Two years after the Covid-19 crisis, “seum” persists in classes. The Pisa 2023 survey points to a drop in levels linked in particular to the discomfort of increasingly anxious students.
The barometer of teachers’ mental health is not looking good. Neither does that of their students! Is the teaching profession really the most beautiful profession in the world when faced with disarming young people… and not always disarmed?
Level drop
When teachers are not doing well, students have the “same”. The converse is true. The Pisa 2023 survey, which serves as a reference for governments and surveys the performance of 15-year-old students every three years, reveals a general decline in reading comprehension, in science, but especially in mathematics.
Among the reasons given, there is of course Covid-19 and its consequences, but also the feeling of students of not being sufficiently supported by their teachers, with additional help being provided to students who need it, discomfort caused by excessive noise or agitation in most classes, lack of teachers. Four years ago, according to school leaders, 17% of students suffered from a shortage of teachers.
This time, it’s 67%, the largest increase in the OECD. The OECD report highlights that violence, in all its forms, has a greater impact on girls, disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, REP+, rural areas and professional sectors.
The pandemic is already far away
According to teachers surveyed by the Ecol’huma study, one in five students today shows signs of stress. And these figures are comparable to those of 2022, the day after a pandemic that we hoped would have no serious consequences. What conclusions can be drawn from this discomfort which is anchored over time, especially among the youngest, where the increase has been the most significant since 2022?
According to these same teachers, orientation, misuse of screens and family problems are at the origin of this stress which does not go away, despite the return to a normal general health situation. These results are also consistent with the data produced by Ipsos in 2024.
Parcoursup: anxiety-provoking course
In final year, teachers find their students excessively stressed by their results and Parcoursup. Teachers, faced with compulsory evaluation counting towards the exam, cannot “modify the coefficient of a test or make evaluations on a voluntary basis,” testifies a teacher who would like to bring a little flexibility into the daily lives of students. students.
From elementary school, we observe the signs of school disengagement to increase in secondary school. The analysis carried out from the teachers’ declarations demonstrates that “the more stressed students there are in a class, the more disengaged there will be.” The Montpellier academy is implementing a mental health training strategy in 2024 implemented by 17 trainers. Objective: train 800 relay adults, 50 directors and 2 adults per establishment, “to be able to identify, alert and guide”.
Teacher training: a strategic lever
EAFC In 2022, rector Sophie Béjean inaugurated the first EAFC, an academic continuing education school for the Montpellier academy. Its goal: to become a one-stop shop for professional training, inviting each staff member to become an actor in their training journey. More than 26,000 people, all categories combined, have registered in 2023-2024. Contract teachers, moreover, were able to benefit, via this school, from a training course adapted for replacement missions, covering classroom management, posture and professional gestures, as well as disciplinary training.
BILL In primary education, teacher training takes place as part of 18 hours of training outside of class hours. In 2023, Gabriel Attal had decided, against the advice of the unions, that all continuing training (non-compulsory) in the 2nd degree would take place outside of service time from the start of the 2024 school year “with a development of video to allow more flexibility. At the start of the 2024 school year, article 6 of MP Céline Rilhac’s bill, which envisages “the possibility of making academic training plans compulsory for secondary school teachers”, is in the sights of the unions. “Continuing education is a right. It must not become additional work.” For the Snes-FSU union, “if continuing education is increasingly deserted, it is because it is increasingly offered outside of service time while half of teachers already declare that they work more than 43 hours per week”.
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