It is urgent, they say. What if it were even worse… Everyone who follows the news at all knows it now: we are facing a serious and terrible shortage of teachers. I have already spoken about it in these pages. But if I come back to it this week, it’s because the news gives me little choice. Because it seems, alas, that this already dramatic situation is not likely to improve.
This week, it was reported that a recent study by Maurice Tardif, director of the Center for Interuniversity Research on Training and the Teaching Profession (CRIFPE), estimates that between 27,000 and 32,000 teachers in the public network will retire from by 2030, or, it is thought, some 40% of permanent teachers in this network.
These figures should no doubt be taken with caution. But it is also necessary, in order to correctly estimate the seriousness of the situation, to take into account the fact that the number of pupils in the school system is often underestimated and also that we do not take into consideration here either the new classes of kindergarten or the private network.
There is even worse. Because to correctly judge all this, we must also take into consideration the capacity of our teacher training system to fill the positions that become vacant. However, according to recent studies (but this remains to be confirmed for all universities and regions), it could be that out of 100 people who start studying to teach in preschool, primary or secondary, there is a rate of dropout from 40% to 50%. And it’s not over: of this number, we would have, during the first five years, a rate of professional desertion (in other words, of people who would leave teaching) ranging from 30 to 50%. All of this, if it were only true in general, would be something very serious.
The above draws, I am not afraid to say it again, a national emergency.
Admittedly, and that’s good, we are already imagining — and we will continue to do so over the next few years — ad hoc and temporary solutions to alleviate this tragedy. There are. But they remain temporary and ad hoc, and we must address what is causing this terrible situation.
To do this, you need to know what is going on in teacher training. How many begin and end their journey? How many are leaving? And why ? Are faculties of education doing their job well, especially when measured against the evidence that needs to be taught? Did they foresee this shortage, as one would expect them to have? How did they react to it? And what are the measures then put in place?
Education and what we expect from it
But we also have to work very hard to recognize and promote the profession.
This requires concrete actions, such as granting better salaries to teachers (we must applaud the recent improvement and go further in this direction), implementing better working conditions, and other similar measures.
But this also requires – and at least as much – a collective valuation of education itself.
Education, at least that is my point of view, is not only an instrument for climbing higher in the ladder of trades, professions and salaries. It is also – and even above all – the tool of individual and collective emancipation par excellence, the place for the preservation of a culture, a language. And it is also, even primarily, for these reasons that we should value it, finance it and respect it by admiring the people who devote their lives to it. Seen in this way, its implementation poses unavoidable ethical and political problems and challenges.
But is this point of view which is mine shared? By the greatest number? Is what this entails wanted by the majority of people? If so, do we really want a three-tier education network like the one we have? How do we collectively think about our ideal of education in relation to our ideal of social justice and equal opportunity?
It is also by answering difficult questions like these (and many others, just as difficult) that collectively, we will decide what we implement in education. This will necessarily involve deciding how we train teachers, those whom Bertrand Russell rightly called the guardians of civilization, and why and how we take care of them.
The situation demands significant and immediate action from us. Among them, and I know I’m repeating myself: launch a Parent 2.0 commission.
Calling all
I consider teaching to be a magnificent profession, perhaps the most beautiful of all. It is a difficult profession, but it sometimes brings immense joy to those who practice it. I am therefore very sorry to have to often speak of it in the preceding terms. This is why I would like to read to you about the joys, small or large, that you have experienced in the exercise of your teaching profession or experienced as a pupil or student. Write to tell me about it (at the address [email protected]) and I will talk about it in my next columns. Thanks in advance ! Anonymity guaranteed, if you wish.