The OGBL and the Board of Governors of Vauban, Ecole et Lycée français de Luxembourg, recently signed the renewal of the collective agreement covering the 330 or so employees of this educational institution.

The new agreement, which includes new equity measures, improvements in working conditions and salary increases for all employees, was negotiated for a period of three years.

The history of the Vauban agreement began in 2005. At that time, it covered only the staff of Lycée Vauban. Following the merger of the Ecole Française de Luxembourg (EFL; primary education) and the Lycée Vauban in 2017, the collective agreement was extended to cover all staff of the two now merged entities. This agreement, signed in September 2019, was the result of difficult and exhaustive negotiations, which at the time reflected a compromise between the demands of the employer and those of the OGBL. In September 2022, negotiations for the renewal of this collective agreement began in a constructive climate between the social partners.

As a result of these negotiations, significant improvements in both working conditions and wages were agreed:

• an increase in the annual salary progression rate to 2.1% for all employees (previously the rate was 2% for salaries up to 4,000 euros gross per month, 1.8% for salaries between 4,001 and 5,500 euros gross per month, and 1.6% for salaries above that)
• equal pay for primary school teachers with a CAPE (and equivalent diplomas) and secondary school teachers with a CAPES, who will be placed on the same salary scale level
• the introduction of a salary scale for administrative, technical and supervisory staff, with ranges depending on the position to be filled and the level of seniority, as well as the repositioning of existing staff within this scale
• an increase in the number of days of contractual leave for administrative, technical and supervisory staff, depending on their respective positions
• increased allowances for secondary and primary school teachers and the introduction of a special mission allowance for all staff
• an end-of-career salary increase of 2.1% at age 55
• an increase in seniority at recruitment, from 2/3 to 1/1 for seniority prior to Vauban for a position with an equivalent function, and from zero to 2/3 for a position without an equivalent function
• reduction of the reference period from one year to four months for administrative, technical and student support staff
• introduction of the principle of internal mobility in the text of the collective agreement
• creation of a monitoring group to draw up a job description list.

The OGBL welcomes the willingness of the management of Vauban, Ecole et Lycée français de Luxembourg, to recognize and value the work and skills of its staff. The union also thanks the employees for their support and commitment throughout the negotiations.

Press release of the Private Education Department of the Education and Science Syndicate (SEW) of the OGBL,
January 4, 2024

Luxembourg, October 19, 2023

Dear representatives of CSV and DP,

We would like to draw your attention to some of the key demands of the SEW/OGBL, the Landesverband and AMELUX regarding education policy and ask you to include them in the coalition negotiations.

As the working group on education policy will unfortunately take place without consulting the professional associations concerned, we ask you to at least listen to the concerns of teachers.

We would like to draw your attention to the following points:

• Multilingualism is an insurmountable obstacle for a growing number of students. Instead of critically analyzing and rethinking language teaching from cycle 1 to 1ère as a whole, French literacy has been launched as a pilot project. In our opinion, this isolated measure does not go far enough. The SEW/OGBL calls for a coherent approach to language teaching, from childcare all the way through to secondary school. The weighting of languages and the flexibility of language teaching should provide more educational opportunities.
• The SEW/OGBL warns against the creation of parallel school systems to counter educational inequality. At present, there are six different school systems from primary school onwards: the public European schools with their different language sections, the primary school of the Lycée Michel Lucius, which offers the British system, and French and German literacy in regular schools. This fragmentation is even more pronounced in secondary schools. The SEW/OGBL warns of the consequences of this fragmentation of the educational landscape, as it mainly benefits the socially better-off families and will exacerbate rather than reduce educational inequalities. Instead, the SEW/OGBL calls for the current model of multilingualism in public schools to be reconsidered on the basis of a critical analysis. We believe that a common public school is essential for social cohesion and integration. We therefore call for the strengthening of the public comprehensive school so that every student, regardless of his or her background, can find his or her place in it.
• The SEW/OGBL demands that the Luxembourg Ministry of Education commits itself at European level to the introduction of a European section in the public European schools, adapted to the specific needs of our country. This section should prioritize the learning of French, German and Luxembourgish and thus allow for transitions (“passerelles”) to the traditional school system. This would offer a maximum choice of educational opportunities to those pupils who cannot meet the performance requirements of the European schools. Such a section should then also be offered as a priority in all public European schools in order to promote integration and social cohesion.
• National legislation must also be respected in public European schools. Many administrators of public European schools interpret their status as an accredited European school as a free pass to circumvent national laws. This abuse ranges from unpaid overtime during teacher training to the regular use of inadequately qualified teachers in secondary education. Due to the fact that primary and secondary schools are under the same management, teachers with a Master’s degree are often hired to teach at the primary level at salary grade A2 and then transferred to the secondary level without their salary grade being adjusted to reflect the work they are doing.
• Luxembourg has taken the path of inclusion by signing the relevant UN Convention. However, many teachers complain that they are unable to cope with the heterogeneity of their classes. Schools lack the necessary resources and the procedural effort is enormous. As SEW/OGBL, we demand that the procedure be simplified so that pupils can benefit from challenging and supportive measures more quickly. We need a multidisciplinary team in schools to be able to react efficiently and quickly.
• The Second Education Report has once again clearly shown that social background has a decisive influence on the educational opportunities of students. None of the measures taken so far have been able to stop this trend. In order to guarantee better educational opportunities, we need the necessary resources. As SEW/OGBL, we demand that the “quota” be adjusted upwards so that we can do justice to the heterogeneity of the classes. Schools with a low socio-economic status must be systematically supported so that the social divide does not widen further.
• The SEW/OGBL also calls for a revision of the reform of the “Cycle inférieur” in the ESG.

The promotion criteria should be made more comprehensible and therefore more transparent for students.

At the national level, we call for mandatory external differentiation of “Cours de base” and “Cours avancé”.

For “Cours de base” and “Cours avancé”, minimum requirements must be defined that students must achieve in order to progress. This is to prevent students from being automatically promoted from the 7ème to the 5ème despite an enormous learning backlog, only to have their access to numerous sections blocked at the end of the 5ème due to precisely this learning backlog.

• The SEW/OGBL continues to oppose the extension of compulsory schooling to 18 years. The causes of early school leaving must be tackled much earlier in the school career with preventive measures, such as an upwardly adjusted “quota” in primary schools and smaller classes in secondary schools, as well as the removal of administrative hurdles in relation to specific support measures, which the pupils concerned often receive too late.
• The SEW/OGBL also calls for free study materials for vocational students and free copies for all secondary school students.
• Vocational education must be upgraded and the lower cycle of secondary education in the ESG must be extended by one year, as has long been the case in the ESC. The DAP should be nominally upgraded to be called “Première professionnelle” and provide access to the master craftsman’s certificate, which should be raised to level 6 of the national qualifications framework. Apprentice salaries will be harmonized and will be at least 80% of the unqualified minimum wage before the PII and at least 100% of the unqualified minimum wage after the PII.
• Teaching assistants (chargés de cours), known as chargés de cours, have done valuable work in the past. However, many of them are in a precarious situation due to the succession of fixed-term contracts (CDD). The SEW/OGBL, together with the national federation, is demanding that lecturers be automatically offered a permanent contract (CDI) after their second fixed-term contract, in accordance with the Labour Code. In addition, we demand that teaching assistants also benefit from the so-called “age deduction”. In primary schools, they should also be given the opportunity to train as teachers while working. We also demand better protection against dismissal for lecturers.
• For part-time secondary school teachers, the SEW/OGBL demands a revision of the mutation procedure. In the future, part-time teachers should have the same rights to transfer as full-time teachers. This would strengthen equality as more female teachers work part-time.
• The 36/52 correction coefficient for overtime must be abolished. Overtime worked throughout the year due to teacher shortages must be paid the same as regular school hours.
• The previous government promised to establish vocational training at higher education level in Luxembourg. The SEW/OGBL welcomes this in principle, but would like to be involved in the relevant discussions. In general, it must be ensured that the diplomas to be developed are recognized both nationally and internationally. There is also room for improvement in the BTS, and the SEW/OGBL advocates a “régime concomitant” at this level as well.
• In recent years, investment in higher education and research has slowed down compared to previous years and is now well below the price trend. The SEW/OGBL demands that budget allocations at least be adjusted for inflation. The existing four-year plans of the university and the public research centers are to be corrected in this sense in the upcoming mid-term review.
• In the last coalition agreement, the previous government announced its intention to counteract the precariousness of young researchers in particular. The opposite has happened, and the percentage of fixed-term contracts has actually increased. The SEW/OGBL calls on the new government to take countermeasures and to increase the share of permanent contracts in the four-year contracts.
• The SEW/OGBL calls for the introduction of a mechanism to link salary developments in universities and public research centres to those in the civil service, preferably in the form of global negotiations for the entire public sector, in which the OGBL, as the majority union in several of the sectors concerned, must be involved.

Thank you for your attention to our letter.

Best regards,

Joëlle Damé, President of the SEW/OGBL
Vera Dockendorf, Spokesperson of the SEW/OGBL Secondaire
Marvin Caldarella Weis, Spokesperson of the SEW/OGBL Fondamental
Michel Reuter, Spokesperson of the SEW/OGBL Secondaire
Isabelle Bichler, President of the section “Chargés de cours” Landesverband
Christian Turk, President of AMELUX
Frédéric Krier, Central Secretary of the SEW/OGBL
Gilles Bestgen, Deputy Central Secretary of the SEW/OGBL

As part of the SEW/OGBL awareness and prevention campaign on mobbing in the higher education and research sector, the staff delegations of the three public research centres (LIST, LISER and LIH) and the Max Planck Institute have asked the staff of these four institutions to take part in a survey on their knowledge, perceptions and experiences of mobbing in the workplace.

The purpose of the questionnaire, entitled “Survey on Mobbing in the Higher Education and Research Sector”, was to gather initial information on the current situation in the sector and to raise awareness of the issue of mobbing in the workplace.

Of the approximately 1,350 people contacted, 360 responded to the survey, representing more than a quarter of the staff at the four participating institutions. Even if the possible existence of certain biases could influence some of the results, the conclusions of the survey underline the reality of moral harassment through these testimonies and point to some interesting paths for reflection.

The full quantitative and qualitative results of the survey will be published in a thematic dossier that will soon be made public and distributed to SEW/OGBL members in the sector and to the employees of the participating companies. This initiative is of course in line with the legal news concerning the new law on moral harassment in the workplace adopted in March.

Summary of the quantitative survey results

50% of respondents somewhat or strongly disagreed that they were adequately informed by their employer about moral harassment.

One-third of respondents do not know or have no opinion on whether the institution where they work has adequate policies and procedures to deal with situations of moral harassment.

Nearly 60% of the respondents felt that they were not aware of the legal aspects of moral harassment at work in Luxembourg.

30% of the respondents have been victims of mobbing at work, either currently or in the past. That’s one in three, far too many!

49% of respondents have never been a victim of mobbing at work.

For almost 30% of people who are currently or have been victims of mobbing in the workplace, the actions continue or have continued for more than two years, according to their answers…

Respondents who consider themselves victims of harassment most often name their direct supervisor as the harasser. Co-workers and members of management come in second and third place.

50% of those who feel they have been harassed do not report it to their employer.

74% of employers who have been informed have taken no action to protect victims.

Among the actions taken to protect victims, employers transferred the victim to another team in 43% of cases.

We also wanted to know whether respondents had directly or indirectly (through conversations with victimized colleagues) witnessed acts of mobbing in the institution where they currently work. 48% of respondents had witnessed such behavior. Once again, the facts are spread over a long period of time, with 46% of cases lasting a year or more. The most common perpetrator is the direct superior, followed by members of the management and then colleagues.

Specific mobbing situations suggested to survey participants

Irrespective of whether respondents considered themselves to be victims/witnesses of workplace mobbing or not, we provided all participants with a non-exhaustive list of situations they had experienced or witnessed. Less than one percent of the participants ignored this question. For the remaining participants who did respond, here are some interesting numbers.

Participants responded that they had been victims or witnesses of the following situations very often or often:

• 28%: being criticized for the quality of their work
• 27%: having their ideas or decisions questioned
• 23%: being treated as if they didn’t exist, being ignored
• 22%: being asked to work after working hours
• 21%: being excluded from discussions
• 17%: being the victim of false rumors
• 16%: being excluded from team work
• 16%: not allowed to talk or not allowed to speak at all
• 14%: openly or subtly threatened
• 14%: forbidden to speak to colleagues
• 13%: being given demeaning tasks
• 9%: being subjected to jokes about intellectual abilities and skills
• 5%: insinuations about physical disabilities

If we isolate the proportion of participants who feel that they have never been a victim or witness of moral harassment, either in the past or at present, there are still a number of people who claim to have experienced some of these situations:

• 26%: often or sometimes questioned about their ideas/decisions
• 11%: very often or often asked to work outside of working hours
• 5%: often or sometimes criticized about their personal life
• 9%: often or sometimes excluded from conversations
• 5%: sometimes the victim of false rumors
• 5%: sometimes ignored, treated as if they didn’t exist
• 3%: sometimes openly threatened

In conclusion, even if some people claim never to have been victims or witnesses, some of these respondents confirm having experienced situations that could be qualified as moral harassment, depending on the systematic nature and duration of the acts.

The Conseil d’Etat (Council of State) has just issued its long-awaited opinion on Bill 8163 concerning the duties of educational and psychosocial staff (EPS) in public education. In particular, this law concerns the organization of the work of the centers of competence for specialized psychopedagogy and the support teams for pupils with special educational needs (ESEB) in primary and secondary schools.

The opinion of the Conseil d’Etat is devastating for the Minister of Education, to say the least: it contains no less than six formal objections to the law in its current form. These formal objections are largely in line with the criticisms made by the APCCA (Association du Personnel des Centres de compétence et de l’Agence) and the SEW/OGBL.

As a reminder: Bill 8163 is intended to implement the agreement signed on November 16, 2021 between Minister Meisch and three teachers’ associations affiliated to the CGFP. At that time, APCCA and SEW/OGBL had learned through the press of the signing of this agreement between the Ministry and a single syndicate, while negotiations and discussions in working groups involving all the unions and staff associations concerned had been at a standstill since September 1, 2021.

APCCA and SEW/OGBL felt that the agreement signed without them was far from satisfactory. For APCCA and SEW/OGBL, as the Conseil d’Etat pointed out in its opinion, “this agreement […] remained vague on many points, only partially reflected the discussions in the working groups, did not meet the objective of introducing adequate definitions of staff tasks and even constituted a deterioration in the working conditions of the staff concerned”.

Faced with Minister Meisch’s refusal to continue negotiations after the November 16, 2021 agreement was signed, APCCA and SEW/OGBL decided to initiate conciliation proceedings. However, on June 28, 2022, well after the legal deadline of six weeks and without a meeting having taken place, the president of the conciliation commission declared the dispute inadmissible on the grounds that an agreement had already been reached between the minister and another syndicate.

APCCA and SEW/OGBL challenged this decision to reject the dispute – a unilateral decision that had no legal basis and was in clear contradiction with international legislation on the right to strike – and filed an action for annulment with the Administrative Court. The case is still pending.

At a time when the trade union rights of APCCA and SEW/OGBL have been trampled on, as has the right to strike of the staff concerned, and following the opinion of the Conseil d’Etat, it is now clear that the bill to implement the November 16, 2021 agreement cannot be voted on before the summer recess, and therefore cannot come into force at the start of the 2023 school year (it was originally scheduled to come into force at the start of the 2022 school year).

While Bill 8163 is unsatisfactory in many respects, contains numerous legal uncertainties, does not reflect the realities on the ground, and does not provide for transitional measures for existing staff, APCCA and SEW/OGBL remain fully committed to a regulation covering the organization of work for EPS staff in Competence Centers and ESEBs. However, such legislation must be based on a genuine dialogue with all stakeholders, starting with the trade union representatives of the staff concerned.

APCCA and SEW/OGBL hope that such a dialogue will be possible with the Minister of Education in the next government, in order to reach a better agreement that truly takes into account the needs and expectations of EPS staff in Competence Centres and ESEBs.

 

Press release of APCCA and SEW/OGBL,
July 14, 2023

On July 7, 2023, the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth finally presented the preliminary results of a study on European public schools carried out by researchers from the Luxembourg Center for Educational Testing (LUCET) at the University of Luxembourg and the Service de Coordination de la Recherche et de l’Innovation pédagogiques et technologiques (SCRIPT). Unsurprisingly, and not surprisingly, the results are positive.

Created in 2016, these schools have mushroomed all over Luxembourg. As an integral part of the initial concept, success was pre-programmed, even if it meant using every possible means to highlight it: as recently indicated in an answer to a parliamentary question (QP 8025), the so-called success has already been measured thanks to growing enrollments, the Ministry having refused any kind of comparison with the traditional school system.

Launched with great fanfare, this new study attempts to prove that European state schools are effective in reducing educational inequalities, thus proving their success, if proof were needed. But as always, the devil is in the details, and the interpretation of the data leaves us puzzled. The fact that students enrolled in European state schools tend to come from more privileged socio-economic backgrounds should show that these schools have failed to reduce educational inequalities.

In fact, according to the French Ministry of Education, state European schools were supposed to reduce inequality by offering a less demanding, more flexible language program. That’s why the first European public school opened its doors in Differdange, a commune with one of the lowest average household incomes in Luxembourg.

By 2022, however, ONQS warned: “By integrating a few European schools into the public offer, education policy is transferring part of the social responsibility to a parallel school system, [which] risks leading to a fragmentation of the educational landscape and to social segregation.” This fragmentation of the educational landscape has indeed had an impact on the quality of education in Luxembourg.

This fragmentation of the educational landscape has indeed taken place with the multiplication of European public schools, which has further increased the complexity of school guidance. What’s more, this alternative tends to favor wealthier households: the study presented on July 7 shows that the European public schools serve a majority of students from more advantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

The same ONQS report also points out that “inequalities exist and are transmitted even before schooling. [The link between family poverty and the loss of educational opportunities is well established”. If state schools in Europe are less unequal, it’s because they are recruited from a more socio-economically affluent section of the population, creating greater homogeneity and therefore fewer inequalities from the outset. One of the keys to success?

According to a recent study, students in European public schools are less likely to fall behind academically. But even this finding is questionable. In fact, the grading system is different from anything previously known. It is based on an A and a B grade: the A grade reflects the student’s daily work, i.e. concentration in class, positive attitude to the subject, doing homework. The B grade is made up of the average grade of the homework done in class. These two grades are equally weighted: class participation and a neat notebook are therefore just as important as grades for knowledge acquisition. Under these conditions, it’s easy to pass the year, which explains the almost 100% success rate in the baccalauréat!

It’s also worth mentioning that the study of the Ministry of Education compares the European Schools with all Luxembourg schools (primary and secondary, from the former “modular” preparatory education to the classical education). This comparison leads to the erroneous conclusion that the European Schools achieve better results than schools in the Luxembourg school system. It should be noted that at the secondary level, the results of the classical education are better than those of the European public schools. It is also important to note that this study is based solely on mathematical skills and does not take into account the language skills of students in the European schools and the Luxembourg school system. Indeed, it seems that the Minister is concerned about the results of a comparison of the language skills of pupils in the European Schools and those in the Luxembourg school system.

In their report on the study in question, the authors are at some point forced to admit the limitations of their study, in particular the small number of students at the end of the European curriculum. On the other hand, this does not seem to detract in any way from communicating the desired success of state-run European schools. Comparing the incomparable and ignoring the origins of social inequalities does not, it seems, in any way detract from the predetermined “success story”.

But on closer inspection, European public schools do nothing to reduce educational inequalities in the population. Worse, they tend to increase social segregation and thus undermine social cohesion in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The presentation, with great fanfare, of a study designed to support the predestined success has failed to deceive the vast majority of the population. Instead of continuing to promote new state-run European Schools with a lot of money and publicity, the Minister of Education would be better advised to strengthen the regular school system in order to have, as promised, a school for all.

 

Press release of the OGBL Education and Science Syndicate (SEW)
July 13, 2023

The teacher unions SNE/CGFP and SEW/OGBL, together with the student representatives of the BScE program at the University of Luxembourg, are working closely together on the issue of teacher training.

In September 2023, the 2nd edition of the professional retraining course for teachers will be launched. The course will lead to a “Bachelor en Formation pédagogique”: Holders of a school-related bachelor’s degree, after a year of study in pedagogy and didactics, have access to the teaching competition for cycles 2 to 4. This puts them on an equal footing with “Bachelor en Sciences d’Éducation” students.

Not only the two unions SEW/OGBL and SNE/CGFP, but also representatives of the BScE students are against these new measures. After all, the retraining student, who has to acquire the basics of teaching after a year of accelerated courses, has the advantage over the BScE student of having two bachelor’s degrees after 4 years. This gives them the opportunity to switch to a field other than education if they wish to do so in the course of their professional life. The fact that one year of study with 6 weeks of internship does not provide as much knowledge and experience as four years of study with 30 weeks of internship should be obvious to everyone, especially in a profession where practical experience plays an important role. It is even more incomprehensible that the Ministry of Education has chosen this path. After all, we’re talking about our children, who deserve the best possible education.

This hasty and desperate reaction to an emergency solution to the acute shortage of teachers leaves much to be desired in terms of a well thought-out, long-term strategy defined in agreement with all parties concerned. That is why, in 2018, when the first retraining model was introduced, the two unions SNE/CGFP and SEW/OGBL stressed the need for structural solutions to tackle the teacher shortage in the long term. As early as five years ago, SEW/OGBL and SNE/CGFP called for the teaching profession to be made more attractive again, for example by simplifying administration or providing more support and recognition for teachers in their daily work. Not much has happened.

So we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves in the same situation 5 years later. The SNE/CGFP and SEW/OGBL find it all the more unacceptable that, just before the end of the first retraining model, a hasty retraining 2 is being introduced instead of responding to the unions’ demands.

SEW/OGBL, SNE/CGFP and BScE student representatives are unanimous in their opposition to this new BFP stream. The quality of teacher training cannot be jeopardized lightly.

 

Press release of the SNE/CGFP, SEW/OGBL and Uni.lu BScE student representatives
July 12, 2023