After sketching the outlines of a more autonomous “new school” from Marseille, Emmanuel Macron announced that he would double his budget for public hospitals in France’s second city, with the added bonus of rebuilding the Army Training Hospital on a new website.
In his “Marseille en grand” plan of September 2021, a 5 billion euro program of which he has just launched Act II, the Head of State had already devoted 240 million euros to the modernization of public hospitals. Marseille (AP-HM), including in particular the renovation of the Hôpital Nord and the Timone.
“In total, the state will invest 479 million euros for the modernization project of the AP-HM”, said Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, touting “an unprecedented investment” from the hospital of instruction of the armies of the city. . This one, one of eight establishments of this type in France, will be rebuilt on a new site, for 300 million euros.
Earlier in the morning, from a school being renovated in the northern districts of the city, the president had welcomed the educational innovations launched in some 80 primary schools in Marseille.
With a budget of 2.5 million euros, this project invites schools to have more autonomy and freedom by developing thematic projects, with the possibility for the director to participate in the choice of his team.
“We invented a new school. For me, it’s even more important than the walls, it’s been blockages for decades”, savored Emmanuel Macron, who wishes to see this laboratory of “schools of the future” extended throughout France. .
“At the beginning, if we speak frankly, there was a lot of reluctance, it completely shakes up basic ideologies,” he admitted. But resistance remains strong, a large majority of the 470 schools in Marseille having not wished at this stage to engage in this system.
New argument for joining it: the schools that participate will be able to use the culture pass, reserved for the moment for colleges and high schools.
From now on, the Head of State, who imagines the second city of France as the laboratory of his public policies, also wants to “reopen” the debate concerning school time over the year, because “when we have a three-month vacation , inequality is coming back,” he insisted on Tuesday morning.
New announcement therefore, after those made Monday evening, in front of more than 300 inhabitants and actors of the northern districts of Marseille. In these sensitive neighborhoods, he wants to split the classes from the middle section of kindergarten, gradually widen the timetables in college until 6:00 p.m., and offer the possibility of entering school from the age of two.
At his side on Tuesday morning, the diverse-left mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan welcomed the investments without “equivalent in the country since 1945 for schools”: “we will have completed by 2026 the renovation and reconstruction of 60 schools”, he promised, including the one overlooking the city of Castellane, where Zinedine Zidane grew up.
But for Nathalie Romagné, psychologist at the Edouard-Toulouse hospital, the expanded reception of students will not be enough to reduce inequalities: for that, “it would take real care” of families who live in the poor neighborhoods of the city. city, she said.
With educational experimentation, “the danger is that we are no longer dealing with a school of the Republic but with completely different schools depending on the territory”, leading to a “real break in equal opportunities” , worries about her side Virginie Akliouat, departmental secretary of the FSU-SNUipp (first degree).
To conclude the second day of his stay in the Marseille city on Tuesday, after passing through the Cosquer cave, Emmanuel Macron will give a speech at the Mucem, at Fort Saint-Jean, on culture and the “singular place of Marseille, a real door entry to the Mediterranean”, indicated the Elysée.
At midday, it was with Rodophe Saadé, CEO of CMA-CGM, a shipping giant, that Mr. Macron had lunch, we learned from the company: “They discussed the role of the CMA-CGM, this company very Marseilles and connected to the whole world”, specified a spokesperson for the company.
27/06/2023 18:58:08 – Marseille (AFP) © 2023 AFP