SAINT-DENIS, France — The job fair at a sports hall in Saint-Denis on Saturday had the atmosphere of a speed-dating event: 40 folding tables, a timer, and a line of candidates clutching résumés who had 15 minutes to persuade a school principal that they could teach mathematics, or English, or physics, to 14-year-olds starting Monday.
Mathilde Perrin, 29, a former actuary, left with a contract to teach four math classes at a middle school in Aubervilliers until June. She had never taught. “They asked me about my degree, whether I could manage a classroom and whether I had a problem with a two-hour commute,” she said. “I said yes, I think so, and no. That was the interview.”
France began the school year in September with about 3,100 teaching posts unfilled nationwide, the education ministry said, and roughly 1,200 of those were in the Créteil and Versailles districts that ring Paris, where schools serve the country’s poorest and most crowded suburbs. The vacancies reflect a decade-long decline in applications for the competitive civil service examination that has traditionally been the only route into a French classroom: 23,000 candidates sat the secondary teaching exam this spring, down from 48,000 in 2014, and in mathematics the number of candidates who passed fell short of the posts on offer for the fifth year in a row.
Into the gap have come contract teachers, who now make up 11 percent of the secondary teaching workforce, double the share of 2015. They are hired on fixed-term contracts, paid about 2,100 euros a month before tax, roughly the same as a starting civil servant, and in many districts receive a week of training or none. “We are not proud of the 15-minute interview,” said Véronique Lefèvre, who runs human resources for the Créteil district. “We are proud that on Monday there will be a teacher in the room. The alternative is a class of 30 with a supervisor and a worksheet.”
At a middle school in Bobigny, that alternative was reality for the first five weeks of the term. Karim Haddad, the principal, said his 7th-graders had no math teacher until Oct. 6, when a contract hire arrived from the Saint-Denis fair. “Parents were calling every day. I told them the truth: there is nobody,” he said. “When a teacher finally came, one mother brought her flowers.” His school has a 40 percent annual turnover among teachers, most of whom request transfers to calmer districts as soon as their seniority allows.
The government raised starting teacher pay by about 10 percent in 2023 and has promised a reform that would move the recruitment exam earlier, to the third year of university rather than after a master’s degree, with a paid training year to follow. Unions say the pay rise did not restore what inflation had taken and that the problem in the Paris suburbs is less salary than conditions: large classes, old buildings and a sense of abandonment.
Ms. Perrin said she had taken a pay cut of about half to teach and did not know whether she would stay beyond June. “I wanted to see if I could do it,” she said. “The district is betting that enough of us find out we can.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 10 of the European edition with the headline: With 3,100 Posts Unfilled, France Turns to 15-Minute Interviews to Staff Its Classrooms.
