When her adviser from Pôle emploi suggested that she go to the “job dating” organized on Monday, May 30, by the Academy of Versailles, Élodie was tempted. “Teaching, I had already thought about it… from afar”, she adds, sitting on a bench, in the precincts of the rectorate, where the first of an unprecedented series of four departmental meetings devoted to recruitment is taking place. This job seeker is mainly there to find out about the job from those who practice it. On the trade, or rather on the trades: “School teacher, support for students with disabilities, mathematics teacher in middle or high school”, lists this forty-year-old, computer scientist by training who, for a time, worked as a childminder at home.
→ INVESTIGATION. On Leboncoin, desperately looking for a teacher
Élodie has certainly read that the academy of Versailles, the largest employer in Île-de-France, had more than 2,000 positions to fill, she came without a CV. “I didn’t want to apply without taking a step back. What interests me is the transmission. What I dread is class management,” she summarizes.
At the end of her interview, Élodie is partly reassured. “I was told about a week of training before the start of the school year and then the support of a tutor. I was also told that the teaching team would always be by my side,” she says.
Contracts that span the summer holidays
The Versailles Academy has, in fact, embarked on an operation to seduce contract teachers, those it has already recruited and those it still needs to find to prevent classes from being deprived of back-to-school teachers. “Of the 500 contract workers hired between January and March, at the height of the pandemic, more than 85% will remain in post”, welcomes the rector Charline Avenel. Contrary to what usually happens, these teachers will see their contracts span the summer to allow them to be paid, like the holders, during the holidays, she specifies.
If the rectorate is mobilizing in this way, it is, insists Charline Avenel, that with the improvement on the employment front, “Competition from the private sector, in terms of recruitment, is increasingly strong”. It is also that teaching suffers from a lack of attractiveness – the competitions are far from full – and that many education players say they are suffering. One in three would no longer find meaning in their work, according to a recent barometer published by the UNSA union.
A former legal director in search of meaning
Among the 600 registered for this recruitment day, there are however nearly a quarter of people looking for a retraining. “Looking for a job that makes sense”, says Nadine Crinier, regional director of Pôle emploi. A textbook case: that of Valérie, 51, 25 of whom worked as legal director. “I had reached a stage where I had to be permanently in a political posture rather than in an expert position. It no longer suited me. » Two years ago, shortly before the Covid, the decision was made: the one who has always taken pleasure in transmitting her knowledge to young collaborators begins to prepare for the English Capes… before finally accepting a position as employee in a large charitable organization.
This time, Valérie seems determined to join national education as a contract, without waiting for the Capes. With a gross salary of €2,000, less than half of what she received as legal director. A salary also lower than that which she receives in her association. “Money is not everything”, seems to tell us the serene smile that crosses his face. And then, Valérie was able to see, with her two daughters, one in middle school, the other in high school, how much the non-replacement of absent teachers weighed on the institution.
Valérie has just had a twenty-minute job interview with two teachers, including an English teacher. “She immediately started talking to me in that language, questioning me about my approach to running the class. » Now he has to wait. Two weeks maximum, promises the rectorate.
“Ready to drive two hours a day”
In the queue, there are still teachers trained abroad, outside Europe, and who cannot become holders, or students in a Meef master’s degree (teaching, education and training) eager to work even before taking the competition.
We also meet Elisabeth, 50, who was a contract teacher in primary school for ten years in Paris then a year in Eure-et-Loir, where she now lives. “I was told that my contract would not be renewed”, she laments. Without moving, this “passionate” teaching is now a candidate for a position in Yvelines, the neighboring department. “I’m ready to drive two hours a day to do the job I love,” she assures.
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