Trial balloon or real prospects? “expense review” carried out jointly by the General Inspectorate of Finance and the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research has all the hallmarks of an explosive report on a school in crisis.
Dated April but made public in September, this report, commissioned by Matignon in the fall of 2023, explores different scenarios to take advantage of the decrease in the number of students in the years to come and thus eliminate teaching positions and make budgetary savings. This demographic decline can “justify a reduction in teaching resources”the authors judge.
The publication of this report comes at a time when the preparation of the 2025 budget, disrupted by the political context, is proving particularly sensitive in view of the increase in the public accounts deficit. In a very political warning during her back-to-school press conference at the end of August, the resigning Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet, had herself warned of the need to protect the national education budget, while Bercy is looking for sources of savings.
Since 2017, the means of national education “were deployed without fully taking into account the demographic changes in the population of people under 30”the report states. The priority given to primary schools, with the doubling of classes in the senior section, CP and CE1 in priority education, has led to an increase in education spending of 9% for this historically neglected level. Education spending remains stable in secondary education – with 8,000 job cuts in the meantime – and is falling in higher education.
“Optimizations”
At the same time, there are 404,000 fewer students in primary school in 2023 compared to 2017, while this number has increased by 54,000 in secondary school and 245,000 in higher education respectively. The decline in the number of students is nevertheless starting to reach middle school. Between 2023 and 2028, school enrollment is expected to decrease by more than 480,000 students, including 252,000 in primary school and 132,500 in middle school, according to the projections in this report.
Through three scenarios, the authors of the report submit “working tracks” to confront with “the realities on the ground” to achieve “optimizations”The first model consists of identifying within schools classes with numbers that are too small compared to the national average established by level and by type of establishment (priority education or not for example) and distributing the pupils into other classes. This « rationalisation » would allow the closure of 600 classes in primary schools, between 1,000 and 1,450 classes in middle schools, and the elimination of between 1,380 and 1,820 full-time equivalents. These savings would translate into, for the high schools concerned, “either by a reduction in the supply of options or specialist courses, or by a reduction in class splitting »the report concludes.
You have 44.61% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
