Private school: a minister at the heart of the controversy, how Amélie Oudéa-Castéra got her feet wet

La ministre de l’Éducation nationale a demandé de “clore le chapitre des attaques personnelles”. MAXPPP – Fred Dugit

The Minister of Education Amélie Oudéa-Castéra cannot escape the turmoil. This Monday, she received the teaching unions who slammed the door and called for a strike on February 1st. The affair puts Emmanuel Macron in difficulty, who is organizing a press conference this Tuesday evening to relaunch his five-year term.

This is a controversy that is starting to look like a slide. With each day that passes, the new Minister of Education seems to slide a little lower.

The Oudéa-Castéra affair began on Friday January 12 in front of the glass doors of the Saint-Exupéry college in Andrésy. The minister, just appointed, was then under fire for having sent her children to a private establishment.

As she makes her first trip alongside Gabriel Attal, the journalists question her: why did she choose the private sector and why this establishment, Stanislas College , whose motto is "French without fear, Christian without reproach”, they ask him.

Two heavy files

Under the helpless gaze of the Prime Minister, the former tennis champion gets tripped up by asserting that she and her husband made this choice because of "the number of hours not seriously replaced& ;quot;.

Anger quickly spreads among the teaching world who had already taken a dim view of the appointment of this minister in charge of both the heavy issue of National Education and that of Games Olympics.

"It's time to resign" 

Amélie Oudéa-Castéra quickly backtracks and says "regret" having"could have hurt certain teachers". But the controversy flared up again when the newspaper Libération published several testimonies which denied the alleged absence of teachers and underlined the minister's desire to make the eldest of the siblings skip a class.

This time, the minister did not react. Within the government and the majority the embarrassment is palpable. Few of them came to his aid. And those who do so have difficulty hiding their discomfort like Sylvain Maillard, the president of the Renaissance group in the Assembly, who judged on Sud Radio that Amélie Oudéa-Castéra "was very clear& ;quot; explaining "why she wanted to change" from public to private.

"The lies pile up"

The oppositions are unleashed: "It’s a lie which disqualifies her from continuing to occupy this function", affirms the Insoumis Manuel Bompard on Franceinfo, while the communist Fabien Roussel believes on

In this complicated and tense context, the minister began to receive, on Monday, the teaching unions who very quickly slammed the door. "We cut the discussion short", explained Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU at the end of the meeting, asking for "a public apology".

"She did not take the measurement of the shock wave"

"She did not understand the shock wave among teachers", judged Guislaine David, spokesperson for SNUipp-FSU. This controversy is a huge stone in the shoes of Emmanuel Macron who, thanks to the reshuffle announced last week, hoped to relaunch his five-year term and make the subject of Education one of the flagship themes of the months to come. come.

A minister assured us, the day before the government was appointed, “we must not fail because we will have to stick with these ministers for at least a year, we don't reshuffle every day& ;quot;.

An XXL press conference

While the President is preparing, this evening, to address the French via an XXL press conference, and he intends to inform them of his ambitions for the continuation, the Oudéa-Castéra soap opera comes at the worst time.

But it is not in the nature of the head of state to separate from his ministers in turmoil. This evening, the tenant of the Élysée should therefore defend the former champion, hoping that the crisis will calm down on its own. But the executive remains extremely vigilant because a teachers' strike is expected on February 1.

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