The Toulouse City Council (TCC) is a recognised municipality in France in the field of education since the municipal decision of June 2001 to create, in each municipal school, one leisure and educative centre associated with the school (school-affiliated childcare centres (Centres de loisirs associés aux écoles) – CLAEs) was put in place.
This organisation aims to give to each child of the pre-primary and primary schools (from age 2 to 11) the opportunity of complementing school time with leisure educative time. This service also aims at offering the parents the certainty that their children would be in the presence of certified education professionals from early morning (7.30) to the evening (18.30).
In March 2014, the newly elected Toulouse City Council took the opportunity to take education in hand again and to restructure its own policy, paving the way for the ACCESS project. ACCESS is a comprehensive project of a renewed municipal leadership in the field of education, based on the principles mentioned in Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. ACCESS works on the assumption that the child is the main focus of every parent, the common and unique interest of any professional working in the field of education, and at the same time the main actor, whatever its origin may be.
This assumption leads to the reconsideration of the role of the actors, the reconsideration of the organisation, its processes and services and the new design of the stakeholders’ involvement. By putting the children at the centre of interest, ACCESS aims at considering them under the social, legal and cognitive points of view, and thus aims at challenging the traditional way of considering the municipal competencies in the field of education.
The following elements have been incorporated in the strategic definition of ACCESS.
After the 2014 municipal elections, political change at municipal level gave the opportunity to take major elements as key factors for embodying ACCESS:
- 1st element: A key decision was taken about the beneficiaries of the education policy, i.e. all children and young people from 2 to 18. This choice set up the group of deputy mayors, who embodied this policy. It installed the ambition of dealing with education by taking an innovative view, different from that implemented by law, which declares the municipal, county and regional responsibility differently and depending on the age of the children. ACCESS is promoting education by considering the children through environmental family factors, development needs and parenting capacities.
- 2nd element: this involved the choice of dealing with education with a broad approach, considering it as an element of life and not separating school time from the extracurricular, leisure time and holidays. The formal and informal education methods and providers are considered as contributors to the education of children, and the parents are part of the educational ecosystem.
- 3rd element: this approach would concern every child whatever their origin in the wide sense of the term. Following that principle, education is displayed in the whole area of the municipality and offering the same services regarding the situation of the child, and not its address.
- 4th element: the involvement of all concerned stakeholders, children included, is considered in a participative way, including the commitment of all to prepare official contracts, and the implementation of the project to create an alliance.
5th element: the willingness to enter the digital era leads to the revision of any process and the incorporation of ACCESS in the smart city development.