Question 11027 — nursery and primary education

Summary

Mr. Michel Larive draws the attention of the Minister of National Education to the difficult situation faced by primary school principals. In the vast majority of schools, those with fewer than 13 classes in nursery and 14 classes in elementary school, the functions of management are combined with those of teacher. For several years, school principals have noted the increase in their administrative tasks. Until recently, they had two options to lighten and better distribute this workload. On the one hand, they could use subsidized contract employment, which provided them with valuable administrative assistance. The elimination of these contracts in September 2017 is a first blow to many establishments. On the other hand, it was possible for them to request discharge times of direction. Unfortunately, this system was revised downwards in 2018 and now appears clearly insufficient, according to the union organizations. In some establishments, overworked principals work more than 45 hours per week. The consequent increase in workload causes a lot of stress and frequently leads to the feeling of doing their job poorly or to professional burnout. This situation is neither stable nor acceptable. It is imperative to restore assistance to school principals and review the director discharge thresholds taking into account the increase in tasks, in line with the mission benchmarks, in order to ensure a quality public education service in all territories. According to the majority union in the first level, there are three levers to improve working conditions school directors. The revision of the thresholds for management discharges has already been mentioned. Better remuneration would also constitute better recognition of their position. Finally, administrative tasks should also be reduced, which would allow them to concentrate on missions linked to school life. Alongside these proposals, it would be desirable to set up training to the functions of school management, which would be carried out during the working time of the staff concerned, so that these civil servants acquire the necessary skills in the field of human relations and team management, but also the technical and administrative knowledge which will allow them to assume their dual function with more confidence. In light of these elements, he would like to know whether he shares this observation and what avenues it is considering to improve the working conditions of school directors, with the aim of ensuring the sustainability and quality of the public education service.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

Timeline

No timeline events have been ingested for this record yet.

Votes

No vote records are attached yet.

Versions

No version snapshots stored. Document URLs remain at the source.

Documents

No documents linked.

Sponsors

No sponsors or actors listed by the source.

Related records

No cross-record relationships stored yet.