Eric Anceau teaches contemporary history at Sorbonne University. He is a specialist in the state, powers and relations between the people and the elites. Among his latest books:
Les Élites françaises des Lumières au grand confinement
(Passés Composés, 2020) and
Secularism, a principle.
From Antiquity to the Present
(Passés Composés, 2022).
FIGAROVOX. - The number of eligible for the CAPES is historically low in several disciplines this year. How to explain the difficulties of the National Education to recruit?
Eric ANCEAU. –
I will even go so far as to speak of catastrophic figures: 816 eligible for the external CAPES in mathematics while there were 1035 vacancies, 720 for 755 in letters or 83 for 215 in German.
Even if all those eligible are recruited, we will still be well below the needs!
These recruitment difficulties are part of a long-term phenomenon;
I see it in my amphitheatres, preparing students both for the aggregation and for the CAPES for more than twenty years.
Admittedly, we were already talking about a recruitment crisis in the early 2000s when I was part of the oral jury for the CAPES in history and geography, but I am distraught to see the drop in numbers from year to year.
While in the 2000s we had more than 500 competition students in auditoriums at the Sorbonne, so much so that some had difficulty finding where to sit, there are barely a hundred today.
The loss of attractiveness of the profession is real, because of the indecent salaries and the promised upgrades that have not taken place.
The beginning of the career has certainly been upgraded but it is a “hidden misery”, forgive me the term!
We are currently at 1.1 SMIC for a bac + 5. Moreover, the refusal to thaw the index point has led, over two decades, to the impoverishment of an entire profession.
The teaching profession has become a high physical and psychological risk.
Incivility issues are on the rise.
Eric Anceau
Added to this is the complete disrepute of the profession in society.
Teachers were, until a few decades ago – and I'm not talking about the Third Republic here – rather high in the social hierarchy and almost unanimously respected;
This is no longer the case today.
Another phenomenon linked, in part, to the previous one is that the teacher is now very exposed.
The classroom is no longer a sanctuary but rather, conversely, a sounding board for the many ills of our society.
The teaching profession has become a high physical and psychological risk.
Incivility issues are on the rise.
The aggression, 48 hours ago, of a teacher in a high school in Basse-Goulaine is just one example among many others, emerging in the middle of the #pasdevague, because the attacker was filmed by his accomplices and that his video was posted on the networks.
The loss of consideration of teachers is finally found in the fact, precisely unbearable for them, that the parents who were on their side in their vast majority when the institution was respected, now defend their children against them, even when they are shown the 'unacceptable.
The results are no better for the school teacher competition. Do you see it rather as a crisis of vocations in education in the broad sense or a disinterest linked to the current conditions of exercise of the profession?
The figures of the CRPE (competition for the recruitment of school teachers, editor's note) by academy have also fallen over the last fortnight.
They are indeed, too, very worrying, in particular in certain large academies.
The particularity of this year is that an economic crisis — linked to the CAPES reform — is added to the very long-term structural crisis that I mentioned.
Job security and vacations that critics of professors often throw in their faces to tell them to stop complaining are not enough to attract.
Eric Anceau
Note also that it is not so much better in higher education, both from the point of view of recruitment and that of remuneration.
The superior may retain the prestige and is not confronted with disciplinary problems, but the level to access it is even higher and here the number of posts is very limited, especially since privileges, procedures circumvention and a dangerous transformation of the profession of teacher-researcher are emerging.
We also find ourselves in a situation of proletarianization of the profession, in particular when we compare our situation to that of our colleagues from the great foreign powers.
I think the phenomena add up to bring the disrepute of almost the entire teaching profession.
The phenomenon has been shown in various academic works and in journalistic investigations.
I see it on my modest scale.
I was giving figures earlier, but above all I talk a lot with my students and I see that apart from the few – and increasingly rare – who have a vocation, most are worried about their future, but see also less and less of this in teaching.
Job security and vacations that critics of professors often throw in their faces to tell them to stop complaining are not enough to attract.
That is to say !
What part of the recruitment difficulties this year is attributable to the CAPES reform?
This is a delicate question and I would be dishonest to assert a truth that I do not hold.
We lack hindsight since the change is recent and its effects will only be fully measured over time.
I will first note that this reform is part of an overall movement which consists of reducing the share of disciplinary content in favor of pedagogy and didactics.
This is a question of better responding to the current level of the pupils, which we have been able to observe that it is decreasing in diachronic and synchronic comparison (it suffices here to see the results of the PISA).
As an academic, historian and citizen attached to the voluntarism of the State, I cannot be satisfied with this accompaniment of the lowering of the level.
I think on the contrary that the school must pull our children upwards and for that must train teachers who are disciplinary well equipped.
The rector of the Versailles Academy has decided to apply private and business methods to recruit secondary school teachers.
Eric Anceau
Let's add effects related more directly to the reform.
From now on, it is at the end of the two years of the Master MEEF (teaching, education and training professions) that the competition takes place and no longer at the end of the M1.
It is difficult for a young person from a modest background who is dependent on his family or who has to work to finance his studies to tell himself that he is going to have to complete an additional year of study before being established, even if he receives a little money during his year of M2 since he performs it alternately with generally a third of his time in charge in colleges and high schools.
This reform can undeniably make it possible to get an idea of the "career" before entering it and this also discourages many students (there have been many resignations recently), but it differs tenure so it makes it precarious.
It is also one of the concerns, it seems to me, of the reform to have multiplied the contract workers.
There are also, in fact, these students who signed a contract from their second year of license and for four years, without class load at least until master 2, but who become AED (educational assistants, editor's note) in pre-professional training and who reinforce the teams.
We are here in a "at the same time" characteristic.
Obviously, it's a way for young people to discover the profession and try to attract them, but don't be fooled, it's also a way to fill in gaps by resorting to contract workers and therefore to precarious.
Precisely, to compensate for the number of unfilled positions, establishments are recruiting more and more contract workers. The Versailles Academy even organizes a "job dating" to recruit teachers from bac + 3. What is your view of these recruitment methods?
I won't mince words: I'm outraged.
This amounts to devaluing the profession and sacrificing our youth, since we are going to entrust it to adults who may be of good will, but who absolutely do not have the qualifications required to teach our young people.
The rector of the Versailles Academy, who is not herself a teacher-researcher – as is normally the custom – but a senior civil servant, former classmate of Emmanuel Macron's promotion at the ENA, decided to apply private and corporate methods to recruit secondary school teachers.
I saw the video you are no doubt referring to in which she promoted "job dating" (what a horrible expression!) to recruit contract teachers because of the looming shortage for the reasons alluded to on time.
It looks like a HRD of a large private group!
A regionalization of recruitment in secondary education will automatically lead to a drop in the level of teachers.
And young people in areas that are already the most disadvantaged risk having the least competent teachers.
Eric Anceau
This may announce a worrying reform which is in the air and which would consist in regionalizing the recruitment of secondary school teachers.
Recruitment of teachers is already done by academy in primary education, and several presidential candidates, probably starting with Macron – even if he has not given us too much of an opportunity to see the details of his program – and Valérie Pécresse, but also senior civil servants plan to extend the measure to secondary school.
This would call into question the principle of republican equality throughout the territory.
National competitions guarantee this equality and ensure a certain level of recruitment.
In some deficit academies, such as that of Créteil, the level of recruitment of school teachers is already much lower than elsewhere.
A regionalization of academic recruitment in secondary education will automatically lead to a drop in the level of teachers.
And young people in areas that are already the most disadvantaged risk having the least competent teachers.
This is not how France will become a good student of social mobility, which it is certainly not currently.
How can these recruitment difficulties be overcome?
This very clearly requires an increase in the salaries of teachers.
This is a fundamental point, very well diagnosed by Jean-Michel Blanquer even before he took office and at the start of his five-year term – because he too has done one, he even holds the record for the duration of a minister rue de Grenelle throughout history – but, as I was saying, the revaluation he carried out remained far below what is necessary.
Our teachers remain among the worst paid in Europe.
It is often objected that their foreign colleagues work more, but it is necessary to compare what is comparable.
They also often have much better working conditions and what they do in their establishment, French teachers do at home in small accommodation and in the midst of their children.
Teachers need to be better supported by their superiors in disciplinary matters, to regain their authority.
This is the sine qua non for a return to the respect due to their function.
Eric Anceau
Furthermore, the administration does not pay enough attention to teachers who are experiencing difficulties.
The many testimonies that come to me from the field show that the #pasdevague which officially no longer exists continues to persist due to blockages at almost all hierarchical levels of this huge machine that is the Ministry of National Education.
Teachers need to be better supported by their superiors in disciplinary matters, to regain their authority.
This is the
sine qua non
of a return to the respect due to their function.
In return, they obviously have to be irreproachable themselves in their professional practice.
I would add in this regard that it is perfectly normal for them to be bound by a duty of discretion in the exercise of their functions as civil servants, and the Minister for National Education was right to point this out, but the boundary with freedom of expression is sometimes tenuous and it seems not to have been fully respected in several cases in recent years.
I am convinced that teachers who are better paid, respected and fulfilled in their professional practices will be emulated and it is all of our youth and our entire nation that will benefit from these new teachers.