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EDUCATION

France to put €1 billion into improving teachers’ pay

The Education Ministry announced on Tuesday that it would be injected €1 billion into teaching over the next three years.

France to put €1 billion into improving teachers' pay
Photo: AFP
The cash injection will come in stages, beginning with €500 million in January next year that will go towards improving teacher conditions and increasing their salaries.
 
The other €500 million will come at the start of 2019.
 
Graduate teachers can look forward to an extra €120 a month, while those with more than eight years experience can expect an additional €900 per month.  
 
France's Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said that the goal was to “upgrade the entire career to give teachers better pay and to make the profession more attractive”.
 
Under the new changes, a teacher in France will pocket an extra €23,000 by the end of their career, Le Monde newspaper reported.
 
The government also said that they would clear up some vagaries in the scale of teaching seniority, introducing a new “senior” rank for the most experienced teachers in France, who will be paid accordingly. 
 
The minister of education said that the goal was to “bring France above the OECD average when it came to teacher salaries”.
 
The announcement comes as France's presidential election looms with many suggesting Hollande was getting cheque book out just in time to win over voters.
 
Teachers were among the main support base for President François Hollande when he was elected to power in 2012. However since then relations have turned frosty. 
 
Primary teachers staged strikes for changes to to the school week while those in middle schools (colleges) rose up against the government's reform of the curriculum.
 
Hollande is hoping to win them all back over to boost his chances of being re-elected in 2017. The president, who has said he will wait until the end of the year before announcing if he will run, needs all the support he can get.
 
The first cash injection for teachers scheduled for January 1st, just four months before the election.
 
 

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EDUCATION

Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

Children between ages 6-9 years should be allowed admittance to after-school recreation centers free of charge, according to a report submitted to Sweden’s Minister of Education Lotta Edholm (L).

Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

“If this reform is implemented, after-school recreation centers will be accessible to the children who may have the greatest need for the activities,” said Kerstin Andersson, who was appointed to lead a government inquiry into expanding access to after-school recreation by the former Social Democrat government. 

More than half a million primary- and middle-school-aged children spend a large part of their school days and holidays in after-school centres.

But the right to after-school care is not freely available to all children. In most municipalities, it is conditional on the parent’s occupational status of working or studying. Thus, attendance varies and is significantly lower in areas where unemployment is high and family finances weak.

In this context, the previous government formally began to inquire into expanding rights to leisure. The report was recently handed over to Sweden’s education minister, Lotta Edholm, on Monday.

Andersson proposed that after-school activities should be made available free of charge to all children between the ages of six and nine in the same way that preschool has been for children between the ages of three and five. This would mean that children whose parents are unemployed, on parental leave or long-term sick leave will no longer be excluded. 

“The biggest benefit is that after-school recreation centres will be made available to all children,” Andersson said. “Today, participation is highest in areas with very good conditions, while it is lower in sparsely populated areas and in areas with socio-economic challenges.” 

Enforcing this proposal could cause a need for about 10,200 more places in after-school centre, would cost the state just over half a billion kronor a year, and would require more adults to work in after-school centres. 

Andersson recommends recruiting staff more broadly, and not insisting that so many staff are specialised after-school activities teachers, or fritidspedagod

“The Education Act states that qualified teachers are responsible for teaching, but that other staff may participate,” Andersson said. “This is sometimes interpreted as meaning that other staff may be used, but preferably not’. We propose that recognition be given to so-called ‘other staff’, and that they should be given a clear role in the work.”

She suggested that people who have studied in the “children’s teaching and recreational programmes” at gymnasium level,  people who have studied recreational training, and social educators might be used. 

“People trained to work with children can contribute with many different skills. Right now, it might be an uncertain work situation for many who work for a few months while the employer is looking for qualified teachers”, Andersson said. 

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