- The Ministry of Education released the results of an investigation carried out in November on Tuesday after the suicide of a school director in Pantin, who had denounced her working conditions in a letter.
- The directors express a need for support in their missions and to lighten their workload.
- A consultation between the Ministry of National Education and the trade union organizations is due to start on this subject on 14 January.
Time passes, but the wound is not closed. The school directors have not forgotten Christine Renon, the director of a school in Pantin who committed suicide in his establishment in September after denouncing, in a letter, his working conditions.
A death which had brought to light their own difficulties in the exercise of their profession. Hence the launch in November of an investigation * by the Ministry of National Education, the results of which were revealed on Tuesday.
46% devote 11 to 20 hours per week to management tasks
Not surprisingly, this inventory highlights their complex feelings towards their profession. Because if school principals qualify their function as "versatile" and give them responsibilities, "the negative facets appear in some of the words they use to characterize it: 12% of them evoke overwork, 10 % describe it as time consuming, 10% cite stress and fatigue ”, recognizes Édouard Geffray, director general of school education. "But the word Malay has not been verbalized," he said.
And we quickly understand why these dark aspects are expressed when 41% of directors say they only benefit from a quarter discharge (equivalent to the time when they do not have to hold a class in order to be able to devote themselves to their missions management). This discharge of service only takes place when the school has more than four classes… However, “46% of the directors questioned indicate that they devote an average of 11 to 20 hours per week to their management mission, 24% of 9 to 30 hours, and 20% more than 30 hours, ”says Vincent Soetemont, Director General of Human Resources. The only way for them to lock out all their tasks.
A "need for support to take on the most arduous tasks"
The feeling of being torn between their different missions does not leave them, since 87% of them say that they are often interrupted when they are in class to respond to requests related to their management function. However, the educational part of their profession is the one they favor the most. "The administrative and security dimension is considered by them to be the most time-consuming and the most painful," emphasizes Édouard Geffray. The management of students' difficulties (conflicts, social alerts, etc.) and relationships with parents do not seem to go without saying either.
Faced with this observation, the directors have a fairly clear vision of what they would need to make their work easier. "They primarily express a need for support to take on the most arduous tasks: managing access to school outside of school entry and exit times (for 52% of them), and the response telephone calls (48%), ”notes Vincent Soetemont. And to feel more comfortable in their professional skin, a majority of them believe that training could help them. First of all in law and regulation, in conflict management between adults and in educational management of the team. And the smaller the school, the more the principal expresses the need for training. "Especially since only 47% of the directors who have been at the head of their school for more than ten years have been entitled to training related to their function," notes Vincent Soetemont.
Discussions with unions to start soon
To improve their daily lives, the directors would also like their discharge time to be increased (36%), that their tasks be simplified (27%) and that the assistance of an administrative agent be granted to them (20%). Aid that existed in the past, but that the government drastically reduced at the start of the five-year term, by abolishing subsidized contracts.
Suggestions that the department intends to study, a consultation with the union organizations being planned from January 14. With a first sequence focused on the reduction of tasks and a second on the personalized support of each director, which could lead to increasing their discharge time.
Civic service volunteers to the rescue?
As for the possibility of granting them the assistance of an administrative agent, the ministry refuses for the time being to go too far. “It is one of the sites that are open. A first response would be that certain tasks no longer fall to them, that the director is less in demand, ”thus kicked in touch Edouard Geffray. One solution could be to resort to young people in civic service. "Work is currently being done with the civic service agency," concedes Vincent Soetemont. As for creating a specific statute for school directors, who are not today the teachers' hierarchical superiors, there too, the subject is not settled.
In mid-November, the Ministry of Education had already announced the first measures to “lighten and simplify” their work, granting them an additional day of discharge until the end of December and exempting them at the end of the year from related procedures. to various "surveys" to which they had to respond. Other announcements could be made at the end of January. In particular on the tasks that school directors would no longer have to assume.
Society
Suicide of a school principal: "What Christine lived, we live it daily", thousands of people pay tribute to Christine Renon
Society
Salary too low, minister's schedule ... Why do school principals have the blues?
* The online consultation was conducted from November 13 to December 1, 2019 with 29,007 school principals by OpinionWay.
- Society
- Primary school
- Suicide
- Education
- Nursery school
- Direction