“The proportion of teachers who have resigned is low, but increasing”

If the number of candidates for teaching competitions is a good indicator of the attractiveness – or lack of attractiveness – of the profession, the resignations and layoffs of teachers are also. Sandrine Garcia, sociologist, professor of education at the University of Burgundy, looked at the career of these teachers, young and old, who “Slam the door” of national education. Increased workload, class size, contradictory injunctions, difficult students: for this new generation of teachers, the “Adjustment work between dreams and reality has become very complicated”, she explains to World.

Do we know how many are, exactly, these aspiring teachers who, barely recruited, give up teaching?

The proportion of teachers who resign, compared to the 860,000 teachers in post, remains statistically very low, but it is increasing: it represented 0.02% of the total during the 2008-2009 school year, 0.08% in 2013-2014 and 0.24% in 2017-2018. At this date, national education recorded nearly 700 resignations at the primary level and a little more than 500 at the secondary level.

We also know that 6% of young interns [lauréats du concours mais pas encore titularisés] are no longer teachers the following year – a figure which dates back to 2017, but which probably has not changed much – whether they are fired, resign or resign “Lay off”, as they say. This represents, at most, a few hundred staff, but their renunciation says a lot about the deterioration of working conditions.

Can we draw a composite portrait of these teachers?

Contrary to popular belief, not all of them are young or inexperienced. There are among them a certain number of forties, even fifties in reconversion, who passed the competitive examinations late, idealized the profession, and are sometimes very disappointed on arrival. This obviously depends on the characteristics of the position they occupy. Not all the dissatisfied people resign, moreover: some move away from their class, set up a professional project, sometimes wait years before formalizing their departure.

More than precise profiles, I believe that it is specific teaching situations that lead to renunciation. The academy of Créteil, clearly, is more affected, and had to organize a second competition to succeed in recruiting candidates, strongly under-selected because of this fact. No doubt some academies are more attractive than others.

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