Chirac Calls for Schools Reform

President Jacques Chirac yesterday launched a national debate on the future of France's troubled education system, saying reforms were urgently needed to produce schools that were "fairer, more efficient and more sure of their objectives".

"Our schools are merely treading water," the president told 500 education experts during the first of 15,000 public meetings organised across France over the next two months. He said: "Education is the state's biggest single expenditure, and it must be the state's biggest reform priority."

The unprecedented consultation exercise is a belated attempt by the government to appease teachers who began nationwide strikes earlier this year over plans by the education minister, Luc Ferry, to decentralise school funding and staffing decisions, plans which have since been postponed.

But the teachers' main demands - more cash and more staff - were rejected yesterday by Mr Chirac who asked all involved to "lay aside their passions, politics and clans" to allow "an open and taboo-free debate". He said it was up to all of France's 60 million citizens to help define the school of the future.

He also insisted that the main responsibility of French state schools must be to "transmit republican values such as tolerance and respect for authority, the national anthem and flag". In return, he promised "determined backing" for teachers faced with increasing school violence.

France's centralised school system must become more flexible, he added, arguing that "all too often, equality of opportunity is translated simply into uniformity of education offered. The job of schools must be to provide each pupil with the key to his personal fulfilment."