The Teacher Pact, launched at the start of the 2023 school year, was based on a simple principle: to compensate for additional missions voluntarily accepted by teachers. Short-term replacements, educational support, homework assistance like “Devoirs faits”: each mission corresponded to a functional part paid in addition to the base salary. The 2026 finance bill has reduced the budget for this scheme by about two-thirds compared to its launch, making its application marginal on the ground.
Teacher Pact Credits in 2026: a reduction, not an abrogation
Confusion is common in public debate. The regulatory framework of the Pact has not been removed by any decree or order. The scheme still exists in law.
What has changed is the volume of allocated credits. The budget dedicated to the additional missions of the Pact has been significantly cut, to the point that the rectorates and the departments of the National Education services (DSDEN) no longer have sufficient margins to finance these missions everywhere. The Pact remains theoretically mobilizable, but its funding now depends on local decisions of each academy.
This situation creates territorial disparities. A teacher in an under-resourced rural area will not have access to the same missions as a colleague working in an academy with residual budget margins. The question of the end of the teacher pact and its future thus arises differently depending on the territory of practice.
Base Salary of Teachers: What the Freeze on the Index Point Changes
The Pact was presented by the ministry as a lever for additional compensation. Its near-budgetary disappearance occurs in a context where the public service index point has been frozen since the last revaluation. For teachers who had integrated the functional parts into their monthly budget, the loss is direct and uncompensated.
The base salary of a certified or aggregated teacher continues to follow the classic index grid, with its steps and advancements. No general revaluation measure has compensated for the reduction of the Pact between 2024 and 2026.
Concrete Loss on the Pay Slip
A teacher who combined several Pact missions received a significant annual supplement. The elimination of these missions results in a return to the gross index salary, increased only by statutory bonuses (ISOE for secondary education, ISAE for primary education). Unions like SNALC and Snec-CFTC had initially described the Pact as a partial compensation, not a structural revaluation. The facts prove them right.
Attractiveness of the Teaching Profession and Recruitment Competitions
The reduction of the Pact fits into a broader trend of decrease in the number of candidates for teaching competitions. According to data from the Senate from the DEPP, the number of candidates for public primary competitions has decreased by about one-third between 2016 and 2024, while the number of positions opened has decreased to a lesser extent.
In secondary education, the trajectory is comparable: a decrease of 32.2% in candidates over the same period, for a decrease of only 17.8% in positions. The gap between these two curves reflects a structural attractiveness deficit that the Pact failed to address.
Why the Pact Was Not Enough to Attract New Candidates
The scheme compensated for additional tasks, not the profession itself. A candidate hesitating between teaching and another sector does not make their decision based on the promise of optional missions whose funding can be withdrawn from one budget year to the next. The determining factors remain the level of the base salary, the working conditions in the classroom, and long-term career prospects.
- The entry-level salary in the profession is still perceived as low given the required degree level (master’s), which hinders vocations right from the university orientation phase.
- The Pact missions added a real workload without changing the status or career progression of the teacher who accepted them.
- The variability of funding from year to year prevented any reliable financial projection for the affected teachers.
School Education Budget 2026: The Decisions Behind the Reduction
The decrease in Pact credits does not result from a pedagogical disavowal of the scheme. It is explained by a constrained budgetary context and a demographic adjustment variable: the decrease in the number of students enrolled in primary and secondary education allows the ministry to justify a globally reduced budget while maintaining a stable student-to-teacher ratio on paper.
The senatorial report on the 2026 finance bill points out this logic. The credits for school education are recalibrated based on projected student numbers, not based on the remuneration needs of teachers. The Pact, a costly scheme relative to the number of teachers who actually used it, constituted an easy expense to cut.
Agricultural Education: A Specific Warning Signal
Agricultural education has been the subject of a specific alert mission regarding the future of the Teacher Pact within its scope. This smaller sector, with distinct budgets, illustrates the fragility of the scheme: when central credits decrease, establishments with low student numbers lose their additional missions first.
Teachers’ Careers After 2026: What Compensation Options Remain Open
Without announced index revaluation and with a Pact reduced to its bare minimum, the compensation levers for a teacher in 2026 are limited to existing mechanisms:
- Step advancement, which follows a regulatory schedule and depends on seniority and professional evaluation (career meetings).
- Additional hours per year (HSA), distinct from the Pact and still available within the limits of the establishment’s needs.
- Access to the exceptional class or to the hors-classe, which remains the main lever for long-term salary progression.
- Compensations related to specific functions (management, coordination, priority education), the amounts of which have not been modified by the budgetary reform.
The Teacher Pact lasted three school years in its fully funded form. Its main legacy is to have revealed the gap between the expected missions of teachers and their statutory remuneration. The near-budgetary disappearance of the scheme leaves the issue of financing teachers’ work time outside the classroom unresolved.