Only 80% of open positions in National Education have been filled this year, which worries the profession. The ministry responded by creating recruitment days for contract workers, non-civil servants, on fixed-term contracts and ensures that the start of the school year will take place normally. Olivier Flipo, school principal in Cergy (Val-d’Oise) and SE-UNSA delegate shares his concerns, Thursday June 7 on franceinfo.
>> Lack of teachers: three questions about the thousands of vacancies that worry about the start of the 2022 school year
franceinfo: Are you worried about the start of the school year in terms of staff?
Oliver Flipo: Indeed, the minister said “don’t worry, there will be a lot of people in front of all the students”. We are on a Coué method “I’m fine, everything is fine.” However, I can tell you that there is already a lack, just in the Val-d’Oise, of a hundred teachers, despite the competitions and the job-dating which has been organised. The recruitment of contract workers is welcome, but it is a bandage on a wooden leg.
Why do you estimate this?
It marks a lack of anticipation with people recruited in half an hour to do a teaching job that cannot be improvised. The training that these people will benefit from, in Val-d’Oise for example, is scheduled for August 25, 26, 29 and 30, just before the start of the school year. It’s very short. While a teacher normally passes a competition, he is at bac +4, he does two years of training and then goes into the field. We are not only afraid of not having a teacher in front of each student in the weeks following the start of the new school year, but I think that there are a certain number of these contract workers who will leave at full speed when they have seen what it is was.
What are the causes of this crisis of vocations according to you?
I think we have to look for the why of how we got there. With a function that is not recognized or sufficiently recognized, someone who has a baccalaureate +4 +5, he will see in the private sector. I think there are many candidates who would be likely to join the ranks of National Education. But hey, everyone looks at their salary, that’s normal. And wages as they are today, we are at 1.3 or 1.4 times the minimum wage, whereas in the 1980s, we were at 2.7. You really have to be an activist to be a teacher. What is very difficult for the teams is that they do not know how they can work and prepare their work structure. I’m not even talking about the children who are likely to change schools between September 1 and September 5. Recruit, recruit, recruit.