Minister Élisabeth Borne announced the means and educational policy for the start of the 2025 school year: SUD education is seeing real progress since the government has renounced the elimination of 4,000 positions from the Barnier budget and the Ministry of National Education is gradually burying the “clash of knowledge”. These advances are the result of the combativeness of staff who maintained the pressure by mobilizing despite political instability. Nevertheless, even if the public education service has avoided the worst for the start of the 2025 school year, SUD education calls on us to continue to mobilize to build a school that truly responds to current challenges.
The government is backing down on the 4,000 job cuts and the increase from one to three days of waiting time!
The ministry plans to eliminate 470 positions in primary education for 74,811 fewer students (instead of the 3,155 job cuts initially planned by the Barnier government), to create 324 jobs in secondary education for 16,599 fewer students (while the project initial was to eliminate 181) and create 170 CPE jobs as well as 2,000 FTE AESH jobs. A large part of the announcements of class closures in schools are canceled.
SUD education has constantly repeated that the public education service will not recover from 4,000 new job cuts: it is a relief to see the project abandoned. However, announcements remain insufficient and more job creation is needed to ensure the replacement of absent staff, their training and a reduction in the number of students per class.
Likewise, cornered, the Prime Minister announced the abandonment of the scandalous plan to increase the waiting period from one to three days. It is a victory for the staff, who went on strike massively on December 5, but this victory is still too partial because the waiting day currently in force is maintained as is the desire to reduce compensation for sick leave. .
The “clash of knowledge”: a bad idea that lasted too long
Since December 2023, the ministry has persisted, despite common sense, in imposing the “shock of knowledge” measures desired by Gabriel Attal at all costs. The “clash of knowledge”, decried by the entire educational community, gave rise to a real fiasco in colleges at the start of the 2024 school year with the implementation of level/needs groups.
-Minister Élisabeth Borne announced to the unions that she did not wish to make the Brevet diploma compulsory for registration in the second year class, likewise she renounced generalizing groups in 4th and 3rd years and left the teams free to decide themselves of the best use of the additional resources which will be allocated for these two levels at the start of the 2025 school year. SUD education continues to demand the abandonment of groups in 6th and 5th grade as well as the generalization of evaluations national. There is already not much left of Gabriel Attal’s “major project”, other than deep anger from the educational community against authoritarian management by the ministry.
So that educational inclusion becomes a reality!
The ministry presents educational inclusion as a priority in the distribution of resources for the start of the 2025 school year. However, behind the window of Act II of the inclusive school, students with disabilities are not welcomed in good conditions at school: classes are overcrowded, staff training is very insufficient, AESH are kept in precarious conditions and students do not benefit from real educational and medico-social support. The Ministry of National Education is once again improvising by announcing the rise of schooling support centers (PAS) in 4 new departments without having previously identified them, as well as the deployment of ULIS without being able to give more information. However, educational inclusion requires more resources, consultation and transparency in its management.
And now ?
Schools are faced with major ecological and social challenges in building the democratic society of tomorrow, which is why SUD education calls on staff, strengthened by this progress, to maintain pressure for the public education service in order to gain:
- the repeal of social sorting reforms in schools;
- allocating resources to schools to recruit more, pay better, and reduce the number of students per class;
- the creation of a civil service status for AESH;
- the reconstruction of priority education;
- asbestos removal and ecological reconversion of school buildings.
