While teachers had little choice but to “soldier through” the pandemic, the difficulties on the ground have remained the same, causing “a lot of discontent” among school personnel, according to Patrick Remakel. The SNE’s President stressed that the trade union has previously put up “potential solutions.” Despite this, “not much has changed” in the past two years in terms of the major issues, in part because the government is not listening to teachers, according to Remakel.
One particular issue, according to the teachers’ union, affects children with special needs. Remakel criticised the Ministry for focusing on the procedure rather than the children. He noted that reporting a child is “very cumbersome” and that the process necessitates “a lot of input” for “very little output.” This, according to Remakel, is a disgrace, and the purpose should be to help the children in a timely and transparent manner. Furthermore, the SNE President stated that the entire procedure “often leads to nothing,” and that the Ministry of Education requires a “paradigm shift.” The SNE also maintains that school personnel should be diverse in terms of occupations. Schools should have a “taskforce” that could take care of the children in a “direct and unbureaucratic” way.
Remakel declined to comment on the workload disputes between the staff at competence centres and the Ministry of Education, merely stating that if the General Confederation of the Civil Service (CGFP), of which the SNE is a member, has come to an agreement with the Ministry, the SNE would endorse it.
The SNE does not approve of the government’s plans to open a sixth international school in Luxembourg. Remakel criticised the Ministry of Education for creating “a parallel educational system” instead of finding solutions within the existing public system. For the SNE, the goal should be to adapt the public school system in a way that “does the population justice”. In this context, the teachers’ union welcomes the introduction of alphabetisation in French, which is being launched as a pilot project in four primary schools in September. However, Remakel expressed his regret over the fact that, once again, the Ministry did not discuss the project with teachers beforehand.
In general, the dialogue with the Ministry “leaves a lot to be desired,” according to Remakel. The Ministry, he explained, contents itself with informing the trade unions, but there is no discussion anymore. As a result, people are left feeling “disgruntled”. The SNE also made multiple proposals on how to attract new people to the profession but all of them were rejected by the Ministry, Remakel lamented. The government’s strategy of recruiting more and more so-called Quereinsteiger (“lateral entrants”, i.e., people with a bachelor’s degree in a discipline that has at least some relation to the profession of a teacher) is “nothing but a hotchpotch”.
Staff shortage remains another major problem. Remakel explained that many schools are no longer able to offer tutoring lessons because they simply do not have enough staff. “Almost no municipality” is able to offer “a good school organisation” that is in the interest of all children, Remakel bemoaned.
The recruitment of Quereinsteiger was “a reaction to an emergency,” Remakel stressed. At the time, a solution needed to be found quickly. For this reason, the SNE did not oppose the project. But the Ministry’s decision to keep recruiting Quereinsteiger is misguided, according to the SNE President. Now that the programme is coming to an end after five years, the time has come for “sustainable solutions”. The teachers’ union has made numerous proposals, but the Ministry has once again rejected them all, Remakel explained. Some of the SNE’s ideas included increased publicity for the teaching profession and recruiting new teachers once they obtain their master’s degree.
