Education: Attal calls on business leaders to "commit" to welcoming second-year trainees

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: Thomas SAMSON / AFP 17:04 p.m., November 14, 2023

Education Minister Gabriel Attal on Tuesday called on business leaders to "get involved" in "succeeding in the guidance" of young people, in particular by welcoming high school students during the new compulsory internships in the second year in June, in a speech at the headquarters of the Medef. "The school, in order to succeed in orientation, needs your commitment," Gabriel Attal told the permanent assembly of the Medef, an information body between the employers' organisation and its members.

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"10,000 teachers in charge of discovering professions" for middle school students

Stressing that this was the "first" speech by a Minister of National Education before this body, he considered that it was necessary to "work much more together". "My first message concerns the discovery of professions: since this school year, we have 10,000 teachers throughout France who are responsible for the discovery of professions for our college students," the minister said. "They are just waiting to be solicited or to be able to receive a response to the requests they make to economic actors."

"The second message is about business immersions," he continued. "To organize these immersions, I need you just as much." "Finally, the third message concerns observation internships," he declined, stressing that "nearly 20 years after the introduction of third-year internships, we are going to take a new step by introducing mandatory two-week internships in general and technological secondary."

"Reconquest of the month of June"

These internships, from June 17 to 28, 2024, announced by the minister at the start of the school year to lead the "reconquest of the month of June", will "require a great mobilization", he said. The 550,000 second-year students have so far finished their school year in June. "I know that we will be able to move forward together on this issue," he said. "We need to be able to have a large number of quality internships," he continued, adding that "countries that are more successful than us in guidance often resort to longer internship periods."

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To reassure business leaders, he stressed that "it is not the same volume of students as those we have in the third year courses" (800,000), and that a student at the end of the second year is not the same as a student at the beginning or even in the middle of the third year" because "there is a reflection on the orientation that has been much refined".

Hailing an "essential and very fruitful rapprochement" with the National Education, the president of the Medef Patrick Martin affirmed that companies were "totally mobilized to welcome, much better than we have done until now, the trainees of the Troisième, now of the second".