Cancellations of classes, higher numbers, abandonment of half-group work… For several days, parents of students and secondary school teachers have been mobilizing to demand better allocations of teaching hours, and therefore of teaching positions, for their institutions at the start of the next school year.
The FSU, the first secondary school union, reported on Friday, February 11, about fifty establishments on strike or in demonstration to obtain additional means. In Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales), Grenoble (Isère), Colombes or even Gennevilliers (Hauts-de-Seine), the arrival of global hourly allocations (DHG), these course hours allocated to each establishment, arouses reactions. Tuesday, the movement was very followed at the Louis-Blériot college in Levallois (Hauts-de-Seine): there was 80% of strikers among teachers, 100% of school life on strike and parents of students came to support the movement, according to Snes-FSU.
Big mobilization at Bleriot College in #Levallois against the closure of 3 classes. No to overcrowded classes!
80% of strikers among teachers, 100% of school life on strike and parents of students came to support the movement.#Back to school 2022 pic.twitter.com/xrupQv6ihW— SNES-FSU Versailles (@SNESVersailles) February 8, 2022
“We are being deprived of resources for the next school year, with job cuts that hurt”, regrets Sophie Vénétitay, secretary general of Snes-FSU. According to her, “the drop in hourly allocations means that in the field, we are going to have class cuts, higher numbers per class, the abandonment of half-group work when the students need more than ever to be supervised after two years of health crisis, which has caused delays for some”.
In Gennevilliers in the Parisian suburbs, “for the fourth consecutive year, the Guy-Môquet college, REP+, is very severely affected and loses hours: 32 at the start of the 2022 school year, 20 in 2021, 33 in 2020, 11 in 2019. A total of 95 hours of lessons per week has therefore been suppressed while the numbers have continued to increase”deplores Guillaume Auzou, professor of EPS in this establishment.
Questioned on Tuesday at the National Assembly, Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer affirmed that‘”there has never been as much budget increase for National Education as under this five-year term, much more than in the previous five-year term and even more than in the previous five-year term”.
The ministry relies on demographic data (-6,000 students in secondary school) to explain the elimination of more than 400 teaching posts next year in middle and high school. At the same time, secondary education will see the creation of 300 posts for principal education advisers, 50 posts for nurses and social workers and 60 posts for inspectors.