Faced with the announced shortage of teachers at the start of the 2022 school year, Pap Ndiaye assured, on July 7, that there will be a “teacher in front of each class in all schools in France”. “We are doing what is necessary for,” added the Minister of National Education.
At the start of the school year in September, the number of missing teachers should be glaring according to the unions. However, the Minister of National Education wants to be reassuring on this subject. “There will be a teacher in front of each class in all schools in France. We do what is necessary to (…) We have a recruitment problem, an old problem but which has worsened in recent years, with this question of remuneration, which is objectively not up to what we can wait“, explained ensures Pap Ndiaye this July 7 on France Inter.
School teachers: fewer candidates than positions?
Published at the end of June, the admission results for the recruitment competition for school teachers (CRPE) nevertheless reveal that there is fewer admitted than positions : according Release, there are 11 school teachers missing in the Grenoble academy, 14 in that of Nancy-Metz, 62 in Paris, 660 in Créteil and 1,006 in Versailles. The situation is no better in high school because 102 candidates for Capes in economics and social sciences were selected for 121 available positions. And the results of the Mathematics Capes should not be better… Faced with this worrying lack, Pap Ndiaye proposed this June 25 a system of compensation for hours between colleagues. “We want to ensure that an absence of the history-geography teacher, for example, is compensated by, say, his French colleague. But be careful, not for the French teacher to do history and geography! He will use these hours to do a double dose of French, and when the history-geography colleague comes back, he will compensate by taking over the French hours.“, explained the Minister of National Education in the Parisian. A proposal that does not at all convince unions like the SNUEP-FSU, which represents teachers in public vocational education, who would like the National Education to recruit rather than overload teachers in post.
The teacher competition lacks candidates
If all the candidates for the classic competitions have not been selected to become a professor or teacher, the profession still has to arouse career ambitions. And facing the lack of teacher attractiveness, the decline in the number of applicants for teaching competitions is striking, proof that the profession attracts the young generation much less. The external mathematics Capes, which has 1,035 positions, received only 816 applicants in 2022 compared to 1,706 eligible the previous year. As for German teachers, there are 83 eligible for 215 positions, or half compared to 2021. The competitions are therefore far from filling up, and the approach of the start of the school year raises fears of a lack of teachers. A vocational crisis that urgently needs to be addressed for some academies, which now use recruitment methods that are miles away from institutional protocol.
What is the free recruitment of teachers?
In Marseille, where the Minister of National Education Pap Ndiaye went on June 2, 2022, it is the free recruitment of professors by the establishments themselves, which has been tested. Again, this recruitment method is not very convincing. The CGT Éduc’Action sees it as a way of clouding an entire system by promoting clientelism, and of territorializing the school. In fact, the richest municipalities could afford the best teachers, leading to educational and social inequalities.
Only 22% of teachers would recommend their job to a young person
Fatigue, anger, depression, resignation, isolation…Here are the terms that stand out when teachers talk about their craft and their mindset. After several years punctuated by the Covid-19, the teachers had to somehow adapt to the various health protocols, without feeling any real recognition and respect in their professional practice. According to a study published on May 23 and conducted by the Unsa Education union with 42,836 teachers, only 22% of them would recommend their profession to a young person. But that doesn’t mean they don’t like their job: 92% of them like the profession. However, “29% no longer find meaning in their mission, and 38% say they are ready to change jobs to the public, and 29% to the private sector” specifies the study. What should be improved according to them? Purchasing power for 68% of respondents, workload (45%), career prospects (41%) or hierarchical relations (23%). Finally, 87% disagree with the political choices and 9 out of 10 teachers believe that they are paid too little.