MANAGING TEACHER

ABSENCES

Ensuring continuity of learning

Public thematic report

October 2021

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Summary

The assessment of teacher absences is a sensitive issue because the statistical

measurement and the perception of pupils and their families do not exactly match. Some of

their absences are not recorded, while some of the work they do, because it is done outside

the classroom, is unfairly treated as an absence.

The Court’s

investigation has sought to shed light, in turn, on these two aspects, which

have taken on particular significance recently. The health crisis has highlighted the

importance of the continuity of face-to-face learning. Whether the absence is due to personal

reasons, such as health issues, or to work obligations that temporarily take the teacher away

from the classroom, the school must ensure continuity of learning. While families were

previously content to express their disapproval at the start of the school year or through

parent association meetings, they now no longer hesitate to hold the government responsible

before the courts for failing to provide a continuous

state

education service.

The Court of Accounts has also attempted to measure the cost and effectiveness of the

resources allocated by the government to limit the harm to continuity of learning in the state

education sector, and has tried to identify ways and means that might improve its

effectiveness, at a time when the public authorities have decided to implement, from the start

of the 2021 school year, learning support in the event of a teacher’s short

-term absence.

For the Court, the ministry needs to adopt a genuine strategy based on several pillars

which are still lacking: knowledge of the phenomenon, preventive healthcare initiatives, ways

of limiting and making up for short-term absences. Among such absences, absences for

institutional reasons can be reduced by shifting these work tasks and obligations to outside

teaching time.

Absence from work and absences from the classroom

The specific features of the teaching profession, including the weekly timetable and

school calendar, make it difficult to measure absences. For example, a secondary school

teacher who visits their family two days in a row because they have no classes, is not

recorded as absent; the same applies to a school teacher who is bed-bound for a week during

the school holidays. Neither is counted as an absent employee, which distorts comparisons

with other categories of workers.

On the other hand, teachers who are called upon by their superiors to carry out teaching

tasks other than being present in the classroom, such as sitting on an examination board, are

not teaching and are considered absent by families, even though they are working and

contributing to the running of the school. This situation calls for an alternative solution on the

part of the national education system to ensure continuity of learning.

While teaching cover for teachers is guaranteed in almost 80% of cases in primary

education from the first day of absence, and teaching of pupils guaranteed, the situation is

more complex in secondary education. While more than 96% of teacher absences of more

than two weeks are covered, nearly 10 % of teaching hours were never

theless “lost” in the

2018-2019 school year, an increase of 24% compared to the previous year. The main reason

for such a high level of uncovered teaching time is closely related to the difficulties caused

by short-term absences, which alone account for almost 2.5 million hours, of which only just

over 500,000 are covered. Parents and even pupils have less and less tolerance for this

situation. Thanks to access to digital workspaces, which have been widely developed in

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secondary education

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, parents and pupils now have a real-time information tool that allows

them to find out if the teacher is absent for personal reasons (mainly health issues), or

because the ministry is taking them away from face-to-face teaching to do carry out other

tasks

(ongoing training, examination boards, school trips, teachers’ meetings).

Paradoxically, despite these new sources of data, teacher absences, particularly short-

term absences, are still not completely understood by the ministry of education, youth and

sport (MENJS)

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.

According to analyses by the DGAFP (

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) and the DEPP (

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), based on absences reported

by national education managers on the ground, teachers are no more absent than other civil

servants, and less so than regional and hospital civil servants. However, these analyses do

not fully take into account the specific features of the work of teachers, characterised in

particular by a different number of weeks worked. Furthermore, the proportion of teachers

absent due to ordinary illness on a given day is lower than that of employees in the private

sector and in other ministries.

An essential preliminary step: measuring and comparing the

phenomenon

The m

inistry still lacks robust, remotely accessible tools to measure teachers’

absences, regardless of the terms of teaching work, and to relate them to their service

obligations.

The data collected today are incomplete, especially for short-term absences. While

progress has been made in primary education, this is not the case in secondary education,

where the recording of reasons for absences places too much emphasis on time off for health

reasons, to the detriment of other types of absence linked to the running of the institution.

This shortcoming is particularly unjustified as almost all secondary schools are equipped with

software that records all absences, informs families and facilitates teaching cover. Beyond

exhaustively recording absences, the MENJS must endeavour to quantify the actual working

time of teachers, which is not limited to the time spent teaching pupils.

The lack of an interface between this software and the m

inistry’s national applications

deprives the institution of necessary information. However, the process that would correct

this shortcoming is moving too slowly, even though an important step was taken in December

2020 towards an operational solution under public ownership, which the Court had been

advocating for several years. The ministry needs to create a national database, which can

be adapted to the level of each regional education authority, bringing together information on

absences.

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During the health crisis, some territories accelerated the roll-out of digital work places [ENT in the French

acronym] to primary schools (regional education authorities of Nancy-Metz and Montpellier), while others decided

to extend them to primary schools (regional education authority of Lille).

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The Court had already made this observation in its public thematic report

Finding a different way to manage

teachers, a reform that remains to be done

, october 2017.

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General directorate for administration and civil Service.

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Directorate for evaluation, forecasting and performance.

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Due to a lack of tools, the ministry conducts a survey of lost teaching hours in secondary

schools which provides only approximate data

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. In 2018-2019, 9.3 % of teaching hours were

lost: more than a third (34%) can be explained by absences for personal reasons, the

remaining two thirds being caused by the functioning of the national education system itself.

In addition, the existence of objective information with the definition of a framework for

exercise of the profession remotely and/or in times of crisis would make it possible to

establish the intervention of managers with certain teachers who were not very engaged, and

in particular, if necessary, to provide a basis for decisions on sanctions, which were almost

non-existent during the period of lockdown.

In view of the high level of absences due to health reasons, consolidate

the m

inistry’s preventive healthcare policy

Although health reasons are the primary cause of absence, the ministry does not have

a structured preventive healthcare policy. Implementation of the regulations is unsatisfactory:

the basic documents (single occupational risk assessment documents, DUERP), which make

it possible to define such a policy, do not exist everywhere, preventive healthcare is under-

resourced (87 preventive healthcare specialists for 900,000 teachers), and the institution

does not make sufficient use of the existing information.

As guardian of the national vision, the ministry must rediscover its role as strategist and

regulator, and not confine its action to initiatives rolled out in certain regional education

authorities, as illustrated by the fight against the flu epidemic.

Drastically reduce and cover institutional absences

The cost of teacher absences is est

imated by the Court at nearly €4 billion per year, of

which more than a third is due to the functioning of the education system itself. The latter

type of absences are mainly short-term absences that are poorly covered in secondary

education.

Too many abse

nces related to organisation of the public service itself eat into pupils’

timetables.

In general, the difference between regulatory service obligations (ROS)

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and

annual working hours expected from teachers as public sector employees (1,607 hours)

leaves sufficient time slots for absences due to the institution not being attributed to teaching

time.

The school should ensure that the organisation of examinations or entrance

examinations and teachers’ meetings does not systematically eat into pupils’ class time, that

training courses take place outside teaching time and that teachers taking part in school trips

or outings are systematically covered.

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