“A monstrous bloodletting for National Education”: how the Barnier government chose to sacrifice teachers

"A monstrous bloodletting for National Education": how the Barnier government chose to sacrifice teachers

Moins de professeurs en France. Illustration Archive Midi Libre – STEPHANIE BOULOIR

While the Macronists have long placed Education as a priority, the Barnier government has just decided to significantly reduce its teaching positions. 4,000 teaching positions will be eliminated, mainly in public schools and in primary schools, where reductions in school numbers have been announced. The Left and the unions are up in arms.

Schools were supposed to remain Gabriel Attal's private hunting ground, his domain reserved for him.

So much so that when the Barnier government was formed, the former Prime Minister insisted on imposing one of his close associates, Anne Genetet, at the head of the Ministry of National Education. A way to keep an eye and a foot on rue de Grenelle.

He also imposed some of his advisors. But his supervision will not have been enough to prevent teachers from paying the price of the budgetary savings imposed by Bercy on Thursday.

4,000 positions will be eliminated during 2025.

“Forgers and liars”

On Friday, those close to the former tenant of Matignon refused to comment. The oppositions, however, have not held back. “After spreading misery, here is the organization of ignorance”, Jean-Luc Mélenchon commented on the X network.

“If your children's class or school closes at the start of the 2025 school year, you will know who to thank. Forgers and liars”, added the spokesman for the Communist Party, Léon Deffontaines.

The unions also spoke out: Guislaine David, the general secretary of the FSU-Snu-ipp, the leading union in nursery and elementary schools, denounced a "scuttling of public schools".

"An absolute disgrace"

"A monstrous bloodletting for National Education", "a disgrace “absolute”, deplored the Snalc in a press release. Sophie Vénétitay, head of the Snes-FSU, the leading secondary school union, said: “Michel Barnier is sacrificing public education. Unworthy and irresponsible!”

A risk of censorship ? This is enough to exacerbate social tensions but also to make the left tense on the eve of the opening of the debates on the Budget in the National Assembly.

A Budget whose adoption is not at all obvious because at the other end of the hemicycle, the RN deputy, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, for his part, denounced more generally the orientations of the 2025 Finance Bill: a "very poorly distributed effort", according to him, “since we identify at least 7 billion euros on the middle and working classes and only 2 billion euros on the most privileged. And that, for us, is unacceptable”.

From there to voting for censure”? Doubt is permitted.

“More AESH”

“Rue de Grenelle justifies this reduction in teaching posts by “the reduction in the number of students which should accelerate with 97,000 fewer students at the start of the 2025 school year”.

The budget, however, provides for the financing of 2,000 additional AESH (accompanying persons for students with disabilities), which allows Bercy to say that there will only be 2,000 cuts.

In detail, the first public level (nursery and elementary) is the most affected with a drop of 3,155 positions. The public secondary level (middle and high schools) loses 180 positions, the private primary level 660 and finally the private secondary level 40, according to the Ministry of Education.

Pyramid of ages

The unions regularly warn that the stated objective of putting a teacher in front of each class is far from being met and insist on the need to make the profession more attractive, while more than 3,000 positions were left unfilled in the public and private teaching competitions this year.

So of course, the government has every right to talk about age pyramids, reallocating resources to new needs (inclusive education and the growing need for AESH), but the observation is there: in the context of inflation which, although lower, is not disappearing, the Education budget is unchanged and there will therefore be 4,000 fewer teachers facing students at the start of the school year. next.

Gabriel Attal nevertheless assured in October 2023: “We have never needed teachers so much. No other profession in the world can boast of shaping destinies, changing the lives of entire generations and therefore the destiny of our nation”.

I subscribe to read the rest

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

(function(d,s){d.getElementById("licnt2061").src= "https://counter.yadro.ru/hit?t44.6;r"+escape(d.referrer)+ ((typeof(s)=="undefined")?"":";s"+s.width+"*"+s.height+"*"+ (s.colorDepth?s.colorDepth:s.pixelDepth))+";u"+escape(d.URL)+ ";h"+escape(d.title.substring(0,150))+";"+Math.random()}) (document,screen)