Borrowed chairs, spent money

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It from WORLD Radio, celebrating 15 years. Today is October 13th, thanks for making us part of your morning routine. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up: Students shutting down schools across France.

They’re demanding more teachers and repairs to run-down buildings. The protests have been growing for weeks.

But France is already deep in debt, and finding the money to meet those demands is easier said than done.

EICHER: WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

SOUND: [PROTEST]

MARY MUNCY: Last weekend, about 250,000 people flooded streets across the country, with parents, teachers, and trade unions also marching. Some protesters clashed with law enforcement. Police slapped handcuffs on more than 6,000 people.

Among the students out protesting is 16-year-old Heather.

HEATHER: [French] My physics teacher is leaving at Christmas and we don’t even know if we’ll have lessons right up to the end of the school year.

She says her physics teacher is leaving at Christmas and she’s not sure if they’ll have a teacher after that.

HEATHER: [French] There are 35 of us in each class, we practically have to go and grab chairs from the classrooms next door so everyone can sit down.

She says at her school, there are 35 students in each class, and they have to grab chairs from other classrooms so everyone can sit down.

School buildings also need attention. The bank behind a national renovation program says eight out of ten French schools need work.

GEFFRAY: [French] In the next few hours, 3,000 teachers will join these schools.

Late last week, French Education Minister Edouard Geffray promised to send 3,000 substitute teachers into understaffed schools.

But France already spends heavily on education. In 2023, only four EU countries spent a bigger share of their economies on it. So, where’s the money going?

Pensions account for a large chunk. Reuters examined France’s proposed school budget for this year and found more than a quarter of the money would go toward helping pay for teachers who have already retired.

But more broadly, the government is trying to rein in spending.

French economist Nicolas Véron:

VERON: They have had very undisciplined fiscal management. Not just in the last few years, I would say over the last 20 years or so, there hasn't been a big political emphasis on balancing the books.

Véron is with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Right now, the country’s debt is 120 percent of its GDP, meaning France’s government owes more than its economy produces in a year.

Véron says the people lending money to France want the government to change course and the bond market is pricing France as higher risk than last year.

VERON: What we are talking about is more market discipline. Markets putting pressure on the French government to reform its fiscal trajectory.

And lawmakers are trying.

This year, the government proposed increasing education funding a little, but also cutting more than 1,500 teaching jobs. It also proposed 43 billion euros in new spending cuts.

VERON: It's not surprising to see individual groups which feels that the state should spend more on them expressing disappointment

Pensions are part of the wider budget problem too. Véron points to the cost of supporting retired workers all across France.

VERON: Many people go into retirement at a pretty low age, typically at 63, 64, sometimes even earlier, and the pension system is very much supported by the national government budget, so that creates a lot of expenditure, which increases the deficit.

He thinks fixing the pension system would help the most, but he doesn’t think voters will like it.

France will hold elections in the spring, and after two terms, President Emmanuel Macron cannot run again.

Veron says most candidates are hinting that they will emphasize balancing the budget. Like it or not, he says, France’s fiscal mess means there are tough choices coming.

In the meantime, the protests continue. And at least for now, Heather and her classmates will have to keep borrowing chairs from other classrooms.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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