By admitting, Sunday February 18, that the budget of his ministry was not “sanctuary”, Nicole Belloubet left little doubt as to the inclusion of national education within the scope of the savings plan announced a few hours later by her counterpart in Bercy, Bruno Le Maire. Only the question remained of knowing how high the first state budget, Ministry of “mother of battles” in the words of the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, would be punctured. The response came on Thursday from the decree detailing the cancellation of 10 billion euros in credits planned for 2024: 691.6 million euros will be taken from national education funds.
The budgetary envelope most used is that devoted to “student life”, from which school life staff or those accompanying students with disabilities are paid (261.8 million), followed by the first public level (138.3 million), the second public level (123.5 million), private education (98.9 million), the remaining 69 million euros being taken from “support of the policy of national education” and technical agricultural education. More than 478 million euros are funds devoted to personnel expenses.
La Rue de Grenelle quickly insisted that the school education budget was “one of the least impacted” by this planing blow, which affects a little more than 1% of the ministry’s 63.6 billion euros in spending. But the overall sum, almost 700 million, is substantial. The 478 million euros in personnel expenses represent, for example, the equivalent of around ten thousand jobs, according to the estimate of the collective of civil servants. Our public services.
On the “precautionary reserve”
The decree published Thursday, however, leaves a crucial issue unanswered: from what will this money be taken, while the President of the Republic and successive education ministers have accumulated announcements involving additional spending in recent months? Will positions be eliminated, barely two months after Gabriel Attal, during his visit to rue de Grenelle, promised the creation of several hundred jobs to implement the measures of his “shock of knowledge” and in particular the level groups in middle school?
As the government has carried out these cuts by regulation and not by a amending finance law which would have made it possible to provide the details of the distribution of credits, it is, as it stands, impossible to know. The ministry responds that it will “see which elements can be adjusted”while ensuring that credit cancellations are not “no job cuts” And will not have “no impact on recruitment and the reforms undertaken”. “The cancellations relate, for the most part, to the precautionary reserve”we explain.
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