Increase of 300 euros: the reality behind the figure announced by Blanquer

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NATIONAL EDUCATION – A figure as flashy as abstract. On the set of BFMTV Wednesday, August 28, the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer announced "salary increases" for teachers this year: "300 euros for everyone on average in 2020".

A sum that is surprising, as it was not mentioned during his re-entry press conference, during which he nonetheless multiplied the sweet words with regard to teachers. So, is it the equivalent of a check for 300 euros that will be paid to each professor as suggested by the minister? The reality is -much- more complicated.

300 euros gross annual (and average)

First element to relativize the scope of the announcement of the Minister, it is an annual average calculated in gross. In other words, not much. "This represents less than 30 euros per month on average, it means that some will be significantly less," said Thursday, Aug. 29 Rémi Girard, president of the National Union of high schools and colleges, interviewed by BFMTV.

Indeed, the remuneration of teachers depends on many factors (seniority, qualification, teaching area etc.), making the application of this average of 300 euros inoperative since this "increase" is indexed to the current salary of the teacher. Considering that the average income of a teacher is 2510 euros net monthly (figure that does not take into account significant inequalities), it will therefore see his salary increase by thirty euros. Not really enough to change his life.

Where does this increase come from?

The announcement of Jean-Michel Blanquer suggests that this "increase" is to the credit of the current government, which would have heard the anger of teachers on this point. Here again, the reality is a little different. This change in the salary of teachers is an automatic effect of the thaw of the career path career and compensation protocol (PPCR) decided under François Hollande, and that the current government had frozen for the year 2018. "It only activates a measure of the previous five-year period that had been frozen by this government. This is not a salary increase, "says the HuffPost Claire Guéville, national secretary responsible for high school at SNESFSU.

the HuffPost, the Ministry of Education explains that the deployment of this protocol is estimated at 300 million euros. Divide this sum by the one million personnel that counts the National Education, and obtain the rise with the ladle communicated by Jean-Michel Blanquer. In short, it is not a "salary increase" as the minister said, but a rebalancing. A rebalancing also considered insufficient since the index point of the officials (allowing to index their wages on inflation) is meanwhile always frozen.

Rep + and tax-free overtime hours

During this interview, Jean-Michel Blanquer also cited other measures decided to increase the purchasing power of teachers, such as the increase in the annual bonus of teachers in Rep + (school and college). "We go to 2000 euros, which is added to 2500 euros already existing premiums, so it's very significant," said the minister. A significant effort, but which concerns only 50,000 teachers, ie 4.37% of the staff.

The Minister of National Education also referred to the tax exemption of overtime as a tool allowing teachers to make ends meet. This only concerns secondary school teachers. "We can not just give money to a few and leave others on the wall while the purchasing power of teachers has been declining for more than thirty years now," also said Thursday Rémi Girard.

According to OECD figures, French teachers are worse off than their Spanish, Portuguese, Austrian, Irish or Danish counterparts (see the table below).

OECD

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