Desperately looking for teachers! A few days before the start of the school year, the tension was palpable in most rectorates faced with an unprecedented shortage of staff. Faced with the lack of incumbents linked, among other things, to the 4,000 places left vacant at the end of the competitions organized last spring, it was necessary to deal with the most urgent matters. By going to draw on the additional lists of these famous competitions, or by turning to a new battalion of contractors. During his first back-to-school press conference on August 26, National Education Minister Pap Ndiaye announced the hiring of 3,000 additional recruits. “There will be a teacher in front of each class,” he promised in the middle of summer.
Yes, but at what price ? Classifieds in the local press, organization of “jobs dating”, training in four days for these aspiring teachers ready to embark on the adventure without a net or almost… Only a few weeks or even a few days before the reopening of schools, colleges and high schools, many avenues have been explored to attract these volunteers who are sometimes totally novices.
The job offers published on academic sites speak volumes. Alongside the full-time or part-time offers, some job descriptions would almost look like bottles in the sea. The day before the start of the school year, Saint-Eloy-les-Mines, a small rural town in Puy-de-Dôme, was still looking for a free spanish teacher all school year to do 4.5 hours a week. All for 480 euros gross monthly.
The Grenoble Academy, for its part, listed the list of substitute positions to be filled, calling on certain contract workers to make the trip for … only one hour per week! Suffice to say that the candidates likely to accept such precarious contracts are not likely to jostle at the portals of the establishments.
The responses provided by the institution to this crisis are far from having reassured the parents of students, some of whom have recently discovered the extent of the problem in amazement! This start of the school year, which is taking place “in a context of unprecedented tension for the recruitment of teachers”, as the new host on rue de Grenelle himself admitted, will have helped to lift the veil a little more on the flaws of our educational system.
