French education minister urged to quit after pulling son out of state school

France’s new education minister is facing calls to resign after pulling her son out of a state school and enlisting him in an exclusive private institution.

Amélie Oudéa-Castéra took over the post from Gabriel Attal last week and now runs a “superministry” which is also in charge of youth and sport in the year of the Paris Olympic Games.

But the 45-year-old is already embroiled in controversy after being forced to defend her move to place her three sons in Stanislas, a private select school in Paris.

Her eldest child, aged three at the time of the move, was switched to the private school from a state school in 2009.

Described as “a Catholic, elitist and conservative institution” by Le Monde, Stanislas has been under investigation by the education ministry since last year over media allegations of homophobic and sexist behaviour.

The minister, who is married to Frédéric Oudéa, president of  Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical giant, said her decision was made out of “frustration” at staff shortages and the lack of cover for absent teachers in the state system.

“At some point, we got fed up, like hundreds of thousands of families who chose to look for a different solution,” she said.

Her response infuriated teachers and unions. Guislaine David of the Snuipp-FSU teachers’ union, said: “First day at the head of the ministry and already she’s attacking state schools.

“It’s hallucinatory. If teachers weren’t replaced, it’s because thousands of jobs were cut.”

For his part, Grégoire Ensel, president of the FCPE parents’ federation, described the comments as “clumsy” at best and somewhat “staggering”.

“Yes, schools are in crisis, but we believe in public schools and we choose to send our children there”, he said.

Apology for ‘wounding’ teachers

Ms Oudéa-Castéra later apologised, admitting that her words “may have wounded some teachers in state schools”. She promised “to be always at their side, as I will be at the side of the whole educational community”.

However, on Sunday, the row deepened when the Libération newspaper interviewed her oldest son’s former teacher at the state school she pulled him out of in 2009 after a few months.

She said she was “horrified” to hear the minister’s claims, arguing they were “totally false”.

The problem was rather that Ms Oudéa-Castéra was a pushy parent who wanted her son to skip a year, according to the teacher.

She said the request was declined on the grounds he was “not mature enough”.

Ms Oudéa-Castéra said on Monday that she “categorically denies the claims reported by Liberation”.

“We have to close this chapter of personal attacks and personal life,” she said during a visit to a Paris school, saying she had “tried to respond as sincerely as possible”.

Members of the Left-wing opposition called for her to resign.

“If the minister really lied... [she] has no place at the head of the education ministry,” said Rodrigo Arenas, an MP for the  LFI party and former head of a nationwide parents’ federation.

Marine Le Pen, the hard-Right leader, said the row shone a light on the government’s inability to improve standards in state schools.

“They’ve been in power for seven years and for seven years they’ve done nothing to get public schools back on their feet,” she said.

“Now they’re taking offence at schools’ deterioration as if they weren’t responsible.”

Ms Oudéa-Castéra is not the first education minister to give her children a private schooling.

Pap Ndiaye, the former education minister, sent his children to the prestigious École alsacienne, which was attended by Mr Attal, the new prime minister appointed by Emmanuel Macron.

While still education minister, Mr Attal hit back at those who questioned his private schooling, saying: “I don’t have to deny or apologise for the choice my parents made at the time, as millions of parents do every year.”

He denounced “a great deal of hypocrisy” on the subject, saying that Ms Oudéa-Castéra had “spoken openly about the choices she has made in her family and in her life”.

Once a source of national pride, France’s state education system has seen standards slip in recent years. It has fallen down the Pisa international rankings and now performs worse than the UK in maths.

As education minister, Mr Attal promised to introduce streaming and end grade inflation. He also vowed to make all sixth-formers sit a maths exam regardless of their chosen subjects and launched widescale trials to reintroduce school uniforms.

Mr Attal also won over conservatives by banning pupils from wearing the abaya, a robe favoured by some Muslim women and girls.

When he took up his new post last week, Mr Attal pledged to continue to take up the ”cause of schools”, describing improving standards as “the mother of all battles”.