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Civil servant in Education


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In France, nearly all teachers are civil servants.

As far as we are concerned we can't be fired from our job except if we do huge mistakes.

What are the different situation for teachers in other countries?

Do you think that the french system is the best on that point? If not, what is the best system for you?

Could be interested to confront our different situations.

Jean Philippe

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Australia has a similar situation - all public school teachers are hired by the government and can be moved between schools in accordance with a transfer policy which does not allow transfer further than 60kms from home.

This system has good and bad points. Teachers become a permanent employee and do not have to apply to a particular school for a job, so hiring is fairer, because Principals do not do the hiring and firing. However, it is sometimes difficult to get out of a bad school, and after 6 years you can be moved for another 6 years and so on.

When I taught in England it seemed to me that Heads had too much power in this regard, although they probably didn't think so!!

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Jay,

Can you be fired easily from the public system?

You talk about the difficulty to change from one school tp another. In France, when we want to move from one school to another we have to apply for it and after we have to count our 'points' (difficult system: 10 pts per year + various factors...) and the one who have more points can have the job. How does it work in Australia?

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We too have a fairly complicated transfer system. Public schools are placed in 5 categories - easy to staff, to hard to staff, to very isolated. Teachers have to stay 6 years in first 3 categories, but only 3 years in others, before they can request a transfer. They MUST be given a transfer after 10 years if they want it. There are exceptions to this if people have real problems.

Teachers are not easily sacked. Our one union, of which I am currently the President, is very strong, over 90% membership, and if teachers are threatened with dismisal, there must be a very good case before it can happen. Teachers have to be registered here before they can teach in either public or private schools, by a state registration board and they also hear cases of complaints against teachers. We have a problem at the moment with the Department of Education not making enough young teachers permanent after their first year, and we are losing them to other places, including the UK.

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and we are losing them to other places, including the UK.

Thanks very much for these explanations. Very interesting.

Do you mean that young teachers prefer to work in the UK rather than teaching in places they are sent to?

You said in a previous post that you taught in the UK. Did it happen to you? (or perhaps it was a personnel choice?)

Jean Philippe

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