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After the school building was looted during the riots, the authorities decided to close the Petro ATTITI High School until the end of the year. The staff and parents of students at the Rivière-Salée vocational high school have formed a collective to defend the reopening of the school, even in de-escalation mode. The group has launched a petition on social networks. Interview with Jean-Louis Guilhem, member of the ATTITI 2024 collective and economics teacher at the Petro ATTITI High School.
During the riots, the building was vandalized and some rooms were set on fire. As a safety measure and in consultation with the Vice-Chancellor, the administration decided to close the access to Petro ATTITI High School until the end of the academic year.
On Monday, June 24, teachers and students will be assigned to other high schools in the region. However, a citizen collective is mobilizing to stay in Rivière-Salé and reinvest in the building.
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NC 1st: Why did you form a collective?
Jean-Louis Guillen: The collective, in the shape of a bottle thrown into the sea, calls for a civic renaissance to erase the shame left by three weeks of violence in the Rivière-Salé region. Some schools have done this. Universities have done it.
What we want is access to our buildings, including parents, to help remove traces of the vandalism. There was more damage to the equipment than the fire. The fire was certainly spectacular, but it was only a small part of the school.
For us, we can restart the high school very quickly with at least one-third of the staff.
Isabelle Champmoreau, head of education for the New Caledonian government, confirmed at a meeting on Tuesday that two-thirds of students could be temporarily placed in other institutions.
But for one-third of students, there is no technical platform for professional training.
What was your mindset at the end of the meeting with the vice-chancellor and administration at Jules GARNIER High School on Tuesday?
Jean-Louis Guillen: We left feeling confused as most teachers and even non-teaching staff had no idea what we were going to do on Monday.
Teachers will not be able to keep up with all the courses. They are spread across different institutions.
We have 110 teachers and about 60 non-teaching staff. The teachers have to have a class. And it doesn’t have to be the one they had at the beginning of the year. But at the moment, we are in a grey area because all the classes have not been assigned to a specific place.
We don’t know where we are going…
We are told that we have to work remotely, but vocational education, you will not learn to use a machine to deform wood or to weld with a computer unless you prove otherwise. As for English, mathematics, I would, but there, more than half of the classes are practical classes. We need seminars.
Don’t your other reception agencies have these technology platforms?
Jean-Louis Guillen: No. We don’t have these technology platforms. So sometimes computers are used in vocational education. That’s the case with construction economics, like architect assistant. You just need the right software. But for the most part, for the construction industry, these are manual trades.
We want to be directly involved, while also taking into account issues such as school transportation.
Do you want to join the discussion?
Jean-Louis Guillen: Yes. We know other institutions and we know what can be done. So far we have made some suggestions but they have not been adopted. We want to be directly involved, also taking into account issues such as school transport. Parents send their children to school in Noumea, so if you have to send them to Jean XXIII in Paita, it is much more complicated. I am not even talking about Taneo. But generally speaking, when school transport is normal, you want your child to take twenty minutes to get to school instead of an hour or more.
In addition, we have some students, 1/3 of the students are boarders. There is no longer a functioning boarding school. What are we going to do for these internal students?
If nothing is done, more than half of our students will be in the wild. You can imagine that for a certain percentage of people, this may be around dams.
If we don’t have a frank discussion with the decision makers, we are in a gray area. It would be better if these students were high school students. There is a gang phenomenon and we follow our friends, and unfortunately, sometimes, friends are not in the right place and are not with their parents.
Are you sure that students from Petro ATTITI High School will be well received at Jules GARNIER High School?
Jean-Louis Guillen: Only a small part. These are the BTS students, for them there is no problem. But for the others it is much more complicated. We were told about Champagnat, Do Kamo, Jean XXIII. We were also told about Escoffier, we visited the big institutions in the area. But for the 780 students (pending reclassification)… we have no magic wand.
Regarding the ATTITI 2024 collective petition, are you asking that the high school not be closed permanently?
Jean-Louis Guillen: Initially, we were told that it would open in 2025 at the earliest, and half an hour later we were told 2026. We feared that this would be postponed indefinitely. The temporary assignment became definitive, that is, Petro Artiti High School simply disappeared.
Below is the full interview with Jean-Louis Guilhem, member of the ATTITI 2024 collective:
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