4,000 teaching positions will be eliminated at the start of the 2025 school year to comply with the budget presented by the government. However, the Minister of the Budget assures “increase the number of teachers in relation to the number of students”.
National Education remains the main center of State spending, but it is also the ministry which will have to cut its workforce the most. The 2025 finance bill presented by Michel Barnier’s government on Thursday October 10 did not please those in the sector, in particular the teaching unions who mainly took note of the announcement of the staff cut: 2 000 fewer positions for National Education. The ministry will alone bear almost all of the 2,201 job cuts planned within state services and operators.
But the cuts are expected to be more significant in the ranks of teachers, because 4,000 teaching positions will be eliminated for the start of the 2025 school year. If the ministry is used to seeing the number of open positions reduced in recent years, it is is one of the most significant cuts: 2,500 jobs were eliminated in 2024, or half as many, 1,500 in 2023 and 2,000 in 2022. These workforce cuts were already denounced by the unions, hence their anger to the announcements of the Ministers of the Economy and the Budget.
The vast majority of job cuts will affect primary public establishments, namely nursery schools and primary schools with 3,155 fewer teachers according to details given by the Ministry of Education. In public middle and high schools, 180 positions will be eliminated. As for private establishments, they will lose 660 positions in the first level and 40 for the second level.
Fewer positions but more teachers promises Laurent Saint-Martin
The elimination of teaching positions, which comes as part of a general logic of reducing state spending to limit the public deficit to 5% in 2025, is surprising. The government announces that it will cut 4,000 positions even though the number of teachers recruited is already insufficient. According to data from the Ministry of Education, at least 3,600 teachers are missing to meet the needs in schools, middle schools and high schools this year. Moreover, one school in two reports lacking at least one teacher.
Previous governments, led by Elisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal, repeated and assured before the start of the 2024 school year that there would be a teacher in front of each class this year. The objective was not met, and it seems difficult to meet for next year with several thousand fewer positions. However, the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, assures RTL that it aims at this objective and that the job cuts do not contravene it.
The closure of 4,000 teaching positions would, on the contrary, be justified by a demographic reason: the “decline in the number of students which should accelerate with 97,000 fewer students at the start of the 2025 school year”. The minister also assures RTL that these cuts are not synonymous with austerity but will still allow for a “better supervision rate” and “the strengthening of the presence of teachers in front of students”. How does he explain it? By “the increase in the number of teachers compared to the reality of the estimated number of students”. Laurent Saint-Martin maintains that up to 4,800 teaching jobs could have been eliminated while ensuring the needs of the 2025 school year.
Fewer teachers, but more AESH
If 4,000 teaching jobs are eliminated, how can the government announce the elimination of “only” 2,000 positions? Because it compensates for the elimination of teaching positions with the opening of 2,000 positions for supporting students with disabilities (AESH). These staff are supposed to allow the best inclusion and care of students with disabilities, and there are not enough of them either according to professionals in the sector. But unlike teachers, AESH positions have tended to be increased in recent years, 3,000 additional positions have been opened for the start of the 2024 school year according to the general secretary of Unsa-Education, interviewed on Franceinfo on Friday October 11.
A compensation therefore. The fact remains that the AESH cannot replace teachers and this announcement does not take away the anger of the teaching unions. This is a “scuttle of public schools” for Guislaine David, the general secretary of the first union representing nursery and primary school teachers. “But where is the priority given to school?” asks the unionist about X. The anger is shared by middle and high school teachers. The general secretary of SNES-FSU, Sophie Vénétitay, denounces on the social network “a real bloodletting” and an “unworthy and irresponsible” policy.