the state. The Menpenti school, which has eight classes, has already received 3,000 euros for furniture, 4,000 euros for teaching materials, or nearly 10,000 euros in all, assures the director.
In his school of 17 classes in priority education in the city center of Marseille, Alain Bertoli has also embarked on experimentation. His idea ? Use music to help children with dys disorders, such as dyslexia. Its program has existed since 2018 but was in danger of disappearing due to lack of funding. Thanks to experimentation, he has just received a first envelope of 20,000 euros. “This opportunity came at just the right time”, welcomes the director. But at the beginning, participation in the program provoked debates, in the masters room. “It was the famous criticism of the fact that the director would recruit teachers, and that, of course, raised questions”he confides.
“I do not see, in the current operation of the project, what can cause problems. I find that it is rather positive.”
Alain Bertoli, school director in Marseilleat franceinfo
In the end, he only participates in a commission, which gives an opinion. Then, the applying teacher must go through the classic and national recruitment procedure.
But beyond the volunteers, this project of “laboratory schools” in Marseille has been strongly criticized from the start. “What we are denouncing is not that schools have additional means, it is that some schools have additional meansregrets Virginie Akliouat, representative of the Snuipp union in the Bouches-du-Rhône. For us, what is happening in Marseille is really a showcase of what the candidate president wants to do in his second five-year term.
“What is certain is that the budgets put in Marseille will never be generalized to the whole of France since otherwise the State would very quickly go bankrupt.”
Virginie Akliouat, representative of the Snuipp union in the Bouches-du-Rhôneat franceinfo
This is the risk of a two-speed school: some pampered and others not. “Before proposing so-called innovative projects, we should perhaps take care to provide the basic elementstackle Cécile Baron, member of the Marseille schools collective and the FCPE parents’ federation. The Ministry of National Education is not even capable of providing the basic public service for most schools today in France.” The representative of parents of students denounces a competition between schools.
In Marseille, the “laboratory schools” wanted by Emmanuel Macron are not unanimous – Report by Noémie Bonnin
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