Emilie*, 36, is a contract teacher, that is to say that she was recruited out of competition by the National Education. Since last week, she knows that she will have to go to school this Monday, back to school day, to 26 toddlers in small and medium section of kindergarten, including a little autistic. “Since then, I have been preparing my lessons on the job,” says the young woman. I went on ministry website to see the programs, to make them my own. And, I do a lot of research, you have to get organized to find your way around learning and also imagine supports. »
Freshly launched as a teacher since All Saints Day 2022, Emilie already knows that this start of the school year is going to be intense and portends fifty-hour weeks, even if this rhythm calms down a little afterwards. “It’s a job in which you always have to look for solutions,” she says. And, in kindergarten, we are also asked to give a lot of attention, affection, and to reassure the young parents of students who are sometimes a little lost. If she took the Meef teaching master’s degree (teaching, education and training professions), the 30-year-old did not want to take the competition because she did not plan to have to leave Bordeaux where she to his family life. To give herself a maximum of chances, she should indeed pass the competition in the Paris region. She was a territorial civil servant in a community before returning to teaching by opening up places to contract candidates.
“Fillers”?
The recruitment of contract workers in Gironde is “exponential”, points out Delphine Marin, departmental secretary of Fnec FP FO. For this start of the 2023 academic year, 190 civil servant trainees have been recruited by competition from the department, including around thirty on the complementary list. And at the same time, 38 neo-contractual teachers recruited and 225 contractual teachers renewed or CDIsés on July 1, 2023, according to information from the rectorate of Bordeaux. “A recruitment unit for contractual staff has been created, it works cross-functionally with the management services of the rectorate. As a result, recruitments and/or contract extensions could be anticipated, specifies the rectorate. New contract employees are trained and retained. »
For the FO union, more positions should be opened up for the competition, even though in Gironde, there is no shortage of candidates. Each year the number of professors recruited through the competition decreases and, until last year, there was not even recourse to the complementary list before recruiting contract workers. The union also advocates a tenure plan for contract workers who so wish. “We use them as placeholders, deplores Delphine Marin. At the beginning they were on permanent positions and now on replacement positions, but without the allowance [de déplacement] received by civil servant teachers. »
Low pay and precarious status
Remuneration is one of the big black spots of this contractual status. Lydie*, 37, in professional retraining after a first career in interior decoration, has been a contract teacher for six years, with an interruption for lack of recruitment in the year 2019/2020. “We have a salary that does not change, that is the negative point, and it is not a very high salary, points out the 30-year-old, already that of a civil servant is not. Lydie validated the Meef master’s degree but failed to win the competition, having tried three times. If she likes her job, which she describes as a “vocation”, she would like a permanent contract, more stable, not seeking tenure.
Instead of an internal competition (accessible after three years of contracts without interruption), the young woman pleads for a valuation of the experience acquired in class, in contact with the students. “It’s a job that no longer attracts and is very complicated,” she pleads. However, we do the job on the ground and we are told so, because I can tell you that in Gironde in any case, we are being watched. »
“They are sent to the pipe breaker”
“I am very poorly paid, less well paid than in my previous position, specifies Emilie, when I had been recruited without the baccalaureate level. I’m not far from the minimum wage (1,383 euros net per month) to be in front of students, with a baccalaureate + 5 and that’s not normal. In the private sector, I will earn more but I am passionate about this profession which brings me a lot. However, I do not see myself making an entire career there, given the instability. »
Then there are the alternating contract workers, students in Master 2 Meef to whom the administration offers to hold a class alone, one day a week. “The ministry gains enormously because they do the work instead of a regular teacher, deplores Delphine Marin. They are sent to the pipe breaker. “To guide them during this dive into the deep end, they are generously offered a USB key “taking control of the class”… Finally, if the trial period for contract workers is one month, the unions do not know how much give up during this period. But Delphine Marin assures her, “some leave to be better paid by doing less work”.
*The first name has been changed at the request of the interviewee.