The new Minister of National Education may have revived the subject in spite of herself. Amélie Oudéa-Castéra justified, in controversial statements, the choice to place her children in a private establishment by citing the numerous absences of teachers in the public sector. But are the latter more often arrested than other professions?
According to data from the General Directorate of Administration and Civil Service (DGAFP), cited by the Court of Auditors, teachers are no more absent than other state civil service agents. They are even less so than agents of the territorial and hospital public services, and than private sector employees.
The proportion of absent at least one day during a week stood in 2019 at 2.6% among teachers, 3.2% in the state civil service excluding teachers, 5.1% in the civil service territorial public, 4.6% in the hospital function and 3.9% in the private sector.
The government says it has found a solution to reduce absences: the “teacher pact”. The controversial system, put in place in September, offers additional remuneration in exchange for new missions. Replacing short-term absences in secondary education is a priority mission of this pact.
According to figures given by Gabriel Attal before his appointment as Prime Minister, “we are now close to 30% of teachers who have joined the pact” and “we see the impact on short-term replacement”. According to him, between September and November 2023, “we tripled the number of absences replaced compared to September-November 2022”. But “we were starting from quite low,” he admitted. The ministry did not detail these figures.
The forgotten primary?
For the FCPE parents’ federation, these measures have “laboriously made it possible to go from 5% to 15% of short-term replacements”, but “many positions are not filled throughout the year in secondary education, due to sufficient recruitment.
Furthermore, these measures do not concern primary education. The FSU-SNuipp, the first primary school teaching union, recalled that replacements at primary level are made through the use of replacements and not overtime. She deplores job cuts and the lack of solutions proposed by the ministry.