Threshold and Benghabrit’s CD ROMs prompt Baccalaureate candidates to take to the streets

A large number of end-of-cycle secondary school pupils took to the streets on Wednesday in various provinces of Algeria including Algiers to demand the enforcement by the education ministry of a “threshold” to courses, while voicing their firm rejection of the distributed CD ROMs containing lessons because they have missed school courses for a whole month now due to the teachers’ open-ended strike at the call of the independent education unions.

The protesting pupils also expressed their utter refusal to sit for the tests of the second school semester owing to the same reasons.

During their extensive street protests, the disgruntled pupils smashed the CD ROMs supplied by the education ministerial department, ostensibly designed to help them catch up on their missed lessons, arguing that these makeshift CDs didn’t  replace the teachers’ guidelines and explanations about the topics addressed in the classrooms.

National education minister, Nouria Benghabrit, enjoined, in this connection, school inspectors to tour educational institutions of the country with the aim of  convincing the students that the CDs distributed were not meant to  replace the teachers who are now on strike, but they are supposed to be  a pedagogical means of support, by helping the students to learn their lessons and thereby facilitating the overall review process with just a few weeks to go before the crucial Baccalaureate exam slated for next June 7^th 2015.