A trial of a ‘single school outfit’ – more similar to a dress code rather than a uniform – will be launched in the coming months, Education Minister Gabriel Attal announced a week after announcing the controversial abaya ban on Monday.
“I’m not sure it’s a miracle solution […] but it deserves to be tested,” Attal told RTL on Monday, adding that he was “very much in favour” of experimenting with a “single uniform”.
On Monday evening, in an interview with the YouTube channel HugoDecrypte, which was broadcast live on TikTok and YouTube, President Emmanuel Macron explained the difference between a “single school outfit” and a “uniform”: it would not mean identical clothing for each student, but something more akin to a dress code – for example, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
Macron said he preferred the uniform option, which would be “more acceptable [to students] from a disciplinary point of view”.
After a period of consultation with willing local elected representatives, particularly to identify the schools where it would be used, the education minister said he would “announce the experimental arrangements in the autumn”.
Macron explained that a “uniform school dress” would make it possible to avoid students wearing outfits that show religious affiliation while also ensuring excessively eccentric clothing is not worn or that pupils from poorer backgrounds are not socially stigmatised.
Clarification
Attal’s position contrasts with that of his predecessor, Pap Ndiaye, however, it has already received backing from the right and the far right, with Les Républicains President Éric Ciotti telling weekly newspaper JDD in an interview published on Sunday that he favours “generalising the uniform”.
A mandatory uniform was also part of Marine Le Pen’s presidential programme and was mentioned by all the candidates at the right-wing party Les Républicains congress last December.
However, the left does not believe in a single uniform or outfit for school children to solve the problem of inequalities in schools.
Like radical left MP Thomas Portes, some leftist politicians see this as proof of “an ideological convergence between [Macron’s camp] and the far right”.
Macron’s majority still unclear
In the president’s camp, the question is far from settled, with some opposing the introduction of a single uniform in schools and others finding the debate sterile.
“The school uniform is nothing more than a symbol and will not make pupils more obedient or more respectful of secularism, their fellow pupils or the teaching staff”, wrote Renaissance MP Olga Givernet in an op-ed several months ago.
The government seems to be more or less aligned with Attal’s position, but the form of the experiment highlights differences of opinion. For example, the Secretary of State for Urban Affairs, Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, mentioned the possibility of experimenting with wearing uniforms in poorer so-called “priority neighbourhoods”.
But on Sunday evening, Equality Minister Bérangère Couillard explained that she preferred the experiment to be carried out in a larger areas “rather than in priority neighbourhoods”, so as “not to imagine it being a symbol based on social origin”.
For Couillard, this decision could make it possible to “protect secularism and combat bullying at school” and therefore deserves to be tried out.
(Davide Basso | EURACTIV.fr)
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