2022 presidential election: education, a persistent refrain at the start of the campaign – archyde

While the candidates are far from all declared, the road to the Elysee Palace is still long, the start of the 2022 presidential campaign begins to draw its dominant themes. And the question of school and education has carved out a prominent place in speeches since the start of the school year.

Emmanuel Macron laid the first stone in Marseille, from Thursday, September 2: the head of state announced that he wanted to test in “Fifty laboratory schools” the recruitment of teachers by principals. By declaring to want “Evaluate” the measure and “Generalize it if it is conclusive”, Emmanuel Macron set foot in the post-2022 period, on a resolutely liberal line.

The second stone was laid by Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, as soon as her candidacy was announced in mid-September. She put forward the doubling of teachers’ salaries as the flagship measure of her program, placing the purchasing power of teachers and the recruitment crisis at the heart of the news and surprising even those concerned. “Teacher tends to become one of those devalued service professions, she writes in her book A french woman (The Observatory, 208 pages, 18 euros). This is why, in my eyes, only a major movement to revalue salaries is able to stop this deadly mechanism. This is a fundamental political choice. “ His proposal, if not in its scope, is part of the legacy of his party – since 1965, each socialist candidate has included the question of salaries or staffing in their proposals.

Since then, everyone has pushed their ideas, more or less constructed, to try to take control of the debate. With her shock proposal, Anne Hidalgo forced the other candidates to position themselves. “She messed up with this far-fetched proposition, but the others were forced to continue”, analysis, on condition of anonymity, a specialist in academic subjects. The Socialist Party (PS) candidate asked a fundamental question, which the teachers’ unions are not ready to leave aside. “The issue of remuneration remains essential for us, says Catherine Nave-Bekhti, from SGEN-CFDT. Recruiting and retaining national education personnel is a fundamental issue. ”

On the right, the anguish of decline

On the right, in the campaign being played out within the Les Républicains (LR) party, Michel Barnier and Valérie Pécresse have also made educational questions a marker. Michel Barnier wants to educate “The great cause of his five-year term”, while Valérie Pécresse sees in the school “The factory of France”. Both capitalize on the traditional values ​​of the right: fundamental knowledge in primary school on the one hand, the restoration of authority and discipline on the other. “There is too little debate on education issues in Parliament. The question must be carried by the whole nation ”, says the deputy for Bas-Rhin and former rector Patrick Hetzel, now co-responsible for Michel Barnier’s political project.

You have 67.62% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.