Four weeks after being appointed head of the French Ministry of Education, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, weakened by endless controversy, has already left the role. Nicole Belloubet becomes the fourth education minister to be appointed since the start of President Emmanuel Macron's second five-year term in May 2022.

François Bayrou (head of the centrist MoDem party and a key Macron ally) was initially considered for the post but decided not to join the government due to a lack of "profound agreement on the policy to be followed," particularly in the field of education. Bayrou thought he could "correct" "a crisis of confidence that has come a long way." But "numerous discussions" led him to conclude that there was "a difference of approach on the method to be followed that seems prohibitive," he told news agency Agence France-Presse on the evening of Wednesday, February 7.

The French education system has found a new head in Belloubet. Ironically, Macron's former justice minister between 2017 and 2020 succeeded Bayrou, a short-lived justice minister in 2017. A former member of the Parti Socialiste, the 68-year-old university professor is no stranger to the inner workings of her new ministerial office. Belloubet, a law professor and former mayor of Toulouse and regional councilor in the Midi-Pyrénées region, was the education officer for Limoges and then Toulouse between 1997 and 2005 – a position from which she resigned in protest against job cuts in her education authority.

This was an extremely unusual decision, which the new minister justified in a letter to the authority's executives, in which she stated that she refused to dismantle – for lack of resources – measures that she herself had supported. In the wake of her appointment, former education minister Jack Lang (1992-1993 then 2000-2002) hailed the choice in a statement sent to Le Monde. "Nicole Belloubet worked with me between 2000 and 2002, and I appointed her rector of Toulouse, where she did an excellent job," he insisted.

Oudéa-Castéra was criticized for being a "part-time minister," combining the education role with sports and the Olympic Games. "There are certain criticisms we made of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra that we won't be able to make of Nicole Belloubet, such as being unfamiliar with the field or being from another sector," pointed out Alain Boissinot, former education officer for Bordeaux and Versailles.

However, the choice of Belloubet came as a surprise to the educational world. "Nicole, frankly, don't go there," implored former Versailles education officer Pierre-Yves Duwoye on X on Thursday, predicting that she would be betraying her "so strong and thoughtful commitments to education." An article in the form of a plea for former president François Hollande's middle school reform, published by Belloubet in 2016 and available on the Cairn platform, was also circulated on Thursday, as her name was put forward for the post. The piece reveals a position far removed from the directions taken by the current government.

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