France is expected to lose 1 676 800 students by 2035, according to projections from the Ministry of Education. The reason… The decline in fertility. “Even if there are fairly strong national disparities,” declared Tuesday, April 7, Édouard Geffray, the Minister of National Education, this “extremely broad movement will affect the entire territory” and “requires us to adapt.” “. In detail, the first level would be more impacted: with 933,000 fewer students (-15.2%), then secondary with 743,800 fewer students (-13.2%).
“The challenge is that we become aware of the absolutely seismic nature of the wave that is coming to us,” he continues in an interview with Le Parisien, in order to question “calmly about the development of the territory at the level of schools.” In urban areas, “we will have to question the network” of schools, colleges and high schools. Paris should lose 30% of its students in ten years, according to the results which are based in particular on fertility hypotheses. Whereas in rural areas, there may be solutions of “intercommunal educational groupings”.
Expected meeting with unions
According to the Minister of National Education, “these projections follow an already started decline which will become massive”, with economic consequences such as class closures or job cuts. Édouard Geffray is not providing any further information for the moment, but he confides to our colleagues: “If I were interested in my personal case, I would tell you that we are not making any job cuts, but I would only postpone the problems for my successors.”
On the union side, Aurélie Gagnier, general secretary of SNUipp-FSU (first primary school union), affirms that positions should not be eliminated because this reduction in the number of students would make it possible to “reduce the number of students per class”. For the general secretary of Snes-FSU (majority in the second level), these projections “must not serve as an alibi” for “a multi-year programming law for job cuts”, warns Sophie Vénêtitay. The minister has arranged to meet the unions for a first meeting on April 21.
/2021/12/14/61b8b9952d5fc_marie-adelaide-scigacz.png "War in the Middle East: Israel leads its most significant series of strikes in Lebanon since the beginning of the war, the White House affirms that the country is not part of the ceasefire agreement.")
