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France is one of the OECD countries with the highest number of students per class: a third of primary schools have more than 25 students per class, the average for middle schools is 25/26 students and for secondary schools it is 29/30 students. In this context, the recent general inspection report commissioned by Matignon in 2023, published at the dawn of the preparation of the 2025 budget, sounds like a real provocation. But above all, it is immersed in the ultra-liberal educational policy implemented since 2017, a policy that dismantles our public schools a little more each year.
Taking advantage of the demographic decline in schools to justify a reduction in teaching resources, the authors of this report add fuel to the mill of government speeches that continue to warn of the need for “reduce the public deficit”.
Calculator logic
Under the fallacious motive of “better adaptation of the number of classes to the number of students within each school and each establishment”This ultra-liberal accounting logic, in contrast to a quality public school for all, throughout the territory, clearly shows an objective of“improvement”, which the authors of the report divide into three axes.
- On the hunt for numbers “too small” compared to the national average, which would result in the closure of 600 elementary school classes, between 1,000 and 1,450 middle school classes, and the elimination of 1,380 to 1,820 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff in secondary schools, leading to “a reduction in the offering of options or specialty courses and a reduction in class division”.
- An increase in the thresholds for dividing classes into REP and REP + priority education, from 13 to 17 students per class (currently 12 students), a measure that would allow the closure of 117 to 2,359 classes.
- A review of the modestly defined and justified territorial network as “a better territorial adaptation of the number of schools and establishments to the number of students… taking into account the travel time of a student to his/her establishment”scenario that would allow for the closure of 1,925 schools – or 4% of schools – and the elimination of 4,927 FTEs in elementary schools and 800 in middle schools, or the closure of 33 establishments.
This logic of the calculator, dehumanized and totally disconnected from the daily reality of educational establishments, is part of an inverse orientation of a quality public school for all, throughout the territory of the Republic.
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