Up to 30% of public primary school teachers – in nursery and elementary schools – could take part in the strike, the SNUipp-FSU union said Monday during a press conference also attended by representatives of Unsa, CFDT, CGT, and SUD.
Participation is expected to be “very uneven depending on the departments,” said Aurélie Gagnier, general secretary of the country’s largest primary school union. She acknowledged that organisers are “having a bit of difficulty gaining clear visibility” on turnout.
According to Gagnier, Paris, Gironde, Aude, and Yvelines are “announcing strong mobilisation” in public schools.
In secondary education, teachers are not required to declare in advance whether they will strike, making participation harder to predict. “We could see something quite widely followed in certain academies,” including Aix-Marseille, the Paris region, and Lille, said Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the majority union in secondary education.
The strike, the main event of a week of actions organized by the coalition of unions, will be accompanied by demonstrations in numerous cities. In Paris, a march will depart at 2:00 p.m. from Luxembourg and head toward the Ministry of National Education.
Unions have denounced what they describe as “short-term budget choices” that worsen the deterioration of a public education system they say is already “exhausted.”
In total, 4,000 teaching positions – across both public and private education – are expected to be cut for the 2026 school year. Of those, 1,891 positions will be eliminated in public primary education, and 1,365 in secondary education.
The Lille academy will be the most affected, with 245 positions cut in primary schools and 167 in secondary schools.
“There is a demographic decline unlike anything our country has experienced in its history. We will have lost one million primary school students between 2019 and 2029, out of 6.5 million,” Education Minister Édouard Geffray said again Monday in Lyon.
“We are doing everything possible to minimize the consequences of these class closures,” he added, saying there are “still a few months to make adjustments.”
Union leaders dispute that explanation. “This demographic decline is being used as a kind of alibi for a rather mechanical approach, when it should instead be an opportunity to give us some breathing room,” said Morgane Verviers, general secretary of Unsa-Education.
“We rely heavily on the goodwill of staff to keep the system functioning, yet no salary measures acknowledge this, and it is weighing on staff morale,” added Laetitia Aresu, national secretary of CFDT Education.
