Teachers’ fury as France gives every pupil €2 for Olympics

Booklets containing commemorative coin are waste of money during pay disputes, union complains

FRENCH teachers have protested against plans to give schoolchildren an Olympics booklet containing a €2 coin, saying the money spent on the “scandalous” campaign should instead be spent on them.

In the lead-up to Paris 2024, four million pupils will receive educational booklets about the Summer Olympic Games with a commemorative coin designed by the Paris Mint and featuring an Eiffel Tower glued inside.

Titled “At the Heart of the Games”, the pamphlet includes messages from Emmanuel Macron, the French president; Gabriel Attal, the prime minister; and Amélie Oudéa-castéra, the sports minister and former public education minister. Including printing and delivery costs, the project aimed at “raising awareness” among elementary school children costs about €16 million (£13.7million), according to the Ministry of National Education and Youth.

“When we’re told that there won’t be any hikes in salaries, but we manage to give €16million on a project that makes no educational sense whatsoever, it’s a scandal,” Guislaine David, the secretarygeneral of a teachers’ union in Maineet-loire told the radio station RMC.

“This is not a small budget for certain schools, at a time when [finance minister] Bruno Le Maire has announced that civil servants will have to tighten their belts,” she added.

This week, the government unveiled plans to slash public spending by €10billion after the 2024 growth forecast was lowered from 1.4 per cent to 1 per cent.

Mr Le Maire said that all ministries will be asked to cut their operating budgets, while state institutions will also be asked to tighten their belts.

A cost breakdown from the government gazette published yesterday showed that €700 million will be

‘We manage to give €16million on a project that makes no educational sense ... it’s a scandal’

slashed from the education budget this year.

Teachers also complained that there was no heads-up or explanation given for the kits.

“If they’d told us about it beforehand, we’d have warned them that it’s a bad idea,” Ms David told the news site Actu.

The educational kit was modelled after a similar campaign in 1989 by François Mitterrand, the president at the time, who included a commemorative one franc coin in a booklet marking 200 years since the French Revolution.

In a statement to Le Parisien, the ministry of education defended the new campaign saying: “The Olympic Games in Paris are a historic event, which only happens once a century. The idea is to keep a trace of it, as was done during the bicentenary of the Revolution, under Mitterrand in 1989.”

The distribution of free money to schoolchildren comes amid longrunning teacher protests over salary disputes. They say the amount of money spent on the booklets could have gone to much better use.

Earlier this month, thousands of teachers representing about 20 per cent of the workforce walked off the job to protest about working conditions, wages and class sizes.

But the strike was also a stand against Ms Oudéa-castéra, the public education minister at the time who became embroiled in controversy after it was revealed her three sons attend the elite private Stanislas Roman Catholic school in Paris.

The school has also been under investigation by the education ministry over allegations of homophobic and sexist teachings and insults.

Dogged by controversy, Ms Oudéacastéra quit the post as education minister less than a month into the job, and stepped back into her former title as minister of sports on Feb 8.