More than 3,000 positions have not been filled this year in the public and private teaching competitions, according to figures published on Monday, July 9 by the Ministry of Education, confirming a persistent recruitment crisis that is raising concerns for the start of the school year. According to the ministry’s figures, out of 27,589 positions open in 2024 (23,696 in the public sector and 3,893 in the private sector under contract), 3,185 have not been filled.
First and second degrees concerned
In detail, in the public sector, the number of positions that have not found takers amounts to 1,350 in the first level (nursery and elementary) and 1,575 in the second level (middle and high schools), according to figures from the ministry. In the private sector, 260 positions remain vacant.
For the first level, the figures for rue de Grenelle are lower than those of the FSU-Snuipp, the main primary school union, which at the beginning of July gave 1,583 unfilled positions (including 670 in the Créteil academy, 692 in that of Versailles and 174 in Guyana, excluding additional competitions).
According to an AFP count, which compiled the results published on the ministry’s Cyclades platform, the number of unfilled positions is also higher: 1,582 in the first public level (excluding Polynesia, additional competitions for Créteil and Versailles, exceptional internal competitions and first internal competitions, excluding recruitment on the supplementary lists) and 75 in the private sector. For nursery and elementary school, “as in 2023”, only four academies are in deficit, Créteil and Versailles, Guyana and Mayotte, the ministry stressed.
Need for “urgent solutions”
But for the FSU-Snuipp, “we cannot be satisfied with this”. “This is adding to the job losses of other years” for these academies, reacted Guislaine David, general secretary of the FSU-Snuipp. “We have a crisis that is continuing and taking hold, and that no policy currently allows us to stop”, she insisted. “We must find urgent solutions”.
For middle and high schools, rue de Grenelle highlights a rate of positions filled for public secondary education, all competitions combined, at 88.3% in 2024 compared to 86.3% in 2023 and 83.3% in 2022. For the Capes, the main secondary education teaching competition, “86.4% of positions are filled compared to 82.4% last year”, indicates the ministry.
He argues that the situation of certain traditionally deficit disciplines is “improving”: mathematics (79.9% of positions filled compared to 76% in 2023), classical literature (63.3% of positions filled compared to 30.6% in 2023) and German (45.5% of positions filled compared to 42% in 2023), the ministry argued.
Technical high schools particularly affected
That of the Capet, which allows teaching in a technological high school, is deteriorating with all paths combined, with 77% of positions filled compared to 86% last year. If the situation is improving slightly for the Capes, “it remains worrying for the start of the school year”, judges Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of the Snes-FSU, stressing that “the years go by and the lost positions accumulate”.
“The figures published by the ministry confirm, although the ministry denies it, that the attractiveness crisis is still there,” she added. “We are going to have difficulty again in having teachers everywhere on time to teach all the students,” analyses Catherine Nave-Bekhti, general secretary of Sgen-CFDT, for whom the problem is “quite structural”. “We are quite worried about the territories where the competition for primary school teachers has not been full once again.”
For two years, the recruitment of teachers (primary and secondary education combined) has been experiencing an unprecedented crisis. In 2022, more than 4,000 positions were unfilled in total, causing a stir in the world of education and the recruitment of a greater number of contract workers. Last year, more than 3,100 positions were unfilled in the public sector, including 1,315 in primary education, according to the Ministry of Education.