In a context of teacher shortages and a “tense” return to school, in the words of the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, new measures are desired by the government. The Minister Delegate for the City Olivier Klein declared, this Friday on franceinfo, that he wanted children to have access to a free “keychain” of school supplies at the start of the 2023 school year, by supporting group purchases by communities.
“I want, with the Minister (of National Education, Pap Ndiaye), to work for the start of the 2023 school year on a procedure which would ensure that, in working-class neighborhoods in any case, children have all their supplies”, said suggested Olivier Klein. The device, planned for in a year, would “obviously concern working-class neighborhoods, schools in REP+ and in REP (establishments concentrating social difficulties). But there are also poor children in neighborhoods that are not in REP or REP+ so we will have to find a proposal that is fair, equitable, and that is what we set ourselves the objective of working on throughout this school year,” added the minister.
Olivier Klein, until now mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, a working-class suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, had experimented with this device in his town, where pupils in primary school have “on their table all the necessary equipment”.
A device envisaged “at least in primary school”
This makes it possible to help families in difficulty and to ensure that “all the children have the same notebook”. “There is not the child who will have Hello Kitty, the one who will have Superman and the one who will have PSG on his cover”, defended Olivier Klein. “We could work on it, with the parents, with the teachers, because this kit must be defined,” he said.
“The idea is to be able to give communities this fund to be able to buy outfits, and that each student, when he arrives in his class, finds everything he needs for the year”, specified to the AFP the minister’s entourage. The distribution of supply kits already applies in some cities. In Seine-Saint-Denis, Aubervilliers has provided 4,500 sets of notebooks, pencils and diaries for elementary school students, and Bobigny will equip some 3,900 students, like last year, to get the school year off to a good start.
The device is envisaged “at least in primary”, the inclusion or not of the college remaining to be decided, specifies one with the ministry.