Half of the teachers of a high school in Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis) are on strike on Wednesday to denounce the ban on wearing the abaya at school and the lack of means in the National Education. “Abaya no more nurse”, “Abaya 60 less hours of lessons per week”: surgical mask hiding the face, a dozen members of the educational staff demonstrated at midday in front of the gates of the Maurice-Utrillo multipurpose high school in Stains, facing a swarm of microphones and television cameras.
The strikers point to the “loss” of sixty teaching hours in the operation of the establishment, the abolition of one of the four posts of principal education adviser and the vacancy of several teaching posts in various subjects in this new school year.
“It’s such an accumulation that the student welcome day had to be marked as a major point, which opposes this idea that everything is fine. No, all is not well, there is an obvious lack of resources,” a professor told Agence France-Presse who, like his colleagues, refused to be identified.
In this context, the ban on the wearing of the abaya “is erected as a major problem when it is above all a scarecrow, a way to divert attention from other problems”, said another striker. According to the rectorate of the academy of Créteil, the rate of strikers for the day of Wednesday is around 50%. No incident related to the ban on wearing abayas has occurred in this establishment of 1,200 students and 43 general and professional classes, according to the same source.
On the walls in front of the school, collages proclaim: “Comparing high school girls to terrorists is no”, “Stop bullying” or “Abaya no more teachers”. A few mothers joined the teachers’ rally to protest the “Islamophobic” ban on abayas in the classroom.
“When I accompanied my daughter, I saw a representative of secularism who was deciding whether the students were allowed to enter or not. Frankly, it shocked me, that’s why I’m here today,” the mother of a second-year student told AFP, who declined to be named.
