High school musicians from Seine-Saint-Denis remain on the floor

It was in a joyful concert that students and teachers from the conservatories of the territorial public establishment Est Ensemble demonstrated this Wednesday noon in front of the rectorate of Paris to demand the reopening of the third class with a double course at the Georges-Brassens high school, located in the 19th arrondissement of the capital.

Until last year, many students enrolled in the conservatories of Seine-Saint-Denis could be educated in this Parisian establishment in order to have flexible hours allowing them to follow music lessons or other artistic subjects in cultural facilities in the afternoon. But at the beginning of the summer, all the students of 93 who wanted to enroll in second were turned away for lack of places.

The Paris Academy justified this choice by the fact that these young people did not have sufficient academic and artistic level and that in any case it gave priority to adolescents enrolled in its partner structures ― the regional conservatories of Paris and Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris, the Popular Masters of the Opéra-comique, as well as those of Radio France and Notre-Dame de Paris ―, regardless of their place of residence.

An argument that still leaves Gaspard, one of the pupils of the conservatory of Romainville, present this Wednesday at the demonstration. “Last year in college, I had an overall average of 18.5 and I was in postgraduate studies at the conservatory. So this story of level, it made me laugh, ”jokes this flute player, who was educated in a class with arranged hours (Cham) last year in college.

Since the start of the school year, he has therefore been forced to go to the conservatory in the evening, which makes his days extremely busy. “And again, I’m lucky because my classes are concentrated, I don’t have a lot of hours of permanence, indicates this student from Paul-Robert high school in Les Lilas. But for my friends who are in this situation, it is more complicated. »

Est Ensemble would like to create a class with flexible hours

A few meters from him, Faustine, Cheryne and Alice, three other students from the Romainville conservatory, in their final year of education at Georges-Brassens, came to support the demonstration. “Three years ago, we were 12 young people from Romainville to have been accepted into the establishment, reports Alice, cellist. Not everyone had been there. “Without these arrangements, I don’t know if I would have been able to continue the music”, estimates his comrade Cheryne, violinist.

“Since we launched our mobilization, the rectorate of Paris has not moved one iota, deplores Rachel Auriol, one of the parents mobilized. Thirty informal appeals were filed by families, but they were all rejected. »

“If the students cannot follow a double course, inevitably they will do fewer hours with us, regrets for his part Patrice Rault, the director of the conservatory of Romainville. It puts us in difficulty, while we give them a real quality education! To say that they do not have the level is revolting. Refusing them really gives the impression that there is a tightness between Paris and its suburbs, which seems surreal. »

Failing to have Cham in Paris, wouldn’t the solution be to create some in Seine-Saint-Denis? For the moment, there are none in the high schools of the Créteil academy (Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Seine-et-Marne), which nevertheless has many conservatories, including two in regional influence: Aubervilliers and Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne).

“Today, there is a crying lack of classes of this type, regrets Alexie Lorca, vice-president in charge of Culture at Est Ensemble. We would like to create one on our territory, we are in the process of setting up the project. This kind of device does not cost anything to the National Education, it is just an adaptation of timetables. In Seine-Saint-Denis, we also have many classes with flexible hours in elementary and middle school. It is not logical that there is nothing afterwards. »

Contacted neither the rectorate of Paris nor that of Créteil answered our questions.