Teachers And Teaching Conditions

 

Working conditions

Reforms set for the 2024-2025 school term sparked mass strikes earlier this year as teachers condemned the lack of measures tackling serious issues. Challenging conditions mean public schools in France struggle to attract fresh recruits. As a result, they are disproportionately reliant on teachers who are young, inexperienced and at the lower end of the pay scale – many of whom end up dropping out.

Rather than improving conditions of the profession by increasing pay or finding solutions for overcrowded classrooms, the downsides of the job continue to gain the upper hand.

A German teacher in a French public school with a hefty following on social media recently outlined how difficult working conditions coupled with a lack of support from education authorities can quickly unfurl into a nightmare. On X, she detailed how she had spent the last five years working at a school two hours away by car from her home – waiting to gather enough points to be transferred.

In March of this year, she finally gathered enough points to be transferred, only to learn that the two schools she would be working in were both even further away – a two-and-a-half hour drive from her house. She contested the decision with support from the SNES teacher’s union but was told that “the lack of German teachers” in the area meant “they have no wiggle room”.

“I went to see my doctor … and he wrote me a leave notice, which I sent to the middle school I was transferred to. I explained that the notice would be renewed until they found a solution, because I simply can’t work there, physically and materially speaking,” she wrote.

“Imagine if I had accepted the transfer. How long until I would have had an accident on my way to work?” she added.

The salaries of French teachers regularly fall below the OECD average, despite the government spending more on education per student than the average OECD country. Early career teachers in Germany, for example, earn twice as much as their French counterparts – even with the salary hikes introduced in 2023.

To add to the list of hostile conditions, French teachers also cope with longer hours of teaching and have one of the worst pupil-teacher ratios in Europe.

Recent violent outbreaks in schools have further added to the long list of grievances. In March this year, for example, a principal at a Parisian high school resigned after receiving death threats online following an altercation with a student.

Rémi Boyer spent a total of 21 years teaching history and geography in Rouen to middle schoolers in high-priority education networks (REP), school districts in France that are disadvantaged. He described the last six years of his career as “nerve-wracking”.

“I was being put through the ringer by pupils in overcrowded classrooms five hours a day each day,” he recalled. “I no longer had the patience … So at 63, I said to myself that I would rather be healthy than deal with the working conditions I was facing.” 

Boyer decided to leave teaching and retire three years before receiving his full pension. “I knew I could not last any longer as a teacher,” he said.

Despite the tough conditions they face, teachers in France are some of the most qualified across OECD countries.

That’s no way to say goodbye

To make matters worse, it is often very difficult for tenured teachers to leave their profession.

Contractual terminations or “ruptures conventionelles” were only introduced for tenured teachers in 2020 as part of a five-year experiment. This form of terminating a contract gives a tenured public sector teacher the right to access unemployment benefits and other severance support. An initial assessment by education unions in 2020 found that 80 percent of contractual terminations were rejected. The alternative is to resign without warning, or “abandon de poste”, meaning the employee would have no safety net.

Tenured teachers, or “titulaires”, cannot leave unless the education ministry gives them the green light to do so – a procedure that can last months. As civil servants, their request to quit must be validated by the regional education authority and can be refused on the grounds that their service is necessary. Once they leave, they lose their status as civil servants, meaning they can’t jump back on the tenured teaching bandwagon or any other government job for six years.

“If a teacher decides to quit and this doesn’t suit the local education authorities, they can issue a service requirement [and force them to stay]. In other words, they can say: ‘No, we need you, we are short-staffed and you can’t leave’,” explained Boyer.

Teachers looking for greener pastures also come up against a lack of resources, both in terms of information and support. Information provided to teachers on the education ministry website is sparse and the procedure is so complex, many blogs and social media groups have propped up to fill the gaps.

That is why in 2006 Boyer decided to launch Aide Aux Profs, a non-profit that supports teachers by providing information on their rights as well as advice on how to quit.

“Those who are really determined will just quit without a safety net. Maybe they recently touched an inheritance, maybe they won the lotto. Maybe they’re young and can go back to living with their parents while they find their footing. But that is not the case for most of us,” he said.

And while contract teachers also have the right to contractual terminations, negotiating one is no easy feat. Paul waited until the end of the school year to refuse a contract renewal and take up studying again. This way, he was sure to be able to access unemployment benefits. “I’m happy that I wasn’t a tenured teacher,” he said. “I have colleagues who told me when I left that they would love to quit but don’t have the means to.”

The German teacher thinks quitting “is a great idea” and “is all for it”. While she has toyed with the idea for the first time in her eight years as a teacher, she will not be resigning for now.

“Why resign?” she wrote in her X thread. “I did my work. I studied five years, took the competitive exams, accepted constraints while teaching for eight years. I’m not the problem here. I shouldn’t be the one getting into sh*t just because the French education system is not working.”

- Author: Lara BULLENS, France24