The start of the school year in France is likely to be difficult in several academies, while this year again, there are fewer successful candidates than positions offered for the school teacher competition. For next September, 1,584 teachers will still be missing for primary school pupils. Proof that despite the government’s efforts to make the profession more attractive, the teaching crisis remains deep.
Joséphine is a school teacher in the Academy of Lyon. She has been in charge since last year. To be a teacher, for her, was a real vocation. However, this year has been particularly difficult.
” I found myself in September having to complete four other teachers, in four schools, on four different levels, so I was the teacher for a day, all year round, in each school! And, at the end of the year, there, I can say that I lost the pleasure of teaching… I gave a lot for my classes, and in fact, I had the impression that it was useless to nothing “, she laments at the microphone of Lucie Bouteloup from RFI.
A quest for meaning
With difficult working conditions, the teachers also denounce the salaries which remain too unattractive or the training courses subject to permanent reforms.
Even more serious for Guislaine David, of the Snuipp-FSU primary school union, the loss of meaning of the teaching profession: “ We suffer a lot from the political alternations and the will of each of the ministers to make his own reform of national education. It does not set an educational policy. We have more and more injunctions… Every day, we have new circulars which arrive on harassment, secularism, fundamentals in maths and French… We insist on many things and we lose the teachers on this which makes the reality of the profession. »
At the start of the 2023 school year, 84% of primary teaching positions will be filled, compared to 94% in 2021. The main victims of these shortcomings: the academies of Versailles, Créteil, Guyana and Mayotte.
🗞️@guislainedavid FSU-SNUipp spokesperson in @libe “The problem of attraction is linked to salaries, but also to working conditions and the recognition that we no longer have as teachers. The “teacher bashing” did a lot of harm. desire to teach.”https://t.co/zLsMAuHFJl
— FSU-SNUipp (@FSU_SNUipp) July 7, 2023
Degraded working conditions and status (teachers mobilized against the pension reform), loss of meaning… the malaise is deep.
More than 3,100 positions have not been filled this year in teacher competitions, according to figures published Thursday, July 6 by the Ministry of Education, confirming new recruitment difficulties but less acute than last year.
According to figures from the Ministry of National Education, out of more than 23,800 positions open in 2023 in the public sector, 3,163 have not been filled. The number of unfilled positions stands at 1,315 in the first degree (kindergarten and elementary) and 1,848 in the second degree (colleges and high schools).
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