Less than 200 students lost for public schools, more than 1,000 for private schools
Private primary (- 433 students) is losing more students than the public (- 232). For the first time, at the start of the 2024 school year, the department's public middle and high schools gained students (+83) while private establishments lost them (-586). In total, out of 126,000 students, there were less than 200 students lost to the public (-149) and more than 1,000 students to the private sector (-1,019).
Demography and rurality
In a context of demographic decline, the rural factor plays a role in this loss of staff in the private sector. “If we talk about first level, private primary is mainly located in rural areas, this is where the demographic decline is most severe, the impact is therefore more significant,” explains Dasen, Stéphane Caron. “This is the first time that we have had a larger transfer of students from private to public at the start of the school year,” he notes.
The reform of fundamental knowledge
When it comes to the reform of fundamental knowledge, public colleges have also seized it much more quickly. “Out of 42 colleges in the department for the public, 37 implemented it exactly as expected. Five of them, due to adjustments, took advantage of it but differently,” explains Stéphane Caron. “We see that for students and parents alike, it is rather satisfactory to have reduced numbers in maths and French at the start of middle school, particularly when, at the end of cycle 3, we have learning consolidations before embarking on cycle 4 and moving towards the preparation of the patent”.
The public teams, who were worried, also found themselves in a more favorable situation at the start of the school year. There are 20 more full-time equivalents (FTEs) in public colleges and ten more in the private sector. The feedback from the literature and mathematics teams is rather positive.
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