Positioning a teacher in front of each class: this is the usual exercise which education ministers tackle, back to school after school. A sizeable challenge to match in each school, college and high school, the assignment of a million staff – including 800,000 teachers – to that of 12.5 million children and adolescents. And this is repeated, year after year, every September.
But three months from D-Day, the situation inherited by Pap Ndiaye, just named Rue de Grenelle, is not usual. Never, in the memory of teachers’ unions, has the recruitment crisis seemed so acute.
The alert was given several times during the health crisis, which saw the institution multiply calls to contract workers – retirees, students – without always finding volunteers. It has reasoned again since the first results of the admission tests for the teaching competitions were communicated in mid-May. Some 10,600 posts are to be filled at the primary level and 13,690 at the secondary level. But, at this stage of recruitment (in other words, after the writings, and before the stage of the orals convened until July), the lack of candidates is already alarming, since the “eligible” are sometimes fewer than the number of open positions.
From ” never seen “, we hammer in the central trade unions. A “exceptional and punctual situation”, they are opposed to the Ministry of Education. The competition reform, launched under the previous five-year term and which postponed by one year (from the end of Master 1 to the end of Master 2) the passage of tests for aspiring teachers, has a “mechanical impact on the fish tank”, we defend the general direction of school education, one of the main services of this ministry. We remain optimistic: “The drop in candidates this year was written in advance, just as their likely increase is written for next year’s session. » Have.
No level spared
In the meantime, on the ground, we are getting organized. In the academy of Versailles since this Monday, and, before that, in Toulouse, in Montpellier, the rectorates bet on jobs dating and hirings on fixed-term contracts, to compensate for the “lacks” of tenured professors to come. These are already foreseeable in certain territories – including Ile-de-France – more than in others. Moreover, in the so-called “deficit” disciplines – mathematics, French, German, « trio terrible », as the teachers say. But no level, from kindergarten to high school, seems to be spared today. “The attendance rates for the first written tests of the school teacher competition have reached one of the lowest levels in history”warned, as of May 10, the SNUIpp-FSU, the majority union in the primary school.
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