Emmanuel Macron promises a “new pact with teachers”

The presidential election candidate proposes to better pay teachers who will accept additional missions.

by

It was expected, but it’s now official. Emmanuel Macron wants to make school a “major project” of the next five-year old if he is re-elected, “he said, on Thursday, March 17, in his programmatic speech. “We have invested a lot, and yet things do not go fast enough. Investments are not enough. We must restore the possibility of adapting solutions to field realities,” he considers after five years of office. And to see: “Today, teachers do not feel sufficiently paid and recognized, families face absenteeism and are not satisfied, children lack confidence, and we continue to have bad results” in international comparisons of educational systems like PISA.

To remedy this, the candidate proposes a “change of method” based on a broad consultation of several months with all stakeholders – teachers, parents, pupils, associations, local authorities – in order to “mobilize the energies differently”. An evolution that slides with these last five years marked by a growing mistrocation of teachers to their minister, Jean-Michel blanquer.

If Emmanuel Macron displays the willingness of a “collective work”, it sets specific objectives to this consultation. The candidate offers “a new pact” to teachers. The “substantial” increase in their remuneration will be conditioned for the acceptance of new missions, at the forefront of which the “systematic” replacement of the absent teachers. Further monitoring of students, homework assistance or closer links with the extracurricular are also mentioned. Teachers in office will have the choice to accept this new contract or not. For those who enter the job, these new conditions will be mandatory. Six billion euros will be devoted to the payroll on the 12 billion investments devolved during the five-year education and youth in the program.

The dropout of teachers’ salary

Emmanuel Macron assumes different pay levels depending on whether or not teachers are voluntary. A red cloth for many unions, for whom the profession has already arranged and complexed in recent years and waiting for salary upstarts without consideration. The salary of teachers, at the beginning of particular career, has dropped in recent decades. It corresponded to 2.3 times the SMIC in 1980, against 1.2 in 2020.

You have 43.69% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports.