Udea-Castera controversy: Minister’s defense of his choice of the private sector is undermined by teacher’s testimony

Disputes within disputes. The choice of the new Minister of Education Amelie Oudea-Caster to educate her children in the private sector was not related to problems of non-replacement of teachers, as she confirmed, according to information on Sunday from Libération, which the minister denied.

Newly appointed Amelie Udea-Castera courted controversy on Friday by justifying her decision to move her children to the private sector with her “disappointment” over teaching “hour packages” that were not replaced during teacher absences from a public school. .

According to Libération, only Amélie Oudea-Caster’s eldest son was educated for some time in the public sector, in a small kindergarten. The newspaper reports a testimony from his then teacher in 2009 at the Littre public school in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The minister denies

According to this testimony, Amelie Udea-Castera and her husband decided to send their son to the private institution of Stanislas, located near their home, because the Littre school refused to allow their son early admission to the secondary section, considering that the student was still too young. And not because of the problem of absence, according to this testimony.

In a conversation with the newspaper Libération, the minister did not deny that she had been teaching her son in the public sector for only six months. However, she disputed the reasons given by her former teacher for the latter’s departure. “I don’t know where you got this element of truth from,” she said, before assuring that she and her husband were “regularly harassed in [leur] organization because classes were missed.”

The reason she “asked to meet Stan was because we lived on Rue Stanislas. Not for ideological reasons, I’m not a Catholic.”

“Hurtful remarks”

Stating that she cannot remember the name of the teacher at the time, nor whether her son entered public school in January 2009, as the teacher who testified said, she still claims to Libération that “it is possible that this hypothesis”.

Later that Sunday, her entourage told AFP that “the Minister of National Education categorically rejects the comments reported by Libération. “We may question the intent behind these inaccurate, inappropriate and hurtful comments to parents about their child almost 15 years later,” the same source said.

“Like all parents, Amelie Udea-Castera and Frederic Udea always considered the well-being of their child a priority and meant that they would make choices that were deeply at odds with their values ​​and development. harms them,” we added.