The shortage of teachers weighs on the return to school for 12 million students in France After two months of vacation, schoolchildren (6.5 million), middle school students (3.4 million) and high school students (2.2 million) have started this morning to find their friends, get to know their teachers and discover their schedule. This year, inflation and the teacher recruitment crisis are weighing on the start of the school year. A phenomenon which is not new for the latter but which has worsened further this year, with more than 4,000 vacancies not filled in competitions in the country, out of 27,300 vacancies in the public and private sectors (and 850,000 teachers altogether). “We obviously wanted there to be a teacher in front of each student for this start of the school year. And it is inevitably an anguish for parents to ask themselves the question of knowing if this will be the case, ”said Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on France Inter on Thursday. “I’m not going to tell you that there can’t be a case [, avec] adjustments in the days to come, she acknowledged. But, in any case, I think that this return to school will go well. The Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, has promised in recent days that, even if the conditions “are not optimal”, the start of the new school year will be “comparable to that of last year”, “with a teacher in front of each class. To make up for the shortage of teachers, the national education system has recruited contract teachers – 3,000, according to Pap Ndiaye – trained in a few days before taking up their duties. In order to reassure, again, the Minister of Education, who is making his first comeback to this position, repeated that “more than 80% of contract workers have already taught”. But the concerns are strong on the side of the parents of students as well as that of the unions. “Last year my son was in a CE1-CE2 dual level class. They were 28, the teacher was a little overloaded. She was often absent, she was not replaced for a week, they had found no one. We spent a week babysitting our children,” Bénédicte Candir, 45, told Agence France-Presse in front of the Charles-Péguy elementary school in Créteil. Parents of students fear “an explosive return to school”, explains to AFP Nageate Belahcen, co-president of the FCPE, the first federation of parents of students. “Absent teachers who are not replaced, contract workers who are not sufficiently trained or maths in high school… Families are anxious,” she says. The unions, they denounce “a tinkering” in the face of the recruitment of contract workers during the summer. “The promise of a teacher to each student seems more like a political slogan than reality,” said Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of SNES-FSU, the first secondary union, this week. This union launched the keyword #NotreVraieRentrée to collect testimonies within the establishments. “We will have adults in front of the classes, not teachers”, declares the Snuipp-FSU, the first primary union, which already fears that the lack of replacements will be felt from the first sick leave or maternity leave. To restore the attractiveness of the teaching profession, the government has laid down some milestones on the remuneration side. Pap Ndiaye promised that “no teacher would start their career with less than 2,000 euros net per month from the start of the 2023 school year”. This will be “a starting salary, excluding bonuses”. And “significant” increases will take place, he said, without giving a timeline.