The start of the school year took place last year under the seal of the health crisis. This year, it is under that of the teacher recruitment crisis. The “first challenge is to ensure a successful return to school in a context of unprecedented tension for the recruitment of teachers,” said Pap Ndiaye on Friday during his back-to-school conference, a few days before the return to school of 12 million. students on September 1. Here are the main announcements of the new Minister of Education, a few days before his baptism of fire.
On the exceptional competition for tenure
Pap Ndiaye announced on Friday the creation of an exceptional competition for the tenure of contract teachers, in the spring of 2023, in the face of the major teacher recruitment crisis. “An organization as vast as National Education needs a handful of contract teachers. In the spring of 2023, we are going to open an exceptional competition for the tenure of a certain number of these (contractual) teachers, according to procedures which will soon be specified, ”announced the Minister of Education.
“The vast majority of our contract teachers were already teaching last year, or even previous years. We can estimate that 80, 90% of contract teachers already have teaching experience,” added Pap Ndiaye.
National Education is using some 3,000 contract workers this year, out of about 870,000 teachers.
On the complementary lists of competitions
Another pool to make up for the lack of teachers, the additional lists of teacher competitions, those who took the competition in the spring of 2022 and were not received. The ministry “identifies the needs following the defections and resignations of the laureates received (in the spring of 2022) on the main lists”, indicates Pap Ndiaye. To replace these resigners, the rue de Grenelle draws from these additional lists. This is, to date, 260 people.
On teacher compensation
On the question of teachers’ salaries, which in France are lower than the average for OECD countries, the Minister of Education reiterated on Friday the need to “create a shock of attractiveness which will allow National Education to recruit more people thanks to attractive initial remuneration”, so that none of them starts their career “at less than 2,000 euros net” per month, at the start of the 2023 school year.
The profession is indeed experiencing an unprecedented attractiveness crisis, with more than 4,000 unfilled positions this year in teacher competitions in the country (out of 27,300 open positions in the public and private sectors). And currently, the 2,000 euros net are reached at step 8 on the salary grid (between 13 and 14 years of seniority).
On the missing teachers
“The figures vary from day to day,” assured the minister. “There are still difficulties in certain disciplines, for example vocational education disciplines, which are most in competition with the labor market, or also in certain disciplines such as modern languages or classical letters, physics- chemistry,” he added, without giving a specific number. According to AFP, there would still be a shortage of 3,000 teachers for the start of the school year.
On the rise of social funds
Pap Ndiaye returned to inflation, which eats away at the purchasing power of families. “The ministry is committed to increased support for families in difficulty so that students can follow their education in good conditions”, in particular via the possible 50% increase in social funds from this start of the school year. Social funds enable schools to provide rapid assistance to pupils whose families are experiencing difficulties.
On the reform of the professional path
Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that he wanted to “rearrange the vocational high school very in depth and upstream with the world of work”, develop “internship times by at least 50%” and better remunerate them, and recruit more teachers from the professional world. Carole Granjean, Minister Delegate for Vocational Training, present at the back-to-school conference alongside Pap Ndiaye listed the three objectives of this reform: “reduce the number of dropouts”, increase “the rate of integration into employment” and “facilitate the pursuit of studies”.
Pap Ndiaye will also have to wear the “school of the future” device, which Emmanuel Macron presented during his trips to Marseille before the summer.