The French Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, holder of the Sports portfolio since 2022 and who in the recent government remodeling has added the responsibility of Education, is the subject of harsh criticism for some comments about the decision to remove her children from public school .
The educational section of the CGT, the second largest union in the country, immediately called the minister’s comments this Friday “amazing”, along the same lines as other voices, such as numerous left-wing opposition figures, and the criticism has not been substantiated. off despite the explanations offered by the Government this Saturday.
Oudéa-Castéra justified her decision to transfer her children from public school to a private Catholic center in Paris, also considered elitist and very conservative, by the frustration generated by the number of hours of class lost due to the lack of teachers.
“At some point we got fed up, like hundreds of thousands of families who, at some point, chose to look for a different solution,” justified the former tennis player, when asked by the press about the training of her children. Oudéa-Castéra expressed himself like this a few hours after the transfer of powers with the previous Minister of Education and now new Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, during a visit that both made to an educational center in the Yvelines department.
The objective of this movement was to show that, despite the addition of education tasks to a portfolio already heavily loaded by the organization of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, education would continue to be a government priority.
But the minister’s comments have ended up taking center stage and media outlets such as the newspaper Le Figaro describe them today as the “first controversy” of Emmanuel Macron’s new government team, which was announced only last Thursday.
“It’s amazing! Whose fault is it that there are so many unfilled hours in the public sector? It’s their policy of job cuts and gifts to the private sector! Regrettable and unworthy statement from the new national Minister of Education! “, expressed CGT Educación on the social network X.
“Simply crazy,” criticized the environmentalist deputy Julien Bayou in the same way, while the spokesperson for France Insoumise in the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot, accused the minister of acting with a “chilling cynicism.” In response, the The new Government spokesperson, Prisca Thevenot, defended this Saturday that these comments would only be controversial if a member of the Executive made them without at the same time proposing solutions.
“We have done more than make this observation: we have responded to it,” Thevenot considered in statements to the public broadcaster France 2.
