“We cannot negotiate a reform that will seriously endanger the academic future and the professional future of our students”estimated on franceinfo, Friday, October 21, Sigrid Gérardin, secretary general of the unitary national union of vocational education, SNUEP-FSU as the first consultations begin at the Ministry of Labor around the reform of the vocational high school.
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Several trade union organizations, including the Snetaa-FO (majority), the Snuep-FSU or the CGT have announced that they will not participate in this meeting between the minister, Carole Grandjean, and the unions. A majority of the unions called Thursday for a new day of strike in France on November 17 to demand the withdrawal of the reform wanted by Emmanuel Macron.
franceinfo: Are you going to take part in these consultations?
Sigrid Gerardin: We are not going to participate in this consultation. On the other hand, we are going to go and read a unitary letter to carry the word of the Pro high school teachers and reiterate our fierce opposition to this reform project. The Minister spoke before the National Assembly, saying that nothing is written, but in reality, the basic elements, that is to say more internships in companies, the calibration of professional sectors geared towards economic needs premises of local businesses and the reduction in hourly volumes are still present. We cannot negotiate a reform which will seriously endanger the academic and professional future of our students and which will also allow the government to eliminate 5,000 Pro high school teacher positions in the long term.
You don’t want to hear about this reform?
What we are going to ask is that Minister Pap Ndiaye speak, because it is still absurd that today we have no expression from him. We ask him for working groups within the National Education, with teachers, representatives of teachers in vocational high schools (PLP), students and families, because we are the experts in the professional path. We know the students, the families, the training content. We are the ones who certify the diplomas and we are the ones who know the local companies that take our students on internship and sometimes hire them. Moreover, these local businesses, when they are told that there will be more internships, they do not agree at all.
Adapting training to local business needs, isn’t that a good idea?
Indeed, we are faced with a shortage of jobs in certain sectors of activity which is unprecedented in France. But we know the causes, they are the rather deplorable salary conditions, it is the working conditions which are very difficult. So, rather than coming to pick up our students and reduce their possibilities of accessing a general education of their choice, they would do better first of all to take care of raising salaries in their sector. The sectors must evolve, we agree, but through the prism of the general interest, by answering an essential question: what does the country need to respond to the greats of tomorrow? And we know that there are issues of ecological transition, care for old age, reindustrialization of France.
Let’s sit around the table and think about the needs in terms of the general interest of the population and certainly not to meet immediate economic needs.
Sigrid Gerardinat franceinfo
It is all the same a school scandal to want to exploit the orientation of post-3e young people and the paths of the most disadvantaged young people. We educate 650,000 young people, that’s a third of high school students, mostly from disadvantaged classes, so young people who come to us a little dented by life, with difficulties. What colleagues are saying is that we are already sorely lacking in time to give them a solid and balanced training between general knowledge and professional knowledge. And today, we want to reduce this time.