Since the first PIRLS assessment in 2001, the performance of French fourth-grade students in reading comprehension has declined progressively at each evaluation. By 2016, the gap represented minus 14 points over fifteen years. A ten-year-old child read less well than a child of the same age in 2001, in the same country, with the same system. After fifteen years of continuous decline, France stabilized its results in 2021, while the vast majority of European Union countries showed a statistically significant decline, averaging 11 points compared to 2016.

This deserves to be stated unambiguously: with an average overall score of 514 points, France stands beyond the international average of 500 points, but below the European average of 527 points. Twenty years of PIRLS, and France has never reached the average of its neighbors. It has simply stopped falling further. When the arrest of the decline becomes a victory, it is a sign that the problem runs deep.

Twenty years of decline and a stabilization that does not change the ranking

France’s score in 2001, the first year of the assessment, was 534 points. It had dropped to 520 by 2011. Then 511 in 2016. Performance on informational texts had fallen by 22 points, and the most complex comprehension processes (interpreting, evaluating) by 21 points. It was not primarily struggling students who gave ground: the decline was broad and affected both the strongest and weakest students.

The stabilization at 514 points in 2021 slightly reverses the trend, but does not correct the structural lag. The gap with the European average was 28 points in 2016 and narrows to 15 points in 2021. That is better. It still represents two grade levels of difference in terms of reading learning, compared with countries that score at the Union average.

What strikes about the PIRLS data is that a French fourth-grade child spends more time in class learning to read than his or her European peers. France devotes 59% of school time in elementary education to reading comprehension and mathematics, the highest proportion among OECD countries. In particular, 38% of time is dedicated to reading, writing, and literature, versus 25% on average in the OECD. More time, fewer results. The problem is not quantity: it is what happens in the classroom, and that depends first on the person standing in front of the students.

When the profession no longer attracts

At the start of the 2024 school year, 3,200 teachers were missing from schools, middle schools, and high schools in the public and private sectors. The attractiveness crisis facing the education system differs from previous recruitment tensions. While twentieth-century crises remained sporadic, many indicators reveal a distortion that has become structural between the needs of public education and its capacity to meet them.

Over twenty-five years, the number of registrations for the most generalist secondary teaching competition has fallen by nearly three-quarters. In primary education, between 2016 and 2024, the number of candidates taking the competition declined by 30.8%, while the number of available posts fell by only 20.8%. Fewer candidates for the same posts. And among remaining candidates, the proportion of resignations among trainee teachers reached 4% in 2023-2024, compared with only 0.9% in 2008. People who passed the competition, got the job: and who leave a few months later.

The concrete result: the share of contract teachers in public primary education has been multiplied by 5.8 since the recruitment difficulties of 2022 and 2023. A child starting first grade in 2024 could very well have before him or her, over the course of the year, several contractors hired in a matter of days, without real pedagogical training.

The underlying reason—the OECD has documented it every year for a decade. In 2024, elementary school teachers earn on average 26% less than other graduates with higher education degrees, and secondary teachers 18% less. These gaps are more pronounced than the OECD average, which stands at 17% and 13% respectively.

A primary school teacher earns less than an employee with equivalent qualifications in any other sector: and the gap with his or her European colleagues has widened, not narrowed. Between 2015 and 2024, salary progression in France remains limited to +8% for beginning primary and secondary teachers, compared with +16 to +17% on average in the OECD. For experienced teachers, salaries remain virtually unchanged in primary education.

57% of primary school teachers mention purchasing power as one of the three most problematic aspects of their profession. This is not a corporatist demand: it is the signal of a profession that can no longer retain its workforce or recruit new members.

The rupture produced by this decline

The mechanism is simple to unfold. When a profession loses its salary appeal, candidates become scarce. When candidates become scarce, you recruit less well.

When you recruit less well, teaching quality declines. When quality declines, student results decline. This is exactly what twenty years of PIRLS documents.

For more than half a century, educational research has shown that teachers’ professional skills and the effectiveness of the methods they implement are the primary determinants of student success, as Baptiste Larseneur recalls at Institut Montaigne. The attractiveness crisis facing the teaching profession now calls for deep reflection on training policy, recruitment standards, and diversification of pathways into the profession. Faced with teacher shortages, the country must be bold and stop considering teaching solely as a career.

This decline is not a cyclical accident linked to the pandemic or a spike in inflation. The attractiveness crisis facing the education system differs from previous recruitment tensions. While twentieth-century crises remained sporadic, many indicators reveal a distortion that has become structural between the needs of public education and its capacity to meet them.

There is also a window of opportunity. France faces sustained demographic decline: the education system will have lost one million students between 2019 and 2029. For the 2026 school year alone, public schools will welcome nearly 150,000 fewer students.

The salary mass of the national education system represents more than 70% of a ministerial budget of 64.5 billion euros in 2026. The High Commissioner for Strategy and Planning notes that the decline in student numbers leaves budgetary room for maneuver. Demography provides ten years to redeploy resources. The question is whether these margins fund salaries at last or disappear in accounting post cuts.

Changing who enters the profession and what it pays them

The lever is not to turn up a bonus dial. Three thousand vacant posts and untrained contractors in classrooms is not a tuning problem: it is the result of an architecture where a primary school teacher’s salary is structurally disconnected from his or her degree level, and where entry into the profession through a single, national, and late competition closes recruitment to entire pools of candidates.

A report from the Inspectorate General of National Education notes that student results in international assessments, the view that primary school teachers hold of their initial training, and the recruitment of primary school teachers are three points of particular alarm. It recommends a five-year initial training pathway starting immediately after secondary school graduation.

What 2027 presents as an architectural choice is twofold and inseparable. First, transform the remuneration basis: align the salary of a primary school teacher with that of other graduates with a master’s degree in the state civil service, funding this revaluation through margins freed by demographics, rather than using them to cut positions. This revaluation changes who chooses the profession, not just the morale of those already in it. Second, open recruitment: break with the single national competition as the only pathway in, by establishing paid pre-recruitment pathways from the license level onward, on a model that several parliamentarians and reports have explored without any government taking the step. The country must stop considering teaching solely as a career: and build entry into the profession that makes the choice possible at twenty, without waiting five years of unpaid training.

After these two decisions, the architecture changes: who decides to become a teacher, at what point in their life they can do so, and what the profession brings them compared with their alternatives. The boundary between teaching and other public service professions shifts. A fourth-grade child has a trained teacher in front of him or her, or a contractor recruited through speed hiring. It is not the same starting point.

Sources

[1] DEPP, “PIRLS 2021: France Stabilizes Its Results Unlike Most Other European Countries in Decline,” Information Note no. 23.21, May 2023, https://doi.org/10.48464/ni-23-21 (accessed 29/09/2026).

[2] DEPP, “PIRLS 2016: International Assessment of Fourth-Grade Students in Reading Comprehension, Evolution of Performance Over Fifteen Years,” Information Note no. 17.24, 2017, https://www.education.gouv.fr/media/13694/download (accessed 29/09/2026).

[3] DEPP, “PIRLS 2011: International Study on Fourth-Grade Student Reading,” Information Note no. 12.21, December 2012, https://archives-statistiques-depp.education.gouv.fr/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/9542 (accessed 29/09/2026).

[4] OECD, “Education at a Glance 2025,” September 2025, https://www.oecd.org (accessed 29/09/2026).

[5] High Commissioner for Strategy and Planning, “Teaching: A Vocation to Rebuild, a Balance to Restore,” June 2025, https://www.strategie-plan.gouv.fr/publications/enseigner-une-vocation-reconstruire-un-equilibre-restaurer (accessed 29/09/2026).

[6] Senate, “Bill of Finance for 2026: School Education,” Report no. 25-139-313, November 2025, https://www.senat.fr/rap/l25-139-313/l25-139-3138.html (accessed 29/09/2026).

[7] DEPP, “National Education in Figures, 2026 Edition,” August 2026, https://www.education.gouv.fr/depp/l-education-nationale-en-chiffres-edition-2026-505326 (accessed 29/09/2026).

[8] IGESR, “Initial Training of Primary School Teachers in France. A Necessary Evolution in Light of European Standards,” Ministry of National Education, 2023, https://www.education.gouv.fr/igesr/la-formation-initiale-des-professeurs-des-ecoles-en-france-une-evolution-necessaire-l-aune-des-465480 (accessed 29/09/2026).

[9] Baptiste Larseneur, Institut Montaigne, “Teacher Shortage: What if We Diversified Recruitment Pathways?,” 2022, https://www.institutmontaigne.org/expressions/penurie-des-enseignants-et-si-on-diversifiait-les-voies-de-recrutement (accessed 29/09/2026).

[10] National Assembly, Written Question no. 9918, 2026, https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/questions/QANR5L17QE9918.pdf (accessed 29/09/2026).

[11] OECD, “Education at a Glance 2024: OECD Indicators,” OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/1aabb39d-fr (accessed 29/09/2026).