Classroom cuts are denounced

OPPOSITION to teacher cuts is mounting across France, with a series of protests by parents and teachers.

Fifty thousand posts have been cut between 2007 and 2010 and another 16,000 are to be cut from the start of the 2011-12 school year. This is despite the fact that there will be an extra 62,000 pupils, according to teachers opposed to the cuts.

Shortages are reportedly leading to many classes lacking teachers, and schools having to reduce allocated teacher hours in their planning for the next school year.

A national collective of concerned bodies, L'Education est Notre Avenir (Education is our Future), is organising a day of protests on March 19. This follows a teacher strike on February 10 (nearly one teacher in five took part, according to the government) and is in addition to an increasing number of grassroots protests.

Parents recently went into 93 schools in Seine-Saint-Denis to "occupy" them to protest at the teacher shortage. This leads to children being sent home, sent into other classes or being told to do homework on their own.

In other cases emergency solutions are found: in one school in Les Landes the headteacher is replacing an absent teacher, in one in Seine-Saint-Denis a local school inspector has been doing so.

The leader of the FSU teacher's union in the Oise, Denis Thomas, said it was not right for school classes to become a kind of crèche. "With 40 pupils or more in the classroom, teachers can't do their lessons properly," he said.

At Laval in Pays-de-la-Loire, parents of six schools have sent an open letter to local education heads.

"It is very destabilising for the children," said one member, Michèle Rousseau. The mayor and parents in Nièvre, Burgundy, have also sent an open letter to education chiefs saying they are "worried and revolted". In Sègre in the Pays-de-la-Loire, parents' federation FCPE asked for petition signatures in the main square.

According to Philippe Vrand, the national president of parents' federation PEEP, local education authorities refuse to give precise figures on shortages.

"We have been receiving daily appeals from parents who are frankly worried about the situation," he said.

Complaints are allowing them to draw up a national picture. For example, in the Ain department in the east of France, there are said to be 65-80 primary school classes with no teacher.

This comes as a study has shown France is the OECD member with the fewest teachers per student, only 6.1 per 100 students (an average from primary school to university), according to the Centre d'Analyse Stratégique, a body that advises the Prime Minister's office.

The figure is pulled down by especially poor rates at both primary school and university, where there are an average five teachers per 100 students: at secondary school the average is 7.1.

President Sarkozy has said France must focus on "quality, not quantity" in teaching and has noted that there are fewer pupils and more teachers than there were 20 years ago.