Nationwide regulation, Regional variation

Isn't it funny how something as uniformly regulated as education can be interpreted in such different ways, thanks to the ridiculous hierarchy of bodies between the school and those who set the regulations?

I say this having experienced two pointless inductions in two different educational académies here in France. Although very similar in their approaches, it's amazing how one group of officials can know all the answers, while their counterparts in a different region can't answer any questions truthfully other than to give the standard "Je ne sais pas, il faut demander à la personne avec qui vous parlerez à plus tard." ("I don't know, you need to ask the person that you'll speak to later." - talk about passing the buck...) Except that person who you speak to later doesn't know the answer either. Such tripe. This is France, the country that prides itself on being the best at everything.

Or so they try to make out.

I spent the day in Nice on Monday, attending the utterly pointless but obligatory induction day. For my own purposes, it served no purpose other than allow me to meet the other assistants in my area and to make me seriously doubt the competence of those who I have to work for and answer to. For those coming from outside of the EU, the induction day is a rather useful time to learn about the procedures to get hold of the necessary papers (the carte de séjour particularly). But rather than be useful, it ends up highly frustrating for all concerned. Those of us from inside the EU who don't need to know anything about work permits and medical visits are bored senseless. Those from abroad (particularly the USA) find that the day becomes a frustrating mess, frying the brain of any understanding of the procedures and the order in which to do them. Talk about swings and roundabouts.

So apart from hearing over and over again about the carte de séjour, my day was shocking in seeing the differences between two académies. There is a particular issue with regard to the assistantship program that is important for each assistant to know. In raising this issue, I was shot down and told that I am in fact wrong. They claim that a language assistant can be left alone with a full class of pupils, despite having received no formal teacher training. Due to my time in Périgueux two years ago, I know for a fact that if a group is just one person bigger than 15 kids, the regular teacher has to remain in the room for the duration of the class. So if the bigwigs here in Toulon think that I'm going to accept their absurd claim that "the teacher is not obliged to stay in the room for the purposes of controlling discipline amongst the pupils", they are certainly in for a fight.

And fight I will. Noone is going to walk all over me, no matter how good the hours and the salary may be.