French schools abroad strike over budget cuts

A French teachers' union has called a strike on Monday at the 500 French lycées and other educational establishments in foreign countries in protestr at planned budget cuts.

Afghan police outside the French lycée in Kabul after a suicide attack in 2014 REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail

The Snes-FSU union calls the estimated 33-million-euro cuts in 2017 "scandalous", claiming that 500 teaching posts, eight percent of the full-time teaching staff, are threatened over the next three years.

It also complains that the proposed 2018 budget is inadequate.

The 2017 cuts are part of the government's revised budget, introduced after it was found that the previous government had spent more than previously announced in the preceding year in order to meet European Union demands to cut the deficit.

The strike is planned to coincide with a meeting of the state agency responsible for the 492 schools, which cater for about 350,000 students in 137 countries.

Sixty percent of the schools' pupils are foreign and the schools, like the Alliance Française cultural agency, are seen as a key part of France's soft power.