After a first day devoted to announcements to fight against drug trafficking, Emmanuel Macron will visit, Tuesday, June 27, a school under renovation to address the second major subject of his “Marseille en grand” plan: education, in particular the rehabilitation of the school park and the development of new pedagogies.
The Head of State criss-crosses until Wednesday – this is his longest stay in the same city – the second largest city in France, in order to accelerate the vast investment plan he has launched in September 2021 and that he wants to see “go even faster”.
The president will visit a primary school in the northern districts of the city in the morning, which is 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 on a large scale”, twenty-eight 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 mayor, Benoît Payan, on the left, who has made this school building renovation plan a priority. 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, on the other hand, going much worse with the teachers’ unions.
A “forced-march experiment”
“The problem is that the President of the Republic matches [his] commitment with the desire to make Marseille the laboratory of neoliberalism applied to public services and in particular to schools,” said Caroline Chevé, departmental secretary, on Monday. of the Unitary Trade Union Federation (FSU) of Bouches-du-Rhône, majority in national education.
In September 2021, Mr. 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, eighty-two schools have been selected to carry out a specific school project, with the possibility for the management to participate in the choice of its 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 National Unitary Union of Teachers, School Teachers and PEGC of the FSU (FSU-SNUipp).
“The danger is that we are no longer dealing with a school of the Republic, but with completely different schools depending on the territory”, with in the end a “real breach of equal opportunities”, she worries, while deploring the total lack of transparency on the methods of selection, deployment of these projects and allocation of funds. Before Emmanuel Macron’s visit, the mayor of Marseilles had disapproved of the idea of ??a “laboratory” or “sociological experimentation on the people of Marseille”.
On Monday, the president announced that the colleges would be gradually opened from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and kindergarten accessible from the age of 2 in priority education districts, starting with Marseille, to fight against “inequality school”.
“Marseille’s unique place”
The president will then visit the Marseille army training hospital, then give a speech at Fort Saint-Jean on the “singular place of Marseille, a real gateway to the Mediterranean”, announces the Elysée. He aims to make it a major city of cinema, with studios, a logistics base for sets and the CinéFabrique school.
Monday, to fight against the scourge of drugs, he announced 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 in the foot of the towers.
Almost two years ago, Emmanuel Macron put 5 billion euros on the table to help Marseille make up for its many delays, with already 300 additional police officers, a school renovation plan and means to expand a transport network. starving in common.
