Alain Leger, “The social determinants of the careers of teachers” , French Review of sociology, 1981, n° 4, pp. 549-574.
“The professional career of teachers is marked by a series of changes in the establishment of exercise, which can be interpreted as so many steps closer to what is, without a doubt, in their eyes, the ideal model of the institution. In the vast majority of cases, indeed, the teachers may not be moved from their position on their application. The priority in the choice of their position is tantamount to those who have the seniority and the rank the higher. We can then set up the schools the most sought-after by the teachers as being those where the highest proportion of aggregate and faculty-aged children, and also as those where the stay in the post is the most long. These schools, most sought may, on the other hand, be characterized by the social origin of their public school. Thus, we will define five categories of schools : on the one hand, institutions that, to simplify, we could call it “very bourgeois” and ” bourgeoisie “, to the extent that certain socio-professional categories of parents of pupils (senior managers and liberal professions) are massively over-represented ; on the other hand, institutions are “popular” and “very popular” where the children of the workers occupy a position superior to their national proportion ; finally, institutions are “socially mixed” public school more mixed.
It is then verify that the schools the most sought after are also the schools with the most ” bourgeois “. The attraction exerted on teachers by these institutions will, therefore, be identified by the three indices mentioned previously, which allows us to ask three assumptions :
– high schools are very popular in the high schools, very ” bourgeois “, the proportion of qualified teachers rises steadily (and, at the same time, the proportion of teachers assistants is declining),
– the percentage of teachers older increases,
– the frequency of long stays in the position increases (the institutions with a strong representation of the people characterized on the contrary by a faster rotation of the teaching staff). “