Only 5 of students found themselves without a solution

At Elbeuf, in a loop of the Seine to the South of Rouen, about 50 students attend the only high school dedicated to river transport in France. Here, we learn to drive a barge, but also and especially to master the complexity of logistics in the broadest sense. "It was a request for the professionals, who had the desire to raise the level of qualification at the time when the River was a renewed interest, notably for environmental reasons," says Ingrid Brumfroy, responsible for inland navigation (Isni) superior engineering of the CNAM. On the menu: maritime English, financial mathematics, management control, geography of trade, economy of river transport... We are far from the poetry of "Man of the"Picardie"", this popular drama from the 1960s to the glory of the inland waterways to the former.

Varied motives

Students recruit after the tray, or even later, like Frédéric Lassire, who has thirty-four years. Holder of a licence of philo, he continued the odd jobs before working in the business of carpentry from his father. At the time of a balance of skills, this Fécampois is remembered from a trip to Austria where he spent his days watching pass self-propelled barges on the Danube... The link was made with this school. At the end of two years of training, he hopes to find work "primarily" on the Rhine, which remains for all the navigable river of reference. In contrast to Thierry Lutz, thirty-one years, the school is not "a means of conversion", but "of evolution." He was already a boat ride on the river Ill, a tributary of the Rhine at Strasbourg, on behalf of the port, where he entered a decade earlier as a "summer job". He hopes to find a position with responsibilities in a company that specializes in cruise or the goods or an artisan still. Passion for river navigation is not required to register in this school. Jerome Tekasala, twenty-one, is first interested in logistics and wants instead to find a job "in the management of the transport of goods."

Often successful outcome

For all the logistics senior technician curriculum and international transport in fluvial dominant concludes with a truth of five-month internship in a company such as WISs, Westerlund, Marfret, Maury, Schenker or TCF. "It is time for the student to shoot down his cards, because most of the time the company will want to keep a person that it will be formed", assured Ingrid Brumfroy. The outcome is often happy. According to the balance sheet of the first five promotions, 50 of students have found a job ashore, in logistics, and 30 boarding, a half cargo and for the other tourism, while 15 have made the choice to continue their education beyond the diploma. Only 5 of students found themselves without a solution.

All the fairies looked at the cradle of this school who complete the French system of training of the River, until then reduced essentially to a Cape issued by a school of Tremblay-sur-Mauldre in the Yvelines since 2003. The Isni were laid on the baptismal font by the National Chamber of craft skippers (CNBA), lane navigable de France (VNF), CNAM and the Haute-Normandie region. This last has paid two barges on which the student learns to hold a bar, to nodes, to master the technique of docking or pass the locks... And remains its main support by funding the cost of training (2.900 EUR the year) for unemployed high-Norman admitted to the school. Sign of its success: the school opened in 2008 another higher education school which leads in 10 months for a professional certificate of head of a river transport unit. It is intended for candidates who want to specifically boatmen.