More than 200 classes will close in schools and colleges in the capital in 2023, due to the demographic decline and positions of posts. A logic challenged by parents, teachers and elected officials, who fear a deterioration in the public education service and a progression of private education.
by Eléa Pommiers
For the past few weeks, several districts in Paris have lived to the rhythm of gatherings around schools, demonstrations bringing together parents, children and teachers, public meetings, petitions, school occupations. The pediments of dozens of them through the city are adorned with banners all carrying the same message: “No to class closures”.
The capital is heard in the midst of a challenge which is organized throughout France against these closures, corollary of the deletions of posts announced for the start of the 2023 school year. With 155 positions withdrawn in primary and 182 in secondary, Paris is the most affected academy. The rectorate provided for the disappearance of 162 classes in primary school (178 cuts for 16 openings), or 3 % of the total. About fifty is also planned in college and ten in the general high school. “It is unprecedented, even during the Sarkozy years we did not close it as much at a time,” said Audrey Bourlet de la Vallée, Snuipp-Fsu Paris.
What the Parents’ Association of Paris FCPE students denounces as a “bleeding” is the result, explains the rectorate, of the demographic decline observed throughout the territory and particularly strong in the capital. In ten years, Paris has lost 27,500 students in the first degree, including nearly 14,000 between 2019 and 2022. At the start of the 2023 school year, 3,100 less students are expected in Parisian schools. The phenomenon also concerns colleges and high schools, although it is smaller: approximately 2,300 students less in September 2023 (- 2 %).
“overdot” territories
For teachers, and especially parents who mobilize in number – there were still several hundred in front of the rectorate, February 14 -, this depent can only serve as an argument in an “accounting logic”, which they reject. The dispute extends to the elected officials, many of whom have expressed their concerns and their disapproval. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, wrote a letter to the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, in which she deplores a project which she does not consider “acceptable”.
Anger is all the stronger as sixty closures concerns establishments in the Northeast of Paris, in the least favored districts, including 41 in priority education. “These measures would lead to degrading the number of students per class in establishments where audiences are the most fragile socially and schoolly. It would be a major regression,” denounces Anne Hidalgo. The figures are not yet stabilized, but many schools and colleges affected by closures fear that this will weigh up the workforce in the remaining classes at the start of the 2023 school year, does not create more multi -multi groups and deteriorates the teaching conditions.
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