Géraldine Farges, researcher at the Institute for Research on Education (University of Burgundy), directed the work with Loïc Szerdahelyi In search of teachers. Crossed perspectives on the attractiveness of a profession (Rennes University Press, 220 p., €20).
Since when have we been talking about the teacher recruitment crisis?
While we have been discussing the difficulties in recruiting teachers since at least the 1990s, the question of the attractiveness of the profession has become more pressing since the 2010s. After significant job cuts during Nicolas Sarkozy’s five-year term, his successor François Hollande decided in 2012 to reverse the trend. But we quickly discovered that there were not enough candidates to fill all the new positions created.
The decline in applications was, in fact, already at work since the 2000s. The attractiveness of the profession is therefore imposed in the public debate in each competition that is not full. And the use of contract teachers to compensate for the shortages has been increasingly assumed since 2015.
How can we explain the relative disaffection of students for teaching careers and what levers can be used to remedy this?
Teaching is one of the so-called “executive” professions that attracts the most students who do not come from the most privileged social backgrounds. The place of the competitive examination in studies is therefore important: the later it comes, the smaller the pool. Because you have to be able to finance five years of studies when the teaching competitive examinations are taken at the end of the master 2 as today. Not to mention the costly risk of ultimately failing this competitive examination…
This is one of the reasons that motivate the possible return of these competitions at bac + 3 (as they were before the reform of the master’s degree in 2010). This measure can be attractive for modest students if it gives access to the status of trainee civil servant in master’s degree (therefore paid).
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The representation that students have of the profession is also obviously important. We often talk about salary conditions that can divert them towards more financially attractive professions. That’s true. But the assignment conditions imposed after the competition [le fait d’être potentiellement nommé loin de chez soi] also weigh in the balance, as do working conditions. Working on the revaluation of the social status of teachers is essential.
The renewal of the pool of new teachers also involves people who change direction after their first professional experience…
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