Schools issue teaches value of compromise

•
Last Sunday over one million people took to the streets of Paris to protest at the French Government's plans for the future of Catholic private schools. Peter Stanford looks at the events leading up to this confrontation.
FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, the French President, will probably never regret anything so much as his promise, made in his election manifesto in May 1981, to introduce a "single, public, lay service of national education". Whilst other promises were quickly followed after the election by legislation to abolish the death penalty, raise the minimum wage and so on, the question of the role of the Catholic Church in private education has remained a live issue, and is fast becoming a focus of discontent for opponents of the other policies of the Socialist government in France.
Until the advent of M Mitterrand, the French Fifth Republic's right-wing governments had looked kindly on private, denominational schools. In particular the Debre Law of 1959 recognised the "specific character" of church schools, and set up a three-tier system for them with different degrees of state funding, and correspondingly varying levels of independence.
After 1959 a period of calm ensued, with many socialists sending their children to private schools. However, President Mitterrand decided that the system needed reform.
He placed the task of framing a piece of suitable legislation in the hands of his Education Minister, Alain Savary, who accordingly, in December 1982, produced a set of proposals for the integration of the two systems which matched up to the weighty promises of the election campaign. Not surprisingly they were rejected out of hand by representatives of the Catholic schools, who refused to negotiate.
M Savary, undaunted by the failure of his first attempt to square the circle, then changed tack. In October 1983 he unveiled his "Propositions on the relations between private and public education", which met with a more sympathetic response from the Catholic sector. He had clearly decided to compromise.
The introduction to his second set of proposals spoke of "gradually reducing the differences", and stressed the Government's respect for three essential principles — equality for all in education, respect of conscience and freedom of choice in education.
This willingness to compromise led to negotiations with all parties involved in the future of private education in the first months of this year. However, they took place against a background of a series of five demonstrations by supporters of private schools, culminating in a gathering of more than 600,000 at Versailles on March 4.
Having completed his talks with both the Catholic Teaching Association, which under the lively leadership of Canon Paul Guiberteau has been among the most vociferous of defenders of Catholic schools, and with lay organisations determined to see the end of the private sector, M Savary announced his Plans to the cabinet.
He resolved to leave the Catholic schools with substantial financial independence, but proposed greater co-ordination with local state schools over issues such as the school's opening hours and holidays. Such questions were to be raised in local etablissements d'interet public, where representatives of both state and private schools in one area could discuss their common ground.
The most controversial of M Savary's proposals was to allow teachers in private schools to become fully-fledged state employees six years after the new legislation was approved, thus qualifying them for all the same benefits as their state counterparts. The outcry in Catholic circles was immediate. To have state employees in their
schools would compromise the independence of the schools.
If the Catholic reaction was fierce, the lay opponents of denominational schools were no less severe in their attacks on M Savary. They felt he had given away too much.
As a sop to this secular outrage, the Prime Minister, M Pierre Mauroy intervened to add an amendment to the effect that if less than 50 per cent of the teachers in private schools decided against becoming state employees, then the Government could withdraw its funding after 11 years.
It was the intervention of M Mauroy, and the unseemly haste with which the legislation was pushed through the National Assembly, which roused public opinion to such an extent that the massive demonstration in
Paris at the weekend was possible. M Savary had worked hard for two years to win the confidence of both sides. The balance which he had achieved was not yet delicate enough for a solution to be envisaged, but the heavy-handedness of M Mauroy has destroyed all hope of that for the time being. His amendment was seen in Catholic circles as proof of bad faith.
The debate on the future of private schools now moves to the Senate, where there are many more opponents of M Mitterrand than in the National Assembly. The estimated 1.5 million who took to the streets of Paris on Sunday hoped to convince the Senate to make a series of amendments altering the most objectionable aspects of the draft law from the Catholic point of view. How far they will succeed remains to be seen.
What is sure is that the question of the future of denominational education has now become a much broader issue. Prominent among the marchers on Sunday were many opponents of M Mitterrand, anxious after their triumph in the European elections to drive home their advantage with a masshe show of opposition to the Government. The French bishops were aware of this dimension and sensibly decided to stay away from the main protest, lest they become embroiled in political manoeuvres.