Challenges and Solutions: Retaining Teachers in Challenging Academies and Disciplines

In some subjects, students are becoming rarer or seeking other paths than teaching. And some academies, with harsher and off-putting working conditions, have a repulsive effect.

This year again, certain territories and disciplines have been shunned by aspiring teachers. In the first degree, that is to say the primary schools, where the competitions take place by academies, those of Créteil, Versailles, Guyana and Mayotte recruited fewer teachers than there were open positions. In Créteil and Versailles, which bring together all the departments of Ile-de-France outside Paris, it has been going on for ten years. Since 2016, the Créteil academy, which includes Seine-Saint-Denis, has even had fewer eligible candidates each year (therefore not yet admitted) than positions. At Versailles, it’s sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but not enough to constitute a real breeding ground during the orals.

“Colleagues know that they will suffer this lack of rights”

“The working conditions are very complex in these schools. It requires a very important commitment, even psychologically. When you teach in an establishment in Seine-Saint-Denis, you do not come out in the evening in the same way as from an establishment in the center of Paris, because you meet children who are in great suffering, notes Guislaine David, spokesperson for Snuipp-FSU, the majority union among primary school teachers. For some time, we have noticed that, as there is a shortage of teachers in these academies, a good part of the rights of the staff are not respected. They are refused part-time work to breathe a little, an absence to take their child to an appointment with a specialist or to attend a funeral. The colleagues know that, if they are going to settle in these places, they will be forced to suffer this lack of rights. And the transfer system of national education does not help. “We know that if we are recruited into these academies, it will be difficult to get out. It takes more than twenty years to leave that of Créteil, ”clarifies the trade unionist.

In the second degree, that is to say the colleges and high schools, the competitions take place by subject. This year, mathematics, physics-chemistry, German, English, Spanish, letters and music education recruited fewer candidates than there were open positions at Capes. A classic for maths and German, in particular. “Overall, there is a drop in the pool of scientific students and the courses of study and professions available to them are very varied (engineering, mathematics, positions in finance, etc.), indicates Claire Piolti-Lamorthe, President of the Association of Mathematics Teachers in Public Education. Professions which also offer much more attractive salaries than those of teachers.

Make certain academies and disciplines more attractive

On the German side, it’s a bit like a snake biting its tail. “In 5th grade, we have a whole age group that speaks two languages, and 75% speak Spanish. As there is only one second language, if we choose Spanish, it develops to the detriment of German”, analyzes Thérèse Clerc, president of the Association for the development of German teaching in France. However, the less adolescents learn German, the less they can then claim to teach it. “The ministry is betting on demand by saying: if there are students, we will supply the offer. We say that German needs a long-lasting, high-quality offer. This is why we are defending the English-German balance sheet classes and why we are asking for an extension of their establishment. It is not obvious for students and their families to learn German, so a specific offer is needed to attract them, argues Thérèse Clerc. We are convinced that there is a need for Germanists. The Franco-German ecosystem is rich, someone who speaks German well has interesting professional opportunities.”

In both primary and secondary education, the path suggested by our interviewees to make these academies and disciplines more attractive is the same: “Make pre-recruitment, that is to say, pay students during their years of study, with a salary or compensation that allows them to pass the competition, follow their studies and keep them in the field, ”says Guislaine David. Emmanuel Macron, he suggested during a trip to Orange (Vaucluse) on Friday, to “completely change the recruitment system for our teachers”, with “training from after the baccalaureate”. A track rejected by most unions, which fear in particular a drop in the level of qualification of teachers.

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