The narratives related to the teaching profession “crisis” widely vary across national boundaries. If in France the public debate remains strongly focused on the crisis in teacher recruitment (Brisard & Mallet, 2004), in England, the debate is as much centred upon retention as upon the loss of attractiveness of the teaching profession (see e.g. DfE 2019). Teacher-related policies and reform trajectories also follow distinct paths in the two countries. In France, teacher policy reforms have been historically centred on initial teacher training, and some dispersed policies aiming to improve the attractiveness of the career are underway (e.g. anticipated recruitment at the end of a bachelor degree, retraining of teaching assistants, premiums for teachers in disadvantaged schools). Meanwhile, England has adopted over the past two decades a larger spectrum of teacher-related reforms touching upon initial teacher training, modes of certification and recruitment, and career pathways and employment conditions (Childs & Menter 2013; Jones 2016).

Our presentation attempts to analyse the interplay between the trajectories of teacher-focused reforms in France and England and the very nature of the ongoing flexibilisation of teacher recruitment processes and working conditions. Theoretically, our analysis is anchored in the framework of work and employment sociology, drawing upon Kalleberg’ work (2009; 2018) on the flexibilisation and polarization of employment relationships on the one hand, and on the literature on state transformation and changing modes of regulation of professions (Bezes et al 2011) on the other. We hypothesise that teacher-centred reform trajectories in England, resting on multiple forms of flexibilisation (training, recruitment, employment, career), can be interpreted as a move towards a liberal deregulation of the labour market for teachers. By contrast, in France, the upholding and reinforcement of existing institutional settings that regulate teachers’ careers (recruitment through concours, a central model of initial teacher training, and a centralised system of teacher allocation to schools), coupled with the recruitment crisis, have led to a polarization of teacher supply and recruitment as well as working conditions.

We use national census data collected under the authority of the ministries of education in each country as our primary source of material with a focus on lower and upper secondary education (the BSA (Base Statistiques des Agents) in France for the years 2008-2017, and the SWC (School Workforce Census) in England for the years 2010-2016). In order to capture the unravelling of standards/traditional employment relationships (full time work, civil servant status or long term contracts, etc.) and the rise of non-standard/non-traditional employment relationships (part-time work, short-terms contracts [Kalleberg, 2000]), we focus on the case of non-statured teachers in France (e.g “contractuels”) and on “unqualified teachers” and “supply teachers” in England. We conduct two types of analysis. First, multi-level growth models (Tasca & al., 2009) are used in order to document the significance and extent of emerging trends and to capture their structure and form. Secondly, sequence analyses (Abbott, 1995; Abbott & Tsay, 2000) are used in order to capture teachers’ employment and work trajectories within each education system.

Our preliminary results suggest that the extent of the flexibilisation of the teaching workforce appears to be relatively similar in both countries (up to 5% over the last ten years, a trend that is even more prominent at the lower secondary level). Nevertheless, the structure and form of flexibilisation appears to clearly differ between the two countries. In France, the “contractuels” are more strongly represented in the least attractive academies (administrative regions for schools), and in those disciplines where there is a noticeable shortage of certified teachers, which gives credit to the dualisation and polarization hypothesis. Flexibilization in England, by contrast, is not only at play in a geographical or by shortage-subject way, centred upon teachers with “standard/traditional” employment (QTS teachers with permanent contracts). It is equally present in high performing schools, who opt for non-standard/non-traditional employees (non-QTS teachers, non-permanent teachers). These establishments are notably those that have opted to become academies, thus avoiding regulative constraints imposed by local authorities and central government. Flexibilisation seems to take root at different levels within the school system, participating also in the fragmentation in supply of education.

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