“If we make student support a professional activity in itself, we can effectively fight against school exclusion”

Can we meet the support needs of students in difficulty by relying on volunteers en masse? This is what Pierre Liret says in a column published by The world August 14: Proposes that the 700,000 young people who have dropped out of the school system, without having completed secondary education, can benefit from the support of more than one million education and training professionals who could “devote part of their time to volunteering”. Add to this a potential reserve of one and a half million retirees who would be made available.

This is the equation that would allow us to relieve our educational system of the burden of academic failure at a lower cost. Under the guise of common sense solutions, this proposal is part of the main trends in school policies of recent decades and, therefore, reveals their contradictions.

Firstly, the call for volunteers would be justified on economic grounds in a context of tension over public finances. This proposal is consistent with the restrictive policies implemented in recent decades. But we know the price, particularly in terms of the deterioration of teachers’ salaries and working conditions, which will result in an unprecedented recruitment crisis. And the most disadvantaged communities were the first victims.

In addition, there are systems dedicated to young people in difficulty. Forty years of educational policy targeting failed students or young dropouts have seen the emergence and development of numerous actions, from municipal educational success programmes within the framework of compulsory schooling to multiple remedial, remotivation or pre-qualification actions for early dropouts over the age of 16, through the large network of associations that mobilise a significant number of volunteers. Volunteering is also supported by the State with the “one young person, one mentor” programme, launched in 2021.

Very diverse needs

Whatever the participants in this nebula, professionals or volunteers, the practices are based on equally disparate notions of accompaniment, help and support, in response to very diverse needs: deficits in academic acquisition, of course, but also needs for social, psychological and even psychiatric support. It is difficult to see how these aspects could be covered by the sole mobilization of “goodwill”.

You have 54.83% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.