After a first day spent “pounding” drug trafficking, Emmanuel Macron will visit a school being renovated on Tuesday, education being a key objective of the “Marseille en grand” plan, and outline a new ambition for the Marseille city at the heart of the Mediterranean. The Head of State is criss-crossing France’s second city until Wednesday to give a boost to the vast investment plan he launched in September 2021 and which he wants to see “go even faster” .
Faced with the scourge of drugs, he announced Monday additional police reinforcements and the opening of colleges beyond 6 p.m. in sensitive neighborhoods in order to fight against educational inequality and the wandering of young people at the foot of the towers. . Almost two years ago, Emmanuel Macron had put five billion euros on the table to help Marseille make up for its many delays, with already 300 additional police officers, a school renovation plan or even the means to expand a network of hungry public transport.
After security for the first of three days – a record length of stay in a single city for the Head of State – it’s time for education, with the rehabilitation of the school park and the development of new pedagogies, and health . The president will visit a primary school in the poor northern neighborhoods of the city in the morning, being renovated as part of a joint public company created by the state and the municipality at the end of 2021.
Since the launch of “Marseille en grand”, 28 school construction or renovation projects have been launched, within the framework of an overall budget of more than 1.5 billion euros. “Never seen” in terms of the capacity of a city, according to its left-wing mayor Benoît Payan, who has made this school building renovation plan a priority. But if the need to rehabilitate Marseille schools – some of which were in a deplorable state – is generally agreed upon, the educational experimentation launched by the Head of State is going much worse with the teachers’ unions.
“The problem is that the President of the Republic combines (his) commitment with the desire to make Marseille the laboratory of neoliberalism applied to public services and in particular to school”, estimated Monday Caroline Chevé, departmental secretary of the FSU 13, majority in National Education. In September 2021, Emmanuel Macron announced the establishment in Marseille of an educational experiment called “the school of the future” and endowed with 2.5 billion euros. Experience called to be generalized to the whole territory.
To date, 82 schools have been selected to carry out a specific school project, with the possibility for the director to participate in the choice of his team. “This experiment was really forced into existence, despite opposition both very strong from the trade unions and from the schools which were the core target, that is to say the schools in the northern districts”, recalled Virginie Akliouat, departmental secretary of the FSU-SNUipp (first degree).
Prior to Emmanuel Macron’s visit, the mayor of Marseilles had disapproved of the idea of ??a “laboratory” or “sociological experimentation on the people of Marseille”. The president will then visit the Marseille army training hospital before a speech at Fort Saint-Jean on the “singular place of Marseille, a real gateway to the Mediterranean”, indicates the Elysée. In particular, he aims to make it a major city of cinema, with studios, a logistics base for sets and the CinéFabrique School.