A new file which is added to Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s well-laden suitcase. The new Minister of Education promoted a private school outside of a contract when she was Minister of Sports, according to information from Mediapart published this Wednesday evening. Going so far as to strongly support the establishment’s request to enter into a contract with the State.
In the summer of 2023, the Diagonale educational structure (based in 4 academies including Paris), offers young athletes customized courses priced at 4,900 to 6,000 euros per year, wishes to come under the control of the State. Amélie Oudéa-Castéra is personally pushing for this to be the case, while the highest national education services are opposed to it. And for good reason, this maneuver would transfer the high burden of teacher remuneration to the State. Especially since the Paris academy, where many positions were eliminated this year, would be particularly concerned.
A potential contractualization which questions
“The specificity of Diagonale’s educational offering (teaching hours shorter than the required programs) and the job withdrawals also planned in public and private education under contract in Paris due to the demographic decline, do not do not allow Diagonale classes to be contracted,” two senior ministry officials confirmed to the investigative media. They specify that the processing of these requests usually takes place in February-March, and has therefore “not yet started”.
Questioned by Mediapart on these questions, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra responded through her communications manager. “(This) school welcoming a certain number of high-level athletes, it is normal that discussions could have taken place on this file (…), as well as on dozens of others brought to (the) attention of (the minister)” . She therefore does not comment on her support for the contractualization of Diagonale.
In its investigation, Mediapart also mentions the links between Amélie Oudéa-Castéra and the director of Diagonale, Michel Naniche, without however specifying them clearly. The latter has long argued for the creation of a derogatory status for Diagonale (and not for direct contractualization) since the school found itself weakened by the new continuous assessment system (which now represents 40% of the final grade for public and private students under contract) during the reform of the “Blanquer bac”, from which its students did not benefit.
Michel Naniche will even be received by Emmanuel Macron in person, in February 2022, to support his request. Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, when she succeeds Roxana Maracineanu at the Ministry of Sports in May 2022, immediately pushes for the establishment of this special regime. Pap Ndiaye, then stationed at Rue de Grenelle, for his part categorically refused this request, which he confirmed to Mediapart. After Ndiaye’s departure, Michel Naniche was also received by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, when the latter was Minister of Education. Attal did not respond to requests from Mediapart regarding the contractualization of the establishment.
Appointed on January 11 at the head of a super-ministry bringing together National Education, Youth, Sports and the Olympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra has since come under fire from criticism, in particular because of the schooling of her children in the Parisian private school Stanislas and his declarations on the Littré public school and its “packages of hours not seriously replaced”.