France reforms teacher recruitment to combat shortages and high attrition

France is implementing a major reform to address a declining number of teacher applicants, which has seen a 45% drop in competition entries since 2021. Starting in the 2026 academic year, candidates will no longer be required to hold a master's degree to enter the profession. Instead, successful candidates will adopt a new status as ‘student civil servants,’ enrolling in a professionalizing Master in Teaching and Education (M2E) program that includes didactic training, pedagogy, and classroom observation internships.

While the reform aims to revitalize recruitment through paid training and relaxed diploma requirements, it faces criticism regarding potential declines in teaching standards. This comes amid a significant retention crisis: approximately 30% of the 30,000 new teachers trained annually leave the profession within their first five years. This high attrition rate results in a substantial loss of public funds, estimated at nearly one billion euros over a five-year period, as the state fails to amortize the initial training costs of roughly 30,000 to 40,000 euros per teacher.