French press review 30 August 2012

The story that gets the most column inches in today’s press here in France is the announcement by the minister for education, Vincent Peillon, that he intends to revamp the education system.

Aujourd’hui en France devotes its first three pages to the plans by the education ministry. The article points out that a plan to recruit an additional 22,000 teachers was part of President François Hollande’s election promise.

Why are reforms needed? Well for starters, twenty five percent of 12 to 15 year olds read badly, according to Aujourd’hui en France. Apparently 150,000 children finish their studies without obtaining a diploma.

The article points out that the children of today are a generation prone to "zapping." A word used by the French to describe people obsessed with electronic gadgets. So these children are not keen on applying themselves to solving lengthy mathematical equations.

The report on pages two and three is also accompanied by some interesting statistics provided by the OECD. France scores well in terms of state investment, it is second after Finland. However, this investment doesn’t appear to trickle down to teaching staff, as French teachers earn less than their German, South Korean, Japanese, British, Finnish, American and Italian counterparts.

There’s an interesting story in Le Monde that caught my eye this morning. It’s about how several Frenchmen, and they are all men, are now managing multinational corporations.

The article is prompted by the appointment of Hubert Joly as managing director of the American firm, Best Buy recently.

Other high-ranking Frenchmen in the world of international business, according to the article, include Pascal Soriot who was appointed to lead the Swedish-British pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca. Then Xavier Rolet is the CEO of the London Stock Exchange.

So is there a demand for the French management style in the corporate world? No, is the simple answer provided by Le Monde. Instead these men have all built their careers outside France.

Then returning to the subject of education, the Catholic daily, La Croix, has a piece about universities in Côte d’Ivoire re-opening.

The West African nation was torn apart by post-election violence part way through the academic year in November 2010. Universities were obviously adversely affected by the chaos that ensued for the next six months while pro-Ouattara forces backed by the UN dislodged a reluctant Laurent Gbagbo.

La Croix visits a university in the commercial capital, Abidjan in the district of Cocody where intense fighting took place. The campus was damaged, but now the government is investing millions of euros in rebuilding the institution to its former glory and 152 million euros are being ploughed into rebuilding the campus in Cocody alone.

But, as the article points out, these costs will be recuperated, in part, by a hike in enrolment fees to 46 euros per year. This has prompted some to call for the government to help disadvantaged students gain admission to university.