Spectacular drop in the number of positions offered in competitive examinations worries the Limoges academy

Despite ever-increasing needs, the number of positions offered in teaching competitions is melting like snow in the sun. In the second degree

4,890 positions will be offered in the Capes competitions for the 2025 session, compared to 5,122 in 2024. Major disciplines, such as mathematics and literature, are particularly affected by these restrictions, which are essentially budgetary in nature.

Sans communication

A sign of an unprecedented political context, and of the unease that such an announcement can cause, which will inevitably have to be assumed by the future Minister of National Education, these figures were published in the official journal without making the object of the slightest communication.

“A dry announcement, raw figures, there is nothing better to improve the atmosphere,” thunders a teacher working in a Limougeaud college, who says he has welcomed twice this year, due to lack of sufficient recruitment, contractual colleagues “totally lost because poorly trained”. This is one of the fears aroused by these apparently surprising figures: the increasingly frequent use of non-tenured professors, with precarious status, in order to cope with a vocations crisis which now seems to be coupled with a budgetary crisis.

A hefty bill

Because the bill paid by future candidates for teaching competitions, who are preparing to try their luck in 2025, promises to be steep.

In total, at the national level, there will be “only” 4,890 positions open in the external Capes, the main route for recruiting general middle and high school teachers. This is 232 fewer than in 2024. And above all, it is a free fall for several years, while in 2017, the Ministry of Education offered nearly 6,000 places.

Certainly, certain disciplines gain positions, such as history-geography, SVT and philosophy. But modern literature loses 30, and maths 50, which could be justified by a loss of interest among candidates for several years. “But that’s not what will motivate them,” continues the Limougeaud teacher. However, it is in letters and maths that we need people to meet the need groups in 6th and 5th grade. »

Technological education pays a high price (-10% of positions), as does vocational education: 95 positions will be offered to CAPLP (-8%).

556 tenured positions lost in 16 years

This situation hardly seems likely to reassure the unions who recall, beyond the recruitment crisis, the multiple cuts in resources which have affected National Education in recent years.

“In secondary education, in the Limoges academy, from 2008 to 2012, 500 secondary teacher jobs were removed, 80 were restored from 2013 to 2017, 136 have been eliminated since Emmanuel Macron was president” , recalled the representatives of Snes-FSU on Monday during the CSAA which was held in Limoges. In 16 years, Limousin will have lost 556 tenured middle and high school teachers. Will the evolution of recruitment follow the same path as that of jobs?