Emmanuel Macron reopens the school vacation site

Emmanuel Macron had promised, Monday, to “accelerate” on the reconstruction – building and educational – of schools in Marseille. This acceleration must go through more autonomy and a revision of the school calendar, announced Tuesday the Head of State, during a visit to the elementary school Saint-André de La Castellane, one of the cities of northern districts of the city.

“We will continue to move forward in Marseille on a large scale and give even more autonomy, ured the Head of State. When you are at the head of an elementary establishment, you have no autonomy, here, we will build this autonomy”. Emmanuel Macron announced the extension of the Culture P for college students to the 82 so-called innovative schools in Marseille.

“We invented a new school”

Taking note of school projects combining sport and health, relating to “eating well”, integrating psycho-social skills to “give confidence” to children or even which envisage a space, in the school, which is also a place of medical consultation, Emmanuel Macron praised the “autonomy” of the directors of “innovative” schools.

“Pedagogical innovation is more effective than the circular” because “the project starts from the bottom”, welcomed the Head of State, who was pleased to have “invented a new school”. “For me, it’s even more important than the walls, they were blockages for decades,” he added. This big word that was autonomy has been reinforced. We need to put more resources where there are more inequalities, we need more autonomy. »

In these pedagogical innovations, the acceleration will relate to the duration of the holidays. Emmanuel Macron wants to “reopen a debate which is that of school time during the year, which is totally hypocrisy. Today we have children who have two and a half months of vacation. However, when they return in September, it is with the skills they had acquired a month before the end of the school year. We have to rethink this time. »

“We are destroying collective learning”

“We stuff our children’s weeks,” lamented Emmanuel Macron, citing Germany as an example, with its six weeks of vacation in the summer. To prevent “our children arriving exhausted every night”. But also because in terms of learning, it does not make sense, he said, referring to the widening of inequalities, supported by researchers, over the time of summer vacation.

Children from the northern districts who resume cles in September return to school with their level for the month of May, while others go to summer camp or language stays. “We are in a way destroying collective learning so we have to rethink this time during the year”, insisted the Head of State, bouncing on the words of his former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who also suggested, two weeks ago, reducing the length of the summer holidays.

Monday evening, Emmanuel Macron also announced the drop in the number of students per cl in the middle section – as for CP and CE1 in priority education -, “wherever necessary, on the basis of an educational report”. The colleges will be open continuously from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for pedagogical support for students, in establishments located in priority neighborhoods for urban policy.

“180 schools renovated by 2030”

Finally, on the building level, the Head of State had promised in 2021 financial aid from the State for renovate the 174 schools in Marseille “considered in such a state of disrepair that learning there has become impossible”. The renovation plan has been extended to 188 schools out of the 470 existing, underlines the Elysée, indicating that 400 million euros have been deployed, then 650 million in the form of loan guarantees. Today, 19 school construction sites are underway and 60 projects are under study, the objective being to launch a second market for 29 additional schools then a third by September for 48 establishments, according to the entourage of the head of state.

In the district of La Busserine, Monday evening, he faced angry mothers were impatient with the progress of the work. And yet: “If I had followed the clic rhythm of what happened during the last 50 years, it would have taken two centuries” to do the same, indicated the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, from the school of La Castellane. “There is no city in France capable of launching so many projects at the same time. By 2026, the renovation and reconstruction of 60 schools will have been completed. I am catching up on a structural delay. It’s a whole system that needs to be put back in place. »

Emmanuel Macron goes further: “The 180 schools, we have to aim for by 2030 for them to be completed. There has never been an equivalent in terms of state intervention since 1945.”