“FEP-CFDT, fifth column in free education?” This question opens the press release of the private education employers’ association, a social dialogue body that brings together the governing bodies of private Catholic education and four unions of school directors. Issued on September 23, the text announces that it has decided “by unanimous vote of its members” the suspension of all instances of dialogue “not mandatory” with the FEP-CFDT, accused of “They stubbornly seek to undermine the very foundations of the institution that employs the employees they are supposed to defend.”
It all started with a press release. On September 13, the FEP-CFDT, the majority union of contracted teachers in the private sector, announced that “congratulate” the decision of the Bordeaux rectorate to suspend for three years Christian Espeso, director of the Immaculée-Conception school, renowned as the school of Pau, for violations of the principle of secularism reported following an inspection visit in the spring.
an investigation of Release published in February had revealed liberties taken in religious practices, such as “mandatory and evaluated catechism, censorship of works, reactionary speakers or obstacles to freedom of conscience”. The rector of Bordeaux, Anne Bisagni-Faure, assured in the columns of southwest that the first reports on this establishment date back to 2021.
The severity of the sanction (it is rare for a director to be suspended for such a long time) is related to the fact that the establishment had already been ordered, starting in 2021, to rectify the points that posed a problem. September 16 in the columns of life, Christian Espeso assured that an appeal will be filed quickly before the administrative court, information that his lawyer refused to confirm to us.
Teacher alerts for three years
The Béarn branch of the FEP-CFDT has helped raise awareness of the situation at Immaculée-Conception by supporting teachers’ warnings for three years. In the press release in question, the union recalled that it had “I always reported abuse” of ” some “ private establishments that do not comply with the partnership agreement. These are the words that provoked the anger of the school director, who insists: “A negotiation can only be carried out with confidence, without the presence of a kind of “fifth column” hostile to those who have chosen it to defend them.”
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