All priority education colleges will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the start of the September school year, the Minister of National Education, Gabriel Attal, announced this Friday, without providing details on this system. This is the generalization of a measure implemented this year in 200 colleges.
“We are going to go from 200 to 1,100 colleges which will have this system”, or “600,000 students in France”, declared the minister, during a trip to a college in Epinay-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis ) concerned by the experiment. In establishments that set up this organization, students are welcomed “before their lessons, after their lessons, with breakfast served to them in the morning”. Support “in homework help, for sporting and cultural activities and for orientation activities” is also offered, he said.
“A form of generalization without assessment”
Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, regrets “a form of generalization without assessment, which is quite problematic”. “We never got an answer” about the organization of the 200 colleges which have experimented with the system, she adds: “are all the children welcomed from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.? », “Who intervenes outside of class hours? »…
Currently, the opening and closing times of a college or high school are decided by a vote by the establishment’s board of directors. The head of the establishment must then obtain the opinion of the department or region, which takes care of school transport, explained Sophie Vénétitay. “In fact, there are colleges which are already open quite widely,” she added, but “that does not mean that all the students are there from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m..”