The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly summary of the major events taking place in French and European politics, published on Sundays in order to give you the perfect way to catch up with current affairs.

This week will be ever so slightly shorter as I’m currently moving across Brussels, but I hope that you enjoy it regardless!

Polling Update

With a new month comes a new poll! This month, Emmanuel Macron has seen his polling numbers increase slightly, staying above his average polling number and putting himself in a better position to profit from the early victories in his political agenda.

The Prime Minister has likewise had a bump in her polling numbers, gaining 3% to move forward in the polls. While she has yet to reach Edouard Philippe levels of popularity, she’s currently benefiting from a growing realisation of what government action has been to protect french citizens and their economic situation.

C’est la Rentrée!

In a first for the French republic, the President spoke to the collected rectors of the academy during their back-to-school conference at the Sorbonne. Outlining his roadmap for the year, ahead of an expected speech by Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye.

From the start of his speech, Emmanuel Macron was clear: “something is not working in our collective organization”. Education no longer reduces inequalities, the teaching profession no longer attracts the best and brightest, and as a consequence, national results are "not always up to par".

However, he took a positive stance, and assured the assembled rectors and the country that while "the task is immense … we can face it", so long as we "look at the failures that have been ours". Macron did, however, caution that the answer does not lie in "more means, that have already done”.

Throughout the speech, Macron confirmed several key measure to help support education in France: the establishment of the daily practice of sport in primary school, an extension of the Culture Pass, currently reserved exclusively for teenagers between 15-18, down to 11 years old and over.

One of his main announcements was that teacher salaries would receive an unconditional increase of around 10%. Alongside this, there will be a new "pact for teachers", which will give them the opportunity to "engage (…) in additional missions", such as individualized follow-up, supervision tasks or "actions which make sense”, and which will be “paid”, allowing, according to him, to achieve a potential total increase in remuneration of around 20%.

Macron also reiterated the promise that “not a single teacher will start his career under 2,000 euros net” implying an increase of over 35% in the basic salary of a trainee teacher and around 20% of that of a young incumbent (which has already been increased by the “Grenelle bonuses” under Jean-Michel Blanquer).

Alongside this, there were also promises to rethink teacher training, with the president outlining that “The trust we owe to our teachers goes through initial training, [and] it is clear that we need to rethink the training of our teachers. We asked for excessive university degrees. We have to assume that people get involved in this profession from the baccalaureate, in this beautiful profession.”

He also announced the creation of a “pedagogical innovation fund” of 500 million euros to finance “establishment projects”, at the heart of his program for the school. According to him, it is a question of giving more “freedom” to teachers and establishments to further free themselves from “directives which come from above” and work “closer to the reality on the ground”.

En Marche Towards a Renaissance

One of the big events of the weekend was the seminar in Mets, where leading politicians and militants La République en Marche, Territoires de Progres, and Agir met to work out the future of the soon-to-be party, Renaissance.

With the party currently in the process of creating a new constitution, LaREM have been gradually involving the entirety of the committees across the world in discussing what is happening, what has gone well, and what has gone wrong, with an expectation that a new constitution will be ready in September, with the new party being ready by the end of the next month.

Will it be good? Will it be bad? Honestly, nobody could tell you, even if we hope that it will be the positive force that it has been in recent years.

However, there is a big benefit to the party making an effort to get information from the people working on the ground, and who have often been working tirelessly to strengthen the movement and who have often been on the frontlines in various elections.

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