The French school year swung open on September 1, 2023, but for many secondary schools the opening bell was accompanied by a stark silence in several classrooms. Vacant teaching posts lingered despite the fact that the state had already recruited a cadre of qualified educators. The mismatch between need and supply set the stage for a series of emergency measures that would culminate in a high‑profile announcement two years later.
On October 9, 2025, Minister of National Education Édouard Geffray stood in the courtyard of the Cachan polyvalent high school in the Val‑de‑Marne department and announced what he called a “hidden resource” within the civil service: 3,024 teachers who had passed the competitive exams required for permanent posts but who had not yet been assigned to any school. In French administrative jargon they are known as titulaires sur zone de remplacement (TZR). Geffray emphasized that these teachers could be dispatched to schools “in the hours or the days to come” using an AI‑powered allocation tool.
The TZR are not temporary substitutes in the conventional sense. They hold the same status as fully appointed teachers—titulaires—but their contracts place them in a reserve pool awaiting a permanent posting. Because they have already cleared the rigorous national exams, they are legally qualified to teach any subject for which they were tested. What makes them distinct is the absence of a school assignment, a bureaucratic limbo that leaves them ready, on paper, but idle.
Geffray’s declaration was specific: the 3,024 unassigned teachers would be sent to roughly 500 high schools that were experiencing “critical staffing shortages.
Geffray’s declaration was specific: the 3,024 unassigned teachers would be sent to roughly 500 high schools that were experiencing “critical staffing shortages.” The figure of 500 lycées underscores the breadth of the problem.
The same day Geffray spoke in Cachan, students across the country took to the streets and the school corridors to protest the prolonged absence of teachers. Their grievances were not abstract; they were rooted in missed lessons, delayed exams, and a growing sense that the system was failing to deliver the education promised by the Republic. The student mobilization added a political urgency to the minister’s technical solution, turning a staffing issue into a flashpoint of public discontent.
In the hours following the announcement, Bruno Bobkiewicz, secretary‑general of the SNPDEN‑UNSA teachers’ union, sat down for an interview that laid bare the administration’s deeper shortcomings. He described it as “hallucinant” that positions had remained vacant since the start of the school year while a pool of qualified teachers sat idle. “There is a complexity to the school map: need in discipline, but also geographically,” he warned, pointing to the twin problems of matching teachers to subject specialties and placing them in the right regions. Bobkiewicz’s critique suggested that the crisis was not merely a matter of numbers but of systemic mismanagement.
Geffray’s reference to an “AI‑powered” tool was meant to convey a sense of modern efficiency, facilitating deployment of the TZR within hours or days.
Even as the minister highlighted the immediacy of the solution, observers noted that the 3,024 teachers would not fully resolve the structural issues of replacement shortages, particularly the geographical distribution of teachers.
The minister’s tone remained supportive, emphasizing that the teachers were “people who have passed the competitive exams” but “have not yet been placed in front of students.”