The “working conditions are sometimes at the limit of unbearable, we support it because we have no choice”, declares on BFMTV Helène Penhouet.
“I find that shocking.” Helène Penhouet has been AESH (accompanying students with disabilities) for four years and reacted this Saturday on BFMTV to comments made by Renaissance MP Claire Guichard.
On Friday, the majority elected declared that the AESH were “mothers who stopped working at one time to take care of their children, they choose this status to have Wednesdays during school holidays and they assume, it’s is a choice”.
A wave of criticism from the opposition followed this declaration and for Helène Penhouet as well, “what was said there I cannot let pass, I find it absurd, I find it even shocking for me and for all my colleagues in France,” she says.
“Working conditions are sometimes at the limit of unbearable”
If she says she loves her job, she recalls that “unfortunately today it is quite poorly recognized, we do not have a clear status, the status of civil servant we do not have it”, she explains, stressing that the “working conditions are sometimes at the limit of unbearable, we put up with it because we have no choice”.
In a press release against the pension reform at the beginning of the week, several unions had recalled the precariousness of this profession and the “salaries maintained at very insufficient levels”, this while “AESH are subject to the general scheme (retirement, editor’s note ) and not to the civil servants’ scheme: their pension is calculated on the best 25 years and not on the last 6 months.”
“I’ve been doing this job for four years, I’m waiting for a permanent contract” in order to “be able to remove this sword of Damocles that I have above my head”, explains Helène Penhouet. . She says she earns “902 euros per month after four years”.
“It is important that this evolves quickly, we have no status, we want this civil servant status, we want a salary increase, it is necessary to be able to live decently”, adds the AESH.
The Ministry of Education highlights on its site the increase in the salary of AESH over the past two years, writing that they have benefited, among other things, “from an average gain of + 1083 € gross / year”. In 2021 and 2022 “thus 150 million euros will have been mobilized to improve the remuneration of AESH.”
Mother of a disabled little girl, Helène Penhouet also denounces, in the other direction, the difficult access for children to suitable places of schooling, declaring that her daughter had to wait 4 years before being able to access an IME ( Medical-educational institute).
Source: BFM TV
