FRANCE. Education minister Francois Bayrou spoke a bit too soon in September when he announced “a peaceful return to school”. During the next three months students went on strike and were on the streets demanding more resources for under-financed, overcrowded and under-staffed universities.
Thousands of schools closed as teachers joined a series of days of action, supporting strikes by transport and other public-service workers. These protests against cuts in the welfare system paralysed the country for three weeks.
Earlier in the year, M Bayrou kept his job despite a change of president and a change of government - the administration of Edouard Balladur, whom M Bayrou had backed in the presidential election, being replaced by Alain Juppe’s.
He also expanded his empire, adding higher education and research, which had previously formed a separate ministry. But during a subsequent reshuffle to slim down the government, he lost the three secretaries of state he had just appointed. Two of the posts were abolished and the secretary for research replaced.
M Chirac’s major contribution to the educational debate was to promise a referendum on the education system. Once elected, he handed over the organisational details to M Bayrou, who had publicly opposed the idea.
A commission headed by industrialist Roger Fauroux has just completed an internal investigation into the state of French education. Now its members are poised to tour schools and universities and launch a public debate, to be broadcast on the educational television channel. Its final report is due in June, but no date has been announced for the referendum.
M Chirac also promised a students’ charter and M Bayrou launched a debate on all aspects of university life.
As students throughout the country deserted lecture-halls to demonstrate from October to December, he also proposed emergency measures to help the poorest universities. Student unions are now preparing for another day of action on January 16.
Another controversy flared with the opening in September of Leonard-da-Vinci, a private, fee-paying university centre funded by the local Hauts-de-Seine departement. It is known derisorily as the “fac Pasqua” (Pasqua’s college) - after its president Charles Pasqua, the right-wing former interior minister. Students at public universities are demanding its requisition by the state. Though he rejects this, M Pasqua has hinted that state students might be allowed to use some of the facilities.
Meanwhile, there have been changes in the classroom, including a remodelled baccalaureat - the school-leaving exam. In September some seven-year-olds began a new programme giving them a daily 15-minute session in a foreign language, and in February the government set up a National Reading Observatory to investigate teaching methods.
