Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal Announces 25% Teacher Pact Participation Rate

This is the first official communication on the rate of teachers signing the “teacher pact”, but it does not yet resolve the questions surrounding the deployment of this new system. “One in four teachers signed”rejoiced the Minister of National Education, Gabriel Attal, on the 8 p.m. news on TF1, Thursday September 28.

However, the minister did not reveal the number of signatories. The 25% he announced corresponds to an established average “on a sample of three quarters of public establishments” as of September 21, according to details from the ministry, which does not wish to communicate an absolute figure. The data is still provisional, as not all establishments have completed their administrative reporting, which lasts until mid-October.

The rate amounts to ” a third “ in middle and vocational high schools, added the tenant of Rue de Grenelle, without detailing the figures for primary schools and general high schools. Mr. Attal’s predecessor, Pap Ndiaye, had put forward, in May, a target of 30% signatories.

Operational since the start of the school year, this “pact”, a campaign promise from the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, consists of offering volunteer teachers to sign for one to three “bricks” of missions, or even up to six in vocational high schools. Each is paid 1,250 euros gross annually for a volume ranging from eighteen to twenty-four hours, when it is quantified. Rue de Grenelle has made some of these missions a priority: intervention in 6^e for one hour of support in mathematics and French for school teachers and – with much greater emphasis – short-term replacement for middle and high school teachers.

Deep divides between establishments

Because it implies an additional burden for teachers, half of whom already work more than forty-three hours per week, according to the ministry, this pact was unanimously rejected by all the unions in the profession, and its principle arouses strong rejection among teachers. In mid-September, Laurence Colin, deputy general secretary of SNDPEN-UNSA, the majority among school heads, however pointed out that “certain individual positions [étaient] different from those of the collective »emphasizing the need for money: “The teachers all do their shopping, they all put gas in their cars…”

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