From Friday, 21 November to Friday, 28 November 2008 Edition #167
Teachers protest en masse


#167 From 2008-11-21 to 2008-11-28
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Organisers say that up to 3,000 people took part in Thursday’s demonstration in Angoulême
Reproduction interdite.
According to one teaching union leader present, it was a sight Angoulême had not witnessed for a decade. Up to 3,000 protestors marched through the streets of the Charente capital on Thursday as part of a national day of protest and strikes against government education reforms. The vast majority of the marchers were teachers, though their numbers were bolstered by 200 lycée students and a number of local politicians. These included Philippe Lavaud, the mayor of Angoulême, and the mayor of Coulgens, Rémy Merle. The demonstrators are angry at what they claim is the gradual destruction of education as a public service, a reduction in working conditions and in particular the loss of 11,500 teaching posts nationally. Much of the protest was aimed directly at Education Minister Xavier Darcos. ‘It’s a scandal, it’s disgraceful what is going on,’ said one union representative. ‘All the changes are just a means of cutting jobs.’ One teacher at a lycée in Cognac was concerned about the planned timetable reforms in lycées. ‘We won’t have a structure to the classes now,’ she said, adding that pupils would suffer as a result. Another expressed the concern that teachers lacked support from the authorities. ‘We are in real difficulty – we can find ourselves being arrested for violent acts that we haven’t committed,’ she said. ‘Like that teacher who was driven to suicide, while the pupil who had accused him of hitting him later retracted his story.’ Alain Tournier, general secretary of the FSU teaching union in the department, said the unions were planning further action. ‘If we stay united the schools can never be defeated,’ he said. For its part the government says the reforms will make the education service more efficient and help students prepare better for their bac exam. The strikes have also raised the controversial issue of local authorities being obliged to provide a ‘minimum service’ for schools hit by strikes (see later story).
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