Trial balloon or real prospects? Over there “expense review” The report, carried out jointly by the General Inspectorate of Finance and the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research, has all the characteristics of an explosive report on a school in crisis.
Dated in April but made public in September, this report, commissioned by Matignon in the fall of 2023, explores different scenarios for taking advantage of the reduction in student numbers in the coming years to eliminate teaching positions and save on budgets. This demographic decline may “justify a reduction in teaching resources”let 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 the face of the increasing deficit of the public accounts. In a highly political warning during her back-to-school press conference at the end of August, the resigning Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet, herself warned of the need to protect the national education budget, while Bercy seeks sources of funding. savings.
Since 2017, the national education media. “They were deployed without fully taking into account demographic changes in the population under 30 years of age”The report says. The priority given to primary schools, with the doubling of large sections, CP and CE1 in priority education, has led to a 9% increase in education spending for this historically neglected level. Education spending remains stable in secondary education – with 8,000 job cuts in the meantime – and is declining in higher education.
“Optimizations”
At the same time, there will be 404,000 fewer students in primary education in 2023 than in 2017, while this figure has increased by 54,000 in secondary education and 245,000 in higher education, respectively. However, the decline in student numbers is beginning to reach middle school. Between 2023 and 2028, school enrollment is expected to continue to decline by more than 480,000 students, including 252,000 in primary school and 132,500 in secondary school, according to the projections in this report.
Through three scenarios, the authors of the report present “paths to work” confront with “the realities on the ground” to achieve “optimizations”The first model consists of identifying classes within schools with numbers that are too small compared to the national average established by level and type of establishment (priority education or not, for example) and distributing the students in other classes. This “rationalization” would allow for the closure of 600 elementary school classes, 1,000 to 1,450 middle school classes, and the elimination of 1,380 to 1,820 full-time equivalents. These savings would translate to the affected secondary schools, “either by a reduction in the offering of options or specialty courses, or by a reduction in the duplication of classes »the report concludes.
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