Boarding school for dropouts: real “opportunity” or place of “recovery” ?

Gabriel Attal is visiting à Nice this Monday to inaugurate a boarding school for dropouts. Nevertheless, criticism is rife among the unions, who denounce the establishment of a “redressal” place.

Last Thursday, Gabriel Attal announcedé different measures to deal with violence among young people. Among them, the establishment of boarding schools for “dropout students”. He then went on April 22 to Nice for the inauguration &agrave experimental title of one of them. The mayor of the town, Christian Estrosi, revealed &agrav; BFMTV that the boarding school of the high school of the Parc Imp&rial was going to welcome & quot;20 first-time offenders who are still in school. During the holidays, support and civic education courses will then be offered to them  eacute;s. 

This is to limit "bad associations" of these young people, particularly during school holidays. "My idea is simple: before a young person really falls into delinquency, when we notice&ccedil ;no matter if it starts at have bad relationships, hanging around in the street, we will suggest to parents that their child be sent to in boarding school, far from his neighborhood and those who pushed him to dive", specifiedé Gabriel Attal.

A possible system since boarding places are currently free. According to the Ministry of National Education, the occupancy rate is 65.9% at middle school and 79.1% at high school. This formula may also be offered throughout the year. The sending of students is done with the agreement of the parents: "there is nothing imposed' or repressive", had specifiedé Matignon. For the Prime Minister, these boarding schools are a real "opportunity" for young people, offering them "a framework" and more "chances to succeed" rather than "sinking into the spiral of delinquency and sometimes crime". 

During this visit, Gabriel Attal met the young people concerned. Instead, they showed themselves. reluctant, insisting on the fact of having been "forced" by their parents. 

A place of "recovery" according to the unions

For some unions, this is not the right solution. According to them, these boarding schools could quickly become “places of recovery”. boarding school has reappeared in political discourses, not always for the better, being the subject of ideological issues, ;ploré the Snes-FSU, the first union of middle and high schools. According to Olivier Raluy, CPE category secretary of the SNES-FSU teachers union , from the AFP, Gabriel Attal presents today “the idea” not as an educational boarding school but rather as a place of recovery& quot; while the union sees the boarding school as a "place of socialization, academic success and a vector of social advancement". 

Dominique Gobetti, principal of a high school with a boarding school at Épinay-sur-Seine and representative of the National Union of Management Personnel of National Education, also says about franceinfo that this is not the right path. "Çit seems very complicated to us; to give à a student a civic culture that he does not have and to teach him to do so. “to obey when he is not used to doing so in his family life,” she explained. She fears that the boarding school will be insufficient to change behavior: "I have a hard time doing it. imagine that a young person who is violent the exterior, which does not reach the outside. obey é his parents, can all of a sudden, by a miracle, because he is in boarding school, because he is face to face with their parents. an adult, a supervisor, can suddenly transform. She believes that people would be needed specifically trained for such a mission and defends that despite this, people are needed. its internal regulations,  the boarding school "is not a prison".