The rain did not discourage the department's teachers.
There were many of them this Wednesday afternoon in front of the Nanterre DSDEN to demonstrate their dissatisfaction following the drop in the number of teaching hours allocated to establishments for the 2024-2025 school year.
But to this annual demand (the DHG, overall hourly allocation, is revised each year according to the evolution of the number of students) is added their opposition to the creation of level groups in 6th and 5th.
“We’re going to end up with trash classes”
Marian Petitfils does not hide her concern.
For this mathematics teacher at Blériot college (Levallois-Perret), departmental secretary of the SNES-FSU 92 union, dividing students into level groups from the 6th grade is “at the heart of [his] profession”.
The teacher fears “a loss of unity and benchmarks which will have the same psychological consequences on middle school students as on high school students after the BAC reform”.
Mayliss Czernielewski is of the same opinion.
A French teacher at Les Chenevreux college (Nanterre), she is also directly impacted by the consequences of this “shock of knowledge”.
“Our DHG will drop by 37 hours,” she worries.
It's already enormous and on top of that we will have to glean the hours necessary to form groups of levels in maths and French.
The half-groups in history-geography or SVT will disappear, like the sport option.
We will still try to keep elitist options like Latin to avoid a flight into the private sector.
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“Scientific studies have demonstrated that heterogeneity in a class allows for emulation,” adds Marian Petitfils.
There we are just going to group together students who are having difficulty and who will therefore no longer be stimulated.
» “And we will end up with trash classes,” adds Mayliss Czernielewski.
Avoiding “social segregation”
“We know very well that school sorting will be correlated to the social situation of the students,” exclaims Jérémy Sandré.
This PE teacher at Evariste Galois college (Nanterre) is concerned about the fate reserved for students who will join lower level groups.
“We are going to see social segregation and stigmatization of 12-year-old students!
» he is indignant.
This teacher in a priority education zone (REP +) also mentions “announcement effects” on the part of the government.
“They talk but in reality they know that in practice all this will be difficult to achieve, in addition to being ineffective,” he sighs.
The union delegates present (SNES-FSU, SUD Education, FO, CGT, UNSA, FNEC-FP-FO) participated in an inter-union hearing during which they asked for more resources and the abandonment of level groups.
The academic management provided them with responses deemed “unacceptable” by the teachers present, but they committed to honoring all requests for an audience that will be made.