The departmental council of national education (CDEN), which meets Monday April 13 in Toulouse to draw up the new school map for 1st level in Haute-Garonne, will propose 190 class openings and 207 closures. The department will lose 2,687 students at the start of the 2026 school year, half of them in Toulouse. And this will continue.
It is a real upheaval which will take place from the start of the 2026 school year in the schools of Haute-Garonne, they could lose 207 classes for 190 openings. A new school map. It is in any case on this basis that the discussions will go well, Monday April 13, during the departmental council of national education (CDEN), chaired by the prefect, between the different members: academy inspector, teachers, elected officials, teaching unions…
2,687 fewer students in the department at the start of the school year
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2026 school map in Toulouse: “We are going to discuss step by step to save classes”, assures Mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc
Toulouse at a time of paradoxes: while the number of inhabitants has passed the 530,000 mark, schools are closing classes and struggling to replace their absent teachers. The Minister of National Education, Édouard Geffray, announces “1.7 million fewer students by 2035” and the department will not be spared by this “seismic wave” described by rue de Grenelle. Recently, Christian Mendivé, departmental academic director of national education services (Dasen), set the scene:
10,000 fewer students within 6 or 10 years
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School map in Haute-Garonne: “190 class openings and 207 closures at the start of the 2026 school year”, will the academic director’s proposals reassure teachers?
“We recorded 2,687 fewer students expected at the start of the next school year in the department’s schools, half of them in Toulouse. In the next six or ten years, according to INSEE statistics on the fertility rate of the population, we will lose approximately 10,000 students in schools is an opportunity to seize to replenish the replacement brigade.” Class closures risk becoming a major subject in the struggle of parents’ associations. There are already dozens of them mobilizing every week to protest, in Toulouse and throughout the department.
After 55 classes menacés de fermer à Toulouse
In Toulouse, the question of school demographics in a city which has 213 schools (nursery and elementary) – nearly 55 classes are threatened with closing out of 207 – is a subject of concern for Jean-Luc Moudenc. Re-elected during the municipal elections, he has always praised the community’s efforts in favor of education by creating 38 new schools since 2014. If the Pink City loses around 1,400 students per year for six years, what about the new schools?
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School map in Haute-Garonne: “We earn the equivalent of a college every year”, how the Department plans to anticipate a future demographic decline
“In two years, I saw two classes close”
“We are not thinking of a closure of the school, but at the Amidonniers school, I will have seen two classes closed for two years, laments Marielle”, parent of a student and president of the APE of the Toulouse school. She deplores a lack of resources and the closure of a kindergarten class in 2026, “while we expect stable numbers”. His school, like others in Toulouse, recorded “more than 100 days of classes not replaced and 50 students to be distributed among other classes.” The parents of the students, who launched a petition to save their class, requested “a one-year postponement from the academic inspection”.
To combat the chronic non-replacement of absent teachers, Dasen plans to create 80 additional replacement positions by recovering positions during closures.
“We must take advantage of the demographic decline to improve apprenticeships”, say the unions
With the wind rising against the announcements made by the Dasen of Haute-Garonne, the teaching unions say they are, moreover, aware of the drop in school demographics to come. “We, with the other union organizations and the parents of students, are coming out of a week of renewable strike and we are trying to highlight that this demographic decline, which is real, cannot be to the detriment of public schools. Public schools are already on their knees, explains the co-secretary of Snuipp-FSU31 Rémy Lasfargues We must take advantage of this demographic decline to improve the learning conditions of students, the working conditions of teachers. We must at least maintain the number of positions. For Haute-Garonne, we are asking for even more, because it is a department which is in difficulty in the first. degree.”
