On Monday 22 February 2016, the Minister of Education, Children and Youth, Claude Meisch, and the president of the Syndicat national des enseignants (SNE-CGFP), Patrick Remakel, signed a partnership agreeing to permanently invest in the quality of primary education.
The agreement followed talks between the Ministry and the SNE as a result of discussions on the budget of the new generation that the Ministry conducted over the course of the last two years with all primary education stakeholders, including the presidents des comités d'école, the Syndikat Erzéiung a Wëssenschaft (SEW) and the SNE.
The latter two were involved in exchanges with Minister Meisch in 2014 and 2015 regarding the redistribution of basic education resources with a view to improving student care. The meetings led the SNE to propose further discussions to include the fields featuring in its mission statement, whilst the SEW reportedly put forward a measure that envisioned the abolition of school development instruments such as a school success plan and the Agence pour le développement de la qualité scolaire, whilst calling for an end to the recruitment of experts to support teachers. The Ministry subsequently claimed Thursday that it had reached an agreement with the SNE, although was not able to find common ground with the SEW.
The Ministry therefore decided to continue talks with the SNE, which has resulted in an agreement between the two parties. The Ministry further states that key instruments for school quality on which educational policy rests were at the heart of the agreement, attributing this to the negative response from the SEW.
Photo by Sarah Graham (Claude Meisch)
