France’s new education minister has sparked the first major crisis for Gabriel Attal’s new government following accusations she failed to give the true reason why she enrolled her children in a private school.
The snowballing row threatens to derail attempts by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to give the government – which does not have an absolute parliamentary majority – a new lease of life before European elections in June.
Just days after Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s appointment last week, she faces calls to resign after claiming her “frustration” over teacher absences in her eldest son’s state school had been behind the choice to move him to a private establishment.
However, the child’s former teacher told the newspaper Libération that Oudéa-Castéra and her husband had changed schools because the establishment had refused to move the boy up a year.
“I feel personally attacked. I was not absent and even if that had been the case, we [teachers] would still have been replaced,” the now retired teacher named only as Florence told the newspaper.
Journalist Nicolas Poincaré, whose son was at the same state school, backed the former teacher, telling French television: “In eight years there have never been absences where the teacher has not been replaced.”
On Monday, teaching union officials demanded Oudéa-Castéra, whose full brief includes not only education but also sport and this summer’s Olympic Games, issue a public apology.
Oudéa-Castéra denied Libération’s report and called for an end to the “personal attacks” against her.
“I don’t want to go any further into the area of personal and private life. There are attacks to which I have tried to respond as sincerely as possible. We must close this chapter,” the minister said during a visit to the Olympic village on Monday.
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A source close to the minister added: “The minister for national education categorically denies the suggestions reported by Libération. One could ask oneself about the aim of these vague, out of place and hurtful suggestions for the parents about their child from almost 15 years ago.”
Oudéa-Castéra, who has three children, had originally said she had moved the eldest to a private school after six months in a state school because she and her husband Frédéric, president of the pharmaceutical group Sanofi, were frustrated at seeing “a stack of hours” allegedly lost to absent teachers.
“At some point we became fed up, like the parents of thousands of families who have chosen to look for a different solution,” she said, in comments that led to a barrage of criticism. Oudéa-Castéra added that she “believed in state schools”.
The Collège Stanislas de Paris, to which they moved their son, and two younger children, is a selective, fee-paying establishment in the sixth arrondissement known locally as Stan. Alumni include Prince Albert I of Monaco and Gen Charles de Gaulle.
Macron has attempted to reinvigorate what has been a difficult second term as president without a parliamentary majority with the appointment of Attal, 34, France’s youngest ever prime minister, and a government reshuffle that critics suggest has shifted the administration to the right.
An opinion poll published on Monday suggested Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) – whose president, Jordan Bardella, 28, is leading the European election campaign – was 10 percentage points ahead of the governing Renaissance party, which is in alliance with the centrist MoDem and Horizons parties for the vote.
Macron, who gathered his ministers and MPs for a team talk at the Elysée Palace on Monday, will outline his political roadmap for his next three years in office at a press conference on Tuesday evening.
