The start of the school year “has been ready for a long time” but “a milestone is missing”, warns Audrey Chanonat, from SNPDEN-Unsa

The school year will start on Monday, September 2, with the Minister of National Education resigning, pending the formation of a new government.

“The start of the school year has been ready for a long time”assured Audrey Chanonat, national secretary for education and pedagogy of the National Union of National Education Management Staff (SNPDEN-Unsa) on franceinfo on Monday, August 26. The school year will start with a Minister of National Education who has resigned while waiting for a new government.

“It is not the minister who will have more influence on the back-to-school policy,” Audrey Chanonat emphasizes. But she recognizes “that we will have to set a new course for the school in the coming weeks, between now and the vote on the next finance laws which will be passed in October and November. And then, we will need much clearer directives and a political direction that we do not have at the moment.”

The representative of SNPDEN-Unsa points out “these permanent reversals” that the staff must “to undergo”. It is “what is causing the school to suffer the most today”. “These changes in educational policy, the impression of not having a direction, of not having a social project that we generally entrust to our school. We deeply miss this direction. We spend our time doing and undoing.”

On the needs groups, wanted by the government of Gabriel Attal, which must be set up at the start of the school year in 6th and 5th grade, Audrey Chanonat explains that they have been “set up with the resources that were given to us and with the constraints that are ours”. “Some establishments received resources and were able to set up a few level groups, others much less”explains the college principal.

But she assures that the establishments will “implement the return to school because it is the law.” “However, we at SNPDEN-Unsa will continue our opposition to this reform,” warns the unionist. “We need to do something for middle schools, we need to do something to help students succeed better, it is perhaps a weak link in our French education system.” But she waits “something quite different from the reform that we are going to implement.”

Implementation of the reform “will be very different depending on the configuration of establishments”, adds Audrey Chanonat. She also hopes “that the enlargement to fourth and third grades will not happen.”