The new Minister of National Education, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, said she “regretted” her comments on “the packets of hours” not replaced by teachers. What are the characteristics of this phenomenon?
During her first speech as Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra created the first controversy of the new government of Gabriel Attal. During her first trip, Friday January 12, to a college in Yvelines, the minister explained that she would place her children in a private establishment, the Parisian Stanislas college, renowned for its great conservatism. She justified her choice by the “frustration” that she and her husband had in the face of “lots of hours not seriously replaced” in the public school that her children previously attended. The day after her speech which sparked strong criticism, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra said she “regretted” her comments which “may have hurt some public education teachers”.
What are the unreplaced “packages of hours” that the minister is talking about?
According to a report from the Department of Evaluation, Foresight and Performance (Depp) carried out for the year 2020-2021, around 8.8% of lesson hours would not have been provided, on average. , in the second degree. “The organization of the school system today leads to the loss of approximately 15 million hours of teaching due to the system’s inability to replace absent teachers,” declared the former Minister of Education. national Pap Ndiaye, in 2022 at the World. In a report published in 2021, the Court of Auditors warned of the “difficulties arising from short-term absences” which represent nearly 2.5 million hours during the 2018-2019 school year in secondary education, “of which only a little more than 500,000 are replaced.” What are the origins of the phenomenon? Three reasons are given.
The first cause would be the large number of unfilled positions. A few days after the last school year, in September 2023, at least one teacher was missing in half of the secondary classes, according to Ouest-France. The second reason could be because of long-term replacements such as sick or maternity leave. Finally, short-term replacements, for training for example, are advanced. The Ministry of Education assures that it will make replacing teachers a priority. “We have made a fight out of this problem,” said Amélie Oudéa-Castéra on Saturday. “Already going from 5 to 15% of absences replaced.” But to solve the problem, many believe that it will be necessary to increase the number of teachers. “Nearly 8,000 teaching positions have been eliminated in secondary education since 2017,” laments Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU.