Contribution of the Socialist Group

The democratisation of the high school was made for the basics via technological and professional course of study. So, the objective of 80 % age groups in the receptacle is almost attained only thanks to the enrolments of these courses of study. That is why the socialist deputies members of the mission of information on the reform of the high school have straightaway, from the first meetings and auditions, called into question the perimetre of mission and of report. The mission of information indeed concerns only the high school of mainstream and technological education, in motive that the reform of the professional receptacle and by l m me of the professional high school had been already thrown and is going to be implemented in the next return.

It is not because the movement of protest against the reform of the professional receptacle was relatively not much covered and because the children of elites are in the state of traces in the enrolments of the professional high schools that it is necessary to lose interest in professional course of study, on the contrary.

To lean over the future of the high school by forgetting more than 40 % secondary school students is a peculiar way to think of the role and of the place of the high school in the educational system and in the society. It is a very negative signal addressed about the half of the educational community and of the secondary school students. It is almost a form of contempt regarding all those which put themselves in the daily for the success of the pupils of professional education, in the school community and in the professional fields which are linked to the definition of the frames of reference of training. It is anyway a guilty indifference which the socialists cannot validate.

This choice disqualifies partly the step of mission and contradicts the official objectives of the reform of the receptacle pro, sensible to "revalorize the course of study and which consisted only of the abolition of whole year in the programme of preparation of the receptacle pro.

More serious, this dead end deprived the Representatives of necessary information:

- on the very worrying state of lack of preparation of the reform of the professional receptacle, including the same on the oral examinations which are going to take place in some days.

- but also on the fact that number of pupils eager to make the choice of the professional high school is 2^nde dress rehearsal, for lack of places in desired speciality there. What explains partly the very important rate of intensification of the class of second, which costs more than a thousand million euro every year.

Besides at no instant of mission question settled to measure the part of direction suffered towards the high school of mainstream and technological education

The high school of mainstream and technological education works well only to prepare for the selective courses of study of higher education (classes pr pa, UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY) where meet besides in crushing proportions the graduates coming from course of study S, that is the former graduates reform Haby.

It is this incredible " surplace that it is necessary to avert by thinking that the reform of the high school, who is for us absolutely necessary, request of time and of sense.

The high school does not work well. And if you should not make him carry all responsibility of the failure of the students from the first year of higher education, everybody agrees to think that he does not prepare them for it well.

A reform of the high school is necessary.

We refuse status quo. The question for us therefore is not to know if one needs a reform, but to say which, and how to make it achieve.

During about 80 auditions and displacements which we performed, that did we hear in a recurrent way? That it was necessary of time, that it was necessary to give sense, that nothing could be made without means.

That it was needed of time

The decision of the minister to apply reform from return 2009 was considered, rightly by the teachers as by the secondary school students, as a strike. And no reform can succeed if it is not, not only included, but adapted by those who will will to have to apply it and to live it.

Finland put several years to reform the high school, country where the minister told himself he taken for reference. Certainly they will object that the diagnosis on the high school is already known. Moreover Richard Descoings, as part of his mission, visited many high schools. And however the distrust which we received in high schools regarding the idea of reform can cause such blockage which it is necessary to answer it.

It is priority if they want, as we think of it, they to make move the high school.

Before approaching the concrete proposals of organisation of the high school as recommends it the reporter by moving 30 proposals forward, it seems to us essential to establish conditions and frame without whom necessary confidence will not be able to be restored between the actors of the high school and policy which has the responsibility for it. Bearing a grudge gain time, they risk losing it.

Before building brick after brick the home high school , it is necessary to draw plan.

That's how we will be able to give sense to measures which, without it will consist merely of a catalogue without ambition.

That is why, we offer that the school year 2009/2010 is dedicated to a true cooperation with all actors of the high school on the following construction sites:

- the conditions of secondary school life;

- knowledges necessary for a citizen's high school of the XXIth century;

- teacher's job;

- means for the high school.

1. - The conditions of secondary school life

The "secondary school student" changed more quickly than the high school which welcomes him.

Often major, already young adults, the secondary school students whom we met aspire at the same time to autonomy and to reinforced supervision which allows them to drive them to it.

This aspiration is strongly expressed all the more as the secondary school students are of modest origin or coming from a sociocultural environment which excluded them, there is still not enough time, the second cycle of secondary education. Moreover, the necessity of a job remunerated to meet the needs of the family reinforces the inequality of the secondary school students between them. This situation which was only fact of students touches more and more the secondary school students. The audition of the high commissioner, recently charged with youth by the President of the Republic, did not appear to us to answer a situation which becomes more and more unacceptable.

The report dedicates only some lines to this subject which seems to us however essential.

The period of cooperation will have to allow to re-examine the system of grants, in contact with regions, but also to envisage an allocation of autonomy for the secondary school students most subjected to economic pressures.

It is delusive to proclaim that the high school must become a place of life and of training of citizenship if many young people have to confront inequality there in the conditions of studies. It is not possible to content themselves with measuring the phenomenon of the job of the secondary school students as recommends it the report in its proposal n 14.

2 - The question of knowledges and of competences

That a young person entering higher education must control to succeed in it: what knowledge, what know-how?

This question returns to every audition. But if question has unanimous support, answer differs, or even controversial, depending on whether they contact the teachers, the secondary school students or the parents. Even if everybody agrees to clear a common origin of knowledge, definition and its perimetre remain subject to debates, often lively. The teachers remain tied, rightly, to their discipline because they often entered education for love of this one. The secondary school students as their parents stress, as for them, the emergence of a strong multidisciplinary approach. On this subject, they all regret the abolition of TPE in final year students.

The difficulty of the question of knowledges and of definition of a common origin of knowledge should not however lead us to elude subject, as makes it the report by tackling this question only under the angle of the management of establishments. There still, we want to be more ambitious, while handling necessary stages carefully.

We offer that Minister for Education calls a cooperation, dices return 2009, on the common origin of knowledge, just like the committee Th lot resulting in the common plinth to the secondary school. Mr Xavier Darcos was then minister of state in school education. This cooperation will have to determine the possible introduction of new disciplines (right for example) and their place. (technological culture for all secondary school students), as the report of disciplines between them, as part of a reorganisation of school time. To this subject, the proposal n 7 of the report which recommends 30 hours for common origin, without defining perimetre and nature of this common origin, does not go to the end of the logic which she pretends to defend. Moreover, the proposal n 4 cuts prematurely the organisation of final cycle and reports between general course of study and technological course of study.

Already, we offer to generalise experiments (as that performed at the high school Jean Renoir de Bondy) where, on the initiative of the professors, interdisciplinarity allowed to clear whole half a day for the individualised accompaniment of the pupils. It is to note that the Jean Renoir high school, in sensitive area and which obtains completely remarkable results, benefited from additional allocations, what poses well the problem of means.

3 - Teacher's job

We cannot content ourselves with approaching the essential subject of teacher's job under the only administrative angle of the decrees of 1950 on the weekly service of the professors of the secondary - (one and a half page on a report of a hundred of leaves!)

A job of redefined teacher announces the report: to take literally this perspective of the report, it is first to pose the fundamental problem of the training of the teachers. In this ambiguous title, we prefer: a professionnalisante training to allow the teachers to take their task .

Teach: a true job which must be admitted

Pedagogic freedom, of time to be beside their pupils, here is what claims most teachers that we met. But all suffer from a lack of recognition of their personal involvement, going very often beyond their service obligations. Many people live the academic failure and the ditch which sometimes separates them from secondary school students as an adjournment of the competences.

It is to contribute to answer this deep feeling of faintness that we make three proposals.

• 1. Accentuate the professionalization of teachers' job by real practice in class.

The de facto disappearance of IUFM does not go to the sense of this professionalization and we condemn it. If we are not against "Mast risation" the recruitment of the teachers, the absence of true practice throws young students too often into a job pressures of which they do not know.

A teaching "master" must be created with a true work-based learning.

• 2. Institute a pre-recruitment at the level of the licence, which would allow young people, who cannot envisage higher education today (safe to sell pizzas to pay them!), to achieve it.

Such pre-recruitment, which has already existed, would also allow to open the teaching profession to a bigger diversity cultural socio of the body of the professors.

• 3. Sanctuariser the credits of training: teacher's job demands an initial professionnalisante training, but also an adult continuing education which could hang in count the evolution of the secondary school students and teacher's job, which goes beyond of the only transmission of disciplinary knowledges. The role of a possible professor referent has sense only if he leans on a particular training. That is why it is necessary that the credits of training are sanctuaris s in the budgets of State education.

4 - Means: go out of a priori ideological of the reduction among teachers

This problem of means was systematically approached during each of auditions.

He is in the middle of any reflexion on the future of the high school.

Everything is not affair of means, either in a sense, or in other one.

To ask for additional means without making in anticipation a valuation of the urgent needs would not take into account necessary rigour in public expenditure. But apply the massive abolition of posts (13 500 in the budget of State education for 2009!) by the not replacement of a civil servant on two retiring be recovering from a priori ideological who makes of the State the first today licencieur of the country.

The promise made under duress by demonstrations of the teaching world not to abolish posts at the high school was not followed by effect.

We iterate our proposal of the frost of the abolitions of posts on the whole of State education by waiting for a valuation shared by needs for the next five years. It is from this valuation which will concern the whole school education, and therefore the high school, that a long-term plan of recruitment will be able to be drawn up. Only the pluriannualit of the recruitment of the teachers will allow to avoid the blows of accordion and therefore massive appeal at overtime and the appeal to temporary employees, aggravating the precariousness of job at the teachers, and notably the young people.

Our proposals:

- for the time being, frost of any abolition of posts on the whole of the State education the budget of which will be "Sanctuaris ".

- installation of a long-term plan of recruitment over five years (the time of a legislature!) after audit of needs.

Proposals which are commitments

These four construction sites which result in proposals for some of the immediate application are commitments regarding all actors who make live the high school: teachers, secondary school students, parents.

We think that 30 proposals moved forward in the report open debate but can gather our approval under no circumstances by a vote which would congeal questions which remain opened. It is obvious that we can only approve consensual proposals as the limitation of the weekly timetables of the secondary school students or the necessary overhaul of the school year. Still it is necessary that they take the time of the cooperation, demanded by all, without which these good intentions would be only pious wishes.

We consider therefore the report of our secondary school Benoist Apparu to be a contribution in the necessary debate which must finally open with the high school: the minister Xavier Darcos did not decide himself to delay everything on the table after the withdrawal of reform on December 15th of this year.

We wish therefore that the proposals of the report become public in the same capacity as our contribution which constitutes, according to us, the frame necessary to a debate which must result in the necessary reform of the high school. Still it is necessary to create notably budgetary conditions. Some proposals of the reporter Benoist Apparu would require additional means: for example, the creation of a professor referent cannot be only based on voluntary service or simple attribution of overtime.

In what concerns us, we think that our commitments constitute a precondition for the success of the necessary reform of the high school.