Toulouse Academy: 834 teachers, or 8% of the workforce, were absent at the start of the school year because of the Covid
The Omicron surge has had a strong impact on the proper functioning of the Toulouse Academy schools since the start of the school year on January 3. They were 834 missing teachers, or around 7.8% of the total out of 10,670 primary school classes.
The question of replacing school teachers, absent due to Covid-19, has become thorny again for the Toulouse rectorate since the start of the school year on January 3, especially in schools where the protocol differs from colleges and high schools, where the majority of students are vaccinated.
Mostafa Fourar, the rector of the Toulouse academy which has eight departments, confirmed this on January 5: “Since the start of the school year, we are expecting difficulties and the statistics which have come back to us from the field announced that the first degree was strongly affected, with 834 professors who were absent on Monday January 3, out of a total of 10,670 classes at the academic level, that made about 7.8% of the absent workforce. “
In the emergency, adds the rector, “we were able to replace 650 teachers on the same day. But we have 184 classes without teachers. Which is less than during the last week of classes in December”.
The academy is hiring contract workers.
However, the question of replacing teachers who have stopped working, if the health crisis were to persist until June, could become problematic in the academy, in Haute-Garonne and in Toulouse and its 210 schools. The rectorate is already launching a “call for applications for students with bac + 3 or young retirees with an attachment to the institution”, in the hope of filling the gaps. Even if it means “being limited by the existing pool”.
Mostafa Fourar ensures, moreover, that national education “is not held back financially” for the hiring of new contractual teachers, failing to establish more candidates for the teaching competition of schools, registered on the complementary list and already felt. A choice often criticized by primary education unions.
CO2 sensors in schools? The rector believes that the academy can do better. “We appealed to town halls to equip schools with sensors, but it is not a great success, he notes. The State has yet made available a fund of 20 million euros for this purpose. The prefects take over to mobilize the town halls, regional and departmental councils. “
Mostafa Fourar also praises “the mobilization of all staff, school directors, school leaders to whom we have asked to reduce their current costs” to devote themselves “collectively” to the health crisis. The teachers, assure the rector, are also put to good use. Training, including for unionized teachers, has, for the time being, “been suspended”, he said.
On the ground, it may become more complicated in the coming weeks, promises the co-secretary of the Snuipp-FSU of Haute-Garonne Alexia Seguin, coming out of a meeting with the academic direction of the national education services.
“We have been confirmed that on Monday January 3, there were more than a hundred classes without a teacher in Haute-Garonne,” explains the co-secretary. We were also told that we are in an ascending phase in terms of health and that it will increase ”.
Hiring contract workers? “It’s open bar, we are now hiring people, on CV, without receiving them, at bac + 2, and we leave trained students who are on the complementary list of the school teaching competition. At the end of 2021, the rectorate had hired 192 contract workers in the department, ”concludes Alexia Seguin.