The new Minister of Education has justified the choice of private education for her children while undermining public schools. Amélie Oudéa-Castéra explained this Friday that she transferred her sons because of her “frustration” with “the bundles of hours” of teaching “which were not seriously replaced” during teacher absences.
“I am not going to dodge your question (…) we are going to go into the personnel field”, she replied during a press briefing to a journalist from Mediapart, after visiting a college in Andrésy (Yvelines). This was his first trip as Minister of Education, alongside his predecessor Gabriel Attal, now at Matignon.
The minister says she was “fed up”
“My eldest son, Vincent, started, like his mother, at public school [élémentaire] in Littré”, in the sixth arrondissement of Paris, the most expensive in the capital per square meter. With her husband, she explains that she was “fed up, like hundreds of thousands of families who, at one point, made a choice to seek a different solution”, she defended herself, specifying that it was a “proximity choice” since they lived on rue Stanislas.
The Stanislas college-lyceum, also in the 6th arrondissement, in the heart of Paris, is a prestigious private Catholic establishment. At the beginning of 2023, the Ministry of Education contacted the General Inspectorate and launched a call for testimony after accusations of homophobic and sexist excesses relayed in the press targeting this establishment.
The public “not good enough for my children”
The head of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure judged the minister’s remarks to be “mind-blowing” by parodying them: “the public school of which I am now the minister was not good enough for my children so I sent them to school in a private high school whose values are, according to the surveys carried out there, far from republican values.
Teachers’ unions also reacted strongly. “Lunar and provocative remarks, against the public education service and its staff,” commented on X Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the first secondary school union. The CGT Educ’action castigated a “lamentable and unworthy speech by the new minister”. For Jean-Rémi Girard, president of Snalc (colleges and high schools), it is “an interesting story because of what it says about the abandonment of public schools by our leaders”.
A “decrepitude organized by Macron”
The Paris councilor, member of the French Communist Party, Ian Brossat, criticized the fact that a “Minister of National Education justifies the schooling of her children in the private sector because of the decrepitude of public schools”, estimating that this “decrepitude [a été] organized for seven years by Macron. During their visit, Gabriel Attal and Amélie Oudéa-Castéra discussed with students the “homework done” system, sport at school and even a project to draft a law against stereotypes in sport.
Before leaving, Gabriel Attal shouted “work well!” » on the megaphone in front of students who had prepared to cheer him in the courtyard. As an echo of the invitation “to work” launched to the government by Emmanuel Macron during the Council of Ministers. “When you are done with the circus, you will have to think about bread for the French,” commented on X the leader of the LR deputies Olivier Marleix.