French President Emmanuel Macron replaced his education minister after a series of controversies, part of a second reshuffle within the space of weeks, his office said on Thursday, February 8.
Nicole Belloubet, who served as justice minister between 2017 and 2020, was appointed France's new education minister, replacing Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who was in January put in charge of a super ministry comprising both sports and education. Oudéa-Castéra will however retain her responsibilities for sport.
As part of the reshuffle, 20 junior ministers were appointed to complement the new government team appointed in January.
Oudéa-Castéra came under increasing pressure over her decision to send her children a private school. Opponents questioned her insistence that she sent one child to a private school over short staffing at his public establishment.
She said she had chosen to go private because of "loads of teaching hours without a serious replacement" teacher at her son's public school. Speaking to reporters on her first visit to a school as minister, she said she had been "fed up, like hundreds of thousands of families" across France – a phrase which widely angered teachers.
But the newspaper Libération reported that Oudéa-Castéra's son had not been affected by staffing gaps at public school, citing the nursery school teacher who had his class in 2009. The family in fact chose to move the child to the private school because the public one would not bump him up a year, the teacher said.
All three sons of Oudéa-Castéra, who is married to the president of French pharma giant Sanofi Frédéric Oudéa, attended the prestigious Stanislas school, a Catholic institution near her home in Paris. The private school has been under investigation by the education ministry since last year over press reports of homophobic and sexist behavior.