France Analysis

Town v country: rural French schools feel sacrificed in favour of urban areas

The education authorities have just made their annual announcement about which primary school classes are being closed and which are being opened in the next academic year. Teaching unions and elected representatives in rural areas fear village schools are getting fewer teaching posts so that the government can implement its flagship policy of halving class sizes in education priority zones - which are overwhelmingly in deprived urban areas. Education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer rejects the claims. Mediapart's education correspondent Faïza Zerouala reports.

Faïza Zerouala

This article is freely available.

It's a familiar ritual every year. At the end of January the education authorities announce which classes will be closed for the new academic year next September, and which will be opened. And local councillors, teaching unions and parents groups duly complain that their particular school is being unfairly hit.

But this year the protests have taken on a different and more strident tone. In the National Assembly the education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has been accused of bad faith by some Members of Parliament. He has retorted by referring to the “demagoguery” of politicians from rural areas who have criticised him. But MPs and councillors have continued to highlight the problems of rural schools, some of which face class closures in the coming year.

The main target of the attacks from MPs, teaching unions, local councillors and parent groups is President Emmanuel Macron's flagship education policy of halving class sizes for Cours préparatoire pupils (equivalent to Year 2 in the UK and first grade in the US) in the most deprived education priority zones.

Illustration 1
A classroom in a primary school in Marseille, 2014. © Reuters

From September the policy will be extended, and CP pupils from other education priority areas plus Year 3 pupils (second graders) from the most needy areas will also see their class sizes cut in size. The key questions, however, are where the resources to do this will come from, and whether some schools will have to suffer to enable others to benefit. Each side brandishes figures which they claim show they are right.

In early February the main teaching unions concerned, the SNUipp-FSU, SE-Unsa and Sgen-CFDT, jointly criticised the worsening teaching conditions for teachers who have to cope with overcrowded classes. Indeed, the SNUipp-FSU says that rural schools have been “stripped back” and that the plans to halve classes are “insufficiently budgeted”.

Meanwhile in a statement published on February 20th, the parents association the Fédération des Conseils de Parents d'Élèves (FCPE) said that the reduction of CP classes in priority areas was “sucking up” teaching posts, and said they had been warned by parents about class closures “especially in rural areas and about a lack of teachers devoted to the schooling of the under-threes”. It continued: “On some National Education Département [editor's note, county] Committees FCPE parents have been told that a choice had to be made between being able to take in the youngest children or having teams of replacements.” It concluded: “This situation is indefensible, it penalises local areas that are already struggling for whom the [local] school is synonymous with its life and its appeal.”

Emmanuel Macron himself made a commitment, during a conference on local regions held at the French Senate in July 2017, that rural communes would not be treated as expendable when decisions were made, and that there would be “no more class closures in rural areas”.

The criticism has clearly irritated Jean-Michel Blanquer, who has been questioned on the subject several times in recent weeks. “In every rural département in France at the start of the next academic year there will be more teachers per pupil than this year,” the education minister told the National Assembly, referring to the 3,881 primary school posts that are due to be created at the same time as pupil numbers are expected to fall by 32,657.

“There have always been classes that close but there are also classes that open,” the minister said on the Parliamentary TV channel Public Sénat on February 15th. “It's not always very honest to list the classes that close without mentioning the classes that open. I'm extremely committed to the regeneration of the rural world,” added Blanquer, who rejected any idea that he was “sacrificing” the countryside for the sake of education priority zones.

At the Ministry of Education a source explains that “in the 49 most rural départements the teaching ratio will be higher, while it is already above the national average thanks to the retention of 1,200 posts which should have been removed in line with the 18,864 drop in pupil numbers at the start of the 2018 year”. Meanwhile Europe 1 radio carried out its own analysis of the figures and concluded that at local level there would be a shortfall in some teaching posts. Meanwhile the dialogue of the deaf between unions and the ministry continues.

The teaching unions have certainly not backed down from their claims. They believe that all the new posts created will simply be absorbed in the fulfilling of the pledge to cut class sizes in needy areas. Xavier Suelves, the national primary school delegate for SE-Unsa union, cited figures which he says show that the ministry has under-estimated the real needs in schools. The national allocation of extra teaching posts in primary education is 3,600 posts, while the demographic fall releases a further 1,200 existing teachers, bringing the total available to 4,800. Yet according to the union official 7,200 posts are needed to enable the policy of splitting classes in priority zones to be carried out. That means, according to the union, there is a shortfall of 2,400 teachers.

“They'll find them from somewhere else, in the départements, from four sources: teaching replacements, in-house training posts and nursery and rural schools,” says Xavier Suelves. He says the logic of the minister's sums is simple. “They highlight a positive allocation [of teaching posts] by pointing to the genuine reduction in pupil numbers, but without relating that to what is needed to implement the reduction in class sizes,' says the union official. Francette Popineau from the SNUipp-FSU union has made a similar calculation though she suggests that around 6,000 teaching posts are needed to carry out the government's flagship policy.

The unions fear that the consequences of this apparent shortfall will be considerable, and they predict a worsening of teaching conditions and general disorganisation in schooling. Xavier Suelves says that some pupils will “have to take a bus to school 45 minutes from home because [their] school will have closed. This creates costs for the département council which has to oversee school transport. The children will have to lunch in the canteen [editor's note, rather than going home for lunch], which will create a cost to town halls and parents”.

A clash between town and country

In some rural areas parents, elected representatives and teachers are mobilising to defend the jobs they say are being lost. Banners have been put up in front of some schools while 'Primary School Nights' – overnight occupations of primary schools – have been staged in several départements. In Picardy in northern France, for example, around 20 primary schools were occupied overnight from February 19th to 20th as a protest. François Ruffin, an MP for the radical left France Insoumise ('France Unbowed'), has encouraged the protest movement, travelling across his constituency to visit the threatened schools.

There is certainly deep concern in many areas. Laurent Serrallonga, a nursery school teacher in Gourdon, in the Lot département in south-west France where a dozen teaching posts are threatened, works in a primary school which currently has five classes and which is losing a teaching post. The school is in the same local education authority as the major city of Toulouse which has a number of priority education areas and will thus absorb a lot of teaching posts.

There have been unsuccessful attempts by parents to stop the loss of the teaching post and thus the loss of a class. “A closure is never wonderful. We have around a hundred pupils so the staffing is not particularly low. But we do take children from the age of two,” says Laurent Serrallonga. In fact, he says, the entire organization of the school will be shaken up, even though he agrees the situation is not “catastrophic”. It will mean, however, that the school will no longer be able to welcome the very youngest children, even though there is widespread agreement about the virtues of pre-schooling for the under-threes, especially in terms of understand how to learn and social skills. It will also mean that working in small groups, for example to help pupils learn how to read, will now be impossible to organise.

Behind this whole affair there is also an implicit conflict between town and country, given that priority education areas are concentrated in urban areas. Rural areas feel they are being sacrificed in order to help large towns and cities. Stéphane Crochet, secretary general of SE-Unsa union, says that “things aren't automatic, even with a fall in demographics you can't close classes without there being consequences. The ministry says that it wants to concentrate on priority education, yet there are struggling pupils in other places”.

Some teachers fear the government is playing a dangerous game. Sylvain Grandserre, a primary school teacher at Montérolier, which comes under the Rouen education authority in northern France, is not himself directly threatened by any changes. But several nearby schools are losing teaching posts. “They want to close schools in our villages where the FN [editor's note, the far-right Front National] picked up large numbers of votes. People full of huge prejudices against the suburbs [editor's note, where many of the deprived urban areas are located] are going to lose their public services because of these [class size] reductions. For those who already feel abandoned it's unacceptable.”

In July 2017 a source who is familiar with thinking at the Ministry of Education predicted to Mediapart that once this policy of slashing class sizes in certain priority areas was adopted a certain section of public opinion would not accept it. “How can you justify the fact that in a special education priory zone school there are 12 pupils per class, while in a school 200 metres away which has no 'priority education' label, they have normal class sizes? It's going to give rise to a feeling of injustice and inequality among sidelined poorer white families,” the source said.

The rural mayors' association the Association des Maires Ruraux de France (AMRF) has expressed similar views. In a statement in January it said it could not accept that the “welcome” political decision to reduce the number of pupils in a class in priority zones should be carried out “to the detriment of children in rural areas”. It added that it was “not acceptable to rob Peter to pay Paul”.

Francette Popineau from the SNUipp-FSU union says that Jean-Michel Blanquer is committing a “political error”. She says: “He wants to bring in a measure which is going to ensure 100% success in primary schools. Great, but you have to budget for it. Rural schools are being stripped back. There is an odious competition of town against country, of priority education against the rest. You can't play children off against each other.”

Sébastien Rome, a principal at a primary in Lodève in the Hérault département in southern France, succeeded in saving a class that was due to close. But he remains worried about about the general situation in areas marked by what are, he says, partially obscured poverty. The countrysides has real needs, he says, and he regrets that education policy is being pursued with a unchanged level of resources.

In his school, he says, there are pupils with the same issues as those found in urban areas, with their social problems impacting on their schooling. With these latest class closures, Sébastien Rome says, we are “reinforcing the idea of a divide between a France of peripheral areas and a metropolitan France where one favours the working class areas, children of colour against white kids. It's dangerous because it doesn't reflect reality. We don't need these controversies and we're feeding a cliché. Indeed, the Right has climbed on board.” In fact the conservative Les Républicains organised a day of protest against the class closures, illustrating just how hard the education minister has found it to make himself heard above the sound of his critics.

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The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter