France To Review Controversial School Reform Plans

France’s right-wing government agreed Friday to review plans for education reforms that brought hundreds of thousands of students into the streets in the biggest youth protest since 1968.

Education Minister Rene Monory told the National Assembly that the government had decided to break off debate on the bill to reform university entrance requirements and send it back to committee for revision.

He announced the move during a tumultuous opening day of parliamentary discussion on the measure.

Hundreds of thousands of students took to the streets of Paris and other cities Thursday to protest. It was the biggest mobilization of French youth since a May, 1968, student revolt which crippled the country and nearly toppled the government of then-President Charles de Gaulle. But unlike the 1968 protests, Thursday’s demonstrations were nonpolitical and involved no violence or destruction of property.

The controversial legislation would encourage public universities to raise money from industry and other outside sources, allow them to “determine the conditions of access” and direct students to particular courses of study.

Students’ Objections

The students claim that, among other things, it will make entry to the university system more difficult, force students towards careers they may not want and lead to state universities issuing degrees based on varying standards.

About 5,000 people, mostly high school students, massed outside the building when the bill went before Parliament for the first time Friday. Opposition deputies demanded its immediate withdrawal.

Monory insisted the government would press ahead with its overall higher education reform plans, saying, “This does not mean the text is withdrawn.”

But commentators said the decision to send the bill to committee marked the first time since Premier Jacques Chirac took office in March that his conservative majority has been forced to retreat from its legislative program.

Political sources said the Cultural Affairs Committee, which Chirac’s party controls, would alter sections of the bill concerning university entrance requirements.

Parliamentary Debate

The revised text will then go before Parliament for debate, probably early next week.

Philippe Darriulat, leader of the largest left-wing student union, welcomed the decision, saying, “There is an indisputable change in the government’s tone.” But he said protest organizers would go ahead with a mass demonstration planned for Paris next Thursday.

While individual left-wing legislators applauded the planned revision, the Socialist Party leadership accused Chirac’s government of playing for time and vowed to fight even a revised text.

Chirac agreed to review the legislation after a meeting earlier Friday with the main targets of the student’s wrath--Monory and Junior Minister for Higher Education Alain Devaquet, who drafted the bill.

Students held mass meetings in universities across France on Friday to plan strategy, with several faculties in Paris and Grenoble voting to occupy university buildings starting Monday.

Most of France’s 72 universities have already been brought to a standstill by student strikes, and pupils are also boycotting classes in hundreds of high schools.

The force of the students’ protest has caught Chirac’s eight-month- old government badly off guard, recalling the previous Socialist government’s surprise in 1984 when its own education reform plans provoked massive opposition.

After weeks of mounting protests, the Socialist government finally dropped plans to reform the mainly Roman Catholic private schools.