Two thirds of teachers’ absences from middle school and high school are linked to service obligations, according to a report from the Court of Auditors published Thursday, December 2. The financial magistrates visited around forty educational establishments, representative of French territory. They took into account the 2018/2019 school year, in order to avoid basing their study on the years 2020 and 2021, disrupted by the Covid-19 crisis.
According to the Court of Auditors, nearly 10% of school hours in middle and high school were lost during the 2018-2019 school year. This is 24% more than the previous year. These so-called short-term absences, of less than 15 days, alone represent 2.5 million hours. About one in five is replaced, or 500,000 hours.
Two out of three times, these absences are beyond the teacher’s control. If he cannot teach his course, it is because he is in training, in an educational meeting, that he is part of an examination jury, or that his establishment is closed due to the holding of baccalaureate or patent exams. The teacher works, but outside of his class. The report also notes that the proportion of teachers absent due to ordinary illness on a given day is lower than that of employees in the private sector and other ministries.
These short absences come at a cost. The Court of Auditors figures them at four billion euros, all levels combined. For this calculation, the magistrates added the cost of substitute teachers to the shortfall of non-replacements, these hours of lessons that the students lost.
To remedy this situation, the Court of Auditors pleads for the Ministry of National Education to acquire “a real strategy based on several pillars that are still lacking: knowledge of the phenomenon, prevention in health matters, the means to limit and compensate for short-term absences”.
The magistrates do not suggest recruiting replacement teachers, but in particular propose to give more freedom to the heads of establishments, to encourage even more than today the replacements between colleagues within the same college or high school, through overtime. “Simply relaunching replacement protocols within secondary schools is not enough, because the head of the establishment is still deprived of the means to find replacements other than volunteers”, writes the Court. She therefore mentioned the possibility of forcing teachers to accept them, if necessary.
The Court also suggests that the organization of examinations or competitions and educational meetings be planned so as not to systematically cut into the students’ lesson time. Other avenues of work are also mentioned, such as the use of artificial intelligence to find the best niche in the event of teacher training, so that they take place outside of teaching time. Teachers participating in school trips or outings should also be systematically replaced. Another proposal: that a teacher record a video of his lesson in order to distribute it to the students during his absence.
Finally, the Court of Auditors insists on the need to acquire an effective national tool to have a precise inventory of absences. Currently, they continue to be poorly known to the Ministry of National Education.