Leaving teaching in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium: a duration analysis

This paper aims at a better understanding of the factors influencing the decision of young graduates who entered teaching to stay in that profession. The field of research covers secondary education teachers in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium. The data analysed comes from an administrative database containing historical records of 50,000 individuals who started teaching between 1973 and 1996. The analysis is carried out assuming a proportional hazard model and using the discrete- time method initiated by Prentice and Gloecker (1978). One of the main results is that the risk of exit is dramatically more important during the first periods of employment. That this risk tends also to increase over time suggesting that drop-out among young recruits is higher now than it was in the past. Location and labour market conditions seem to be of little impact. The risk of exit is the same in rural and urban areas and across provinces wherein unemployment rates vary dramatically. Finally, the significant deterioration of pay conditions (in relative terms) since the mid-80's has had no significant impact on the risk of exit. Of greater importance are supply-side (organisational) elements like the level of centralisation of recruitment decisions or the level of asymmetry between tenure and non-tenure personnel regarding job protection, access to full-time position