Because there is a “lack of teachers”, even outside the covid period, substitutes from Hauts-de-France will take turns cycling to the Ministry of National Education to obtain the opening of additional positions in the teacher competition for schools.
After demonstrating every Friday in November and December in front of their inspections in Roubaix (North) to demand staff, substitute teachers – status in their own right – will challenge Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in an original way: they will denounce “substitute hell“by going to his ministry by bike, a nod to the legendary Paris-Roubaix race, known as the “hell of the North”.
From Tuesday to Friday, five teachers will make the whole journey and will be on strike the whole time. Others will take turns over the stages: in Arras (Pas-de-Calais) on Tuesday evening, Amiens (Somme) on Wednesday and Beauvais (Oise) on Thursday. On arrival rue de Grenelle, they will submit their demands and testimonies on the difficulties encountered by the replacements of National Education and aggravated by the Covid-19 epidemic. A jackpot was opened to support them.
About 8% of teachers are substitute teachers. According to the procedures defined in each department, they are called upon in the event of illness, maternity, training, weighting (out-of-class working time granted to teachers in REP+) or discharge (a school principal is replaced in class while managing the school itself). Very busy in times of flu and gastro, they are particularly busy this winter under the effect of the Omicron variant.
“As of January 11, there were 417 unreplaced classes in the North“, underlines Alain Talleu, departmental co-secretary of the SNUIPP-FSU.
The covid is added here to structural problems. “There is a lack of teachers, says the trade unionist. 124 unoccupied positions, that poses a problem every year and, with special sanitary conditions, we find ourselves in great difficulty.“Alain Talleu also points to a perverse effect of maintaining small rural schools:”It would have taken the political courage to close or more resources, because many substitute positions have been eliminated to avoid closing classes that no longer had enough students, but that disrupts the school on a daily basis and these are the big cities that suffer from it.“
To cope with the current shortage, 107 contract workers have been recruited in the department. Often students or young retirees, with a minimum of Bac+2 graduates, they temporarily fulfill the function of teacher, without having passed the competitive examination.
“People who were told they weren’t good enough and ended up having to go to school four days a week“, comments Alain Talleu, who would prefer that we train more starters: “We do not understand why we have reduced the number of places in the competition, from 700 to 500 in the Lille academy, when there is a lack of people.“
Currently, establishments with enhanced priority education (REP+) are particularly victims of this human resources crisis. “Substitutes who normally take care of the weighting are called elsewhere, it leaves holes in the racket, class splits cannot be done“, says the trade unionist.
In the academy of Amiens, the rector assures that “95% of classes have a teacher” and “class duplication is not an adjustment variable“. For Raphaël Muller, the question of means “does not arise” : “We have the staff we need to replace outside the covid period and, at the moment, the number of contract workers is not limited.“
The academy has nevertheless chosen to suspend the training of teachers who would have required replacements. “It was already done before the covid during the strong epidemic tensions, training was canceled overnight, regrets Guillaume Gressier, departmental co-secretary of the SNUIPP of Oise. We are demanding that colleagues be able to go on training for three weeks a year, but we haven’t had one for years.“
The union believes thatit would take 150 additional positions in the department, and this, since the Sarkozy years, in 2008-2009“. He asks for a “exceptional competitionto recruit tenured teachers.
Oise has around 400 replacements for 5,000 teachers, within the national average. Do we really need more? The rector is skeptical:Either you will take these means in the classes, or you will pay people who are not in class.“The trade unionist argues:”We work all the time! Even when we are in excess, we can help directors with their administrative tasks, or take care of a teacher’s class when he has a meeting about a student in great difficulty.“
Open positions for more comfort all year round. Or be content with contract workers as an adjustment variable. The debate is open but one point is unanimous: the profession lacks attractiveness. “There is a form of disaffection, each year we have fewer candidates“, worries the rector of Amiens. “We have more and more resignations and retirements decided at the last moment“, observes Alain Talleu. The school must be ensured in all circumstances but, in a non-virtuous cycle, the candidates miss the call.
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