High school students at Matignon: after a month of anger, the time for costed commitments

The facts

The meeting had been demanded for weeks. Matignon announced on Sunday that Sébastien Lecornu would receive high school and university student organisations this Monday, 26 October, together with the Minister of Education, Édouard Geffray, and the Minister of Higher Education, Philippe Baptiste, Europe 1 reports. The two ministers are then due to set out the announcements at a press conference in the late afternoon.

The movement has now lasted more than a month. Born in mid-September in Créteil, according to AFP, it focuses on very concrete issues: run-down buildings, overcrowded classes and timetables, absent teachers who are not replaced, and inequalities linked to Parcoursup. On 6 October it brought together around 256,000 protesters according to the Interior Ministry, 450,000 according to the organisations, and 891 of 3,700 high schools had classes suspended in whole or in part, according to the same AFP dispatch.

The next day, in a televised address, the Prime Minister opened five workstreams: replacements, material conditions, school time, transparency of Parcoursup and a new framework for high school students to have their say. He promised first decisions at the end of October, without putting a figure on the resources, Économie Matin noted at the time. That moment has come.

According to government sources quoted by Europe 1, the announcements would cover replacements, buildings, teaching hours, class sizes and Parcoursup. They would be turned into amendments to the 2027 draft budget and informed by an online consultation open from 5 to 23 October, which gathered more than 100,000 contributions. The timetable fits: the National Assembly resumes its examination of the first part of the budget on 27 October, ahead of a formal vote scheduled for 3 November.

The positions

The government defends a record and a method. Before the Senate culture committee on 14 October, Édouard Geffray said that the share of class hours not covered had fallen from 8.5% to 5.9% and that around 3,000 full-time-equivalent replacement teachers were being assigned, Public Sénat reports. He refused to make Parcoursup the sole culprit:

It is not Parcoursup that selects — Édouard Geffray

For the minister, it is the courses that choose, and the platform has become a sort of political totem. He also pointed out, during questions to the government, that reserved quotas have allowed 150,000 grant holders to obtain a place since the tool was created. This is a serious argument: abolishing an interface does not create a single extra place in a bachelor's degree or a BTS.

In the Senate, criticism came from all sides. Les Républicains senator Catherine Belrhiti called for more transparency on Parcoursup and equal access regardless of social background and region. Communist Pierre Ouzoulias denounced students being pushed towards private higher education for lack of any real choice. Green senator Guillaume Gontard asked who would process the contributions and how they would become measures, according to Public Sénat.

Among young people, expectations are cautious. Louis Létoublon, of the Les Lycéens! movement, told Europe 1 he hoped the Prime Minister would meet their demands, while calling for the mobilisation to continue. The Union étudiante accuses the government of separating high school and university students, when in its view the measures concern young people as a whole. On the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in an interview with Mediapart, puts the abolition of Parcoursup at the top of the demands and calls for a 10-billion-euro plan for study conditions.

Analysis

This movement is not primarily ideological. It says that an essential public service no longer keeps its basic promises: a teacher in front of every class, a decent building, clear guidance on future studies. It is a demand for equal opportunity, which should speak to everyone who sees school as the first pillar of the Republic.

The government is right on one point: the answer cannot be a slogan. Abolishing Parcoursup without opening places would mean replacing an algorithm with waiting lists or a lottery. But it would be wrong to believe that an online consultation and a few technical adjustments will be enough. The 1.2-billion-euro increase in the Education budget announced in October, for a total of 64 billion, does not guarantee a real increase once inflation is taken into account, Économie Matin noted.

The real test will therefore be the budget. If Monday's announcements translate into costed amendments, targeted at the high schools in greatest difficulty and voted before 3 November, the method will have proved itself. If they remain intentions, the distrust of a whole generation risks becoming entrenched, at the very moment the country is going through a wider social crisis.

Conclusion

The State has a duty to restore calm in schools. It also has a duty to prove that students' voices count. A simple proposal could reconcile the two: publish, school by school, a report on replacements and building works under way, with a public progress review in the spring. The transparency demanded of Parcoursup: why not apply it to itself?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.