The number of teachers will increase in middle and high schools

2023-12-21 17:08:29

Favorable arbitration for National Education. After the green light from Bercy and Matignon, the ministry of Gabriel Attal can announce on Thursday the cancellation of the reduction in the number of teachers initially planned for the 2024 budget. This is in order to allow a better rate of supervision of students by teachers as part of the so-called “shock of knowledge” reform.

“We are therefore making the historic choice not to restore teaching jobs overall while the number of students will continue to decline (-83,000). This choice allows us to continue to further reduce class sizes,” said Gabriel Attal during a briefing with the press.

Job restitution in primary education

Initially the draft budget for school education provided for “1,709 restitutions of teaching jobs in primary education” and “484 restitutions of teaching jobs in secondary education”, highlighted Gabriel Attal. These were justified by a further drop in the school population expected in 2024. The Minister of National Education reduced the number of job cuts to 650 at the first level (nursery and elementary).

Job creation in middle and high schools

For middle and high schools, Gabriel Attal boasts of having ultimately obtained 574 net job creations. “For secondary education, it will be the first time since 2017 that we will recreate teaching jobs,” he underlined. In middle and high school, job creation makes it possible to finance the establishment of level groups which will be deployed in 6th and 5th grade at the start of the next school year.

“A third of the job creations under the level groups will benefit the overseas academies – Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, Mayotte, Reunion. Some 10% of the job creations will benefit the Créteil academy, 5% at the Amiens academy or even 5% at the Lyon academy,” Gabriel Attal told the union organizations in a meeting, according to a speech. transmitted to AFP.

Level groups in French and maths

“For the most vulnerable students, French and mathematics lessons will be split. During the year, students will be able to change groups: if they progress, they will be able to evolve,” explained the minister.

At primary level, the choice is “to continue to reduce class size: we had already gone from 23.6 students per class in 2017 to 21.5 at the start of the 2023 school year. With this new employment plan, we will reach 21, 4 students per class at the start of the school year, the lowest level since Depp (the ministry’s statistical agency) has measured this figure since 1960.