Some 12 million students in France are starting school today without masks for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and in the hope of having a teacher or professor as the country faces a shortage of teaching staff.
After two months of vacation, elementary (6.5 million), middle school (3.4 million) and high school (2.2 million) students will meet again with their classmates, meet their new teachers and professors and learn their course schedule.
Unlike the start of school classes in the previous two years, teachers and students will not be required to wear a mask due to the recession on the pandemic front.
The new protocol allows the return of students without restrictions regarding sports activities and without social distancing rules.
Last year’s start of the school year took place in the shadow of the health crisis, while this year it takes place in the middle of the teacher recruitment crisis.
A phenomenon that is not new but has further worsened this year with more than 4,000 vacancies in the country’s national competitions, out of 27,300 open positions in the public and private sectors (and 850,000 teachers in total).
The phenomenon is not unique to France: “All European countries (in Eastern Europe) are facing increasing recruitment difficulties, which reveals a real crisis of interest in the profession at European level,” according to a report by the French parliament, given released in June.
French Education Minister Pape Diag has been repeating it for several days: even if the conditions are “not the best”, the start of the school year will be “comparable to last year”, “with one teacher for each class”.
To overcome this shortage, France has hired contract teachers — 3,000, according to the minister — who were trained within days before they were in a classroom.
And trying to reassure the Minister of Education, he repeated that “more than 80% of the contract holders have already taught”.
However, this “does not rule out that during the year there will be difficulties in certain areas”, he underlined.
To make the teaching profession more attractive, the government has pledged that “no teacher will start their career with a salary of less than €2,000 net per month from 2023”.
And as the minister assured, this will be “the initial salary excluding the bonus”, while he spoke of “significant” increases without giving a timetable.
SOURCE: APE-PE
Source: Capital
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