The start of the school year is one of the main indicators of the effects of the teacher recruitment crisis. This key moment allows us to gauge the ability of the Ministry of National Education to respect the public service’s commitment to place a teacher in charge of each student from the beginning of the year. The first union surveys, made public on Friday, September 6, show that vacancies for this 2024 school year, like the two previous ones, are again numerous.
The SNES-FSU, the main teachers’ union of public middle and secondary schools, surveyed a sample of 893 establishments, of which 56% reported at least one missing teacher as of September 5. This figure, which varies according to disciplines and academies, includes both vacant positions, for which principals were unable to appoint anyone, and missing teachers. “foreseeable replacements (maternity leave, long-term sick leave)” that are not covered, the SNES specifies.
The main union for management staff, SNPDEN-UNSA, is also conducting an investigation, the final results of which will not be known until Wednesday, September 11. But the organization has already noted that among the more than 2,500 establishments that responded (out of 7,800 public middle and secondary schools), 61% were missing at least one teacher as of September 2, and even several teachers (31%).
“SNES figures are declarative”
The dangers are inherent to the start of the school year for an administration that must distribute more than 711,000 teachers, including 387,000 secondary school teachers, across 51,000 public establishments. The mechanism, however, has been under pressure for several years due to a recruitment crisis that has become structural and which, although it has not worsened since its peak in 2022, is not being resolved either or is being resolved too slowly. In June 2024, some 3,000 positions were again left unfilled following competitions.
“The SNES figures are declarative, and equate occasional absences or those corresponding to a low volume of students on a schedule and absences corresponding to vacancies”We put into perspective the side of the Ministry of National Education, which says “particularly attentive” to this last category.
Although they try to be as rigorous as possible, the unions do not deny the methodological limitations of their surveys, which do not claim to be statistically exhaustive but rather to place at the centre of public debate a topic on which the Ministry of Education and the national government never deliver detailed reports, which it is the only one capable of doing. “The ministry is able to give us precise figures on abayas or mobile phones, but when it comes to such a crucial issue as knowing whether there is a teacher in front of each student, it no longer does statistical work and is content with vague formulas saying that in general everything is going well, although we are far from the mark.”protests Sophie Vénétitay, director of SNES-FSU.
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