Back-to-school circular: wishes without means or change of policy.

PRESS RELEASE

National Education staff received, Thursday, May 7, the 2026 back-to-school circular signed by Minister Geffray. This temporality raises questions and its publication 4 months before the start of the school year gives more the feeling that the ministry wanted to get rid of a formal exercise (and largely sacrificed during the Macron years) than a desire to set a course. Like a desire to manage current affairs at the end of a sluggish reign where the government is once again trying to convince itself of the “merits” of a certain number of counter-reforms that it wishes to “consolidate”…

Once again, through this circular, the ministry is selling a retrograde ideology through its insistence on fundamental learning (so much praised since the Blanquer era and with prescriptions already included in the programs), through that for republican principles (stipulated without any real link with the rest of the orientations) or finally, in a last paragraph with a very Third Republic tone summoning decline and fears (conflicts and separatism coming together with demographic decline).

For the CGT Éduc’action, this circular is not rich in lessons because of what it indicates, but rather because of everything that is not, all these absences loaded with meaning. Concerning scientific reasoning, apart from an insufficient Girls-maths plan to combat the inequality aspect, nothing is planned by the ministry while a recent report from the DEPP emphasizes the lack of resources or training of personnel. On the school climate, the minister believes that its improvement will come through the end of mobile phones in establishments while it is anecdotal with regard to the absence of a mental health policy or the lack of staff to supervise and support students in peaceful schooling. Likewise, improving personnel management and their support cannot be achieved without the end of austerity (removal of positions) or that of authoritarianism, without the recognition of the rights of personnel (to transfer, to exercise their educational freedom, to train…). Respecting the educational community and its staff (and their “authority”) also means putting an end to a form of institutional contempt and granting them professional and salary recognition. For the most precarious like the AESH, to whom the minister recognizes an “investment” (a term that can also be used for volunteers…), it is also granting them, finally, a real civil servant status at a time when negotiations are struggling to take place. start concretely.

Finally, what can we say about the “requirement” very widely invoked by the minister and which suggests that the educational community must pull itself together? For the CGT Éduc’action, the only valid demand is ours, that carried by our demands to improve the Public Education Service, improve the work of all staff, the success of all students and the fight against inequalities, and therefore that of win another government educational policy.

Montreuil, May 11, 2026

Press release Circular of back-to-school wishes without means or change of policy

 

 

 

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Press release Circular for back-to-school wishes without means or change of policy.pdf 312 KB