Categories A, B and C in the French Civil Service: What They Actually Mean

The French civil service organises its posts into three hierarchical categories, A, B and C, based mainly on the level of qualification required and the nature of the responsibilities attached to a post. Category A covers management, design and expertise functions and generally requires at least a licence-level qualification; category B covers application and supervisory functions, typically requiring a baccalaureat; category C covers execution functions, generally accessible without a specific qualification beyond a basic level.

What defines category A?

Category A posts are built around conception, direction and expertise, meaning the people holding them design policy, run services, or bring specialist expertise rather than executing routine tasks set by someone else. Entry generally requires at least a licence (bac+3), though many category A concours, including some tracks of the ones covered on this site, ask for that qualification level or an equivalent set out in the specific opening notice. Both the CRPE and the IRA concours recruit into category A: a professeur des ecoles and an attache d’administration are both category A civil servants, even though their day-to-day work looks nothing alike.

What defines category B?

Category B posts sit between conception and execution, generally described as application functions: implementing policy decided elsewhere, supervising category C staff, and handling more technical or specialised tasks than category C without carrying the full design and management responsibility of category A. Entry typically requires a baccalaureat or an equivalent qualification, again set out precisely in the relevant concours notice.

What defines category C?

Category C posts are execution functions, the operational and administrative tasks that keep services running day to day. Entry generally does not require a specific diploma beyond a basic education level, or in some cases a vocational qualification tied to the specific post, and category C concours are correspondingly more accessible on paper, though competition for a given post still depends on how many candidates apply against how many vacancies are open.

Why does the category matter beyond the job title?

The category a post belongs to shapes pay scale, the qualification bar for entry, and, over a career, the promotion routes available, including internal promotion mechanisms that can move an agent from one category into another over time. Understanding which category a concours recruits into also clarifies what kind of competition to expect: category A concours generally draw candidates with higher qualifications competing for management and expertise roles, while category C concours draw a different pool entirely.

Where do CRPE and IRA laureates land?

Both are category A, but in very different professional families. A CRPE laureate becomes a professeur des ecoles, a category A post centred on teaching and pedagogy, described fully in what the CRPE is. An IRA laureate becomes an attache d’administration, a category A generalist management post spanning human resources, budget, legal affairs and project management, described in what the IRA concours is. A side by side comparison of how the two concours actually differ is in CRPE vs IRA compared.

Does category determine salary directly?

Category sets the general pay band and progression logic through echelons within a grade, but actual pay depends on the specific grade, echelon and any indemnities attached to the post, which is why two category A posts, such as professeur des ecoles and attache d’administration, do not necessarily pay the same at the same career stage. Indicative figures for the attache grade specifically are covered in attache d’administration salary.

Frequently asked questions

Can someone move from category C to category A over a career? Yes, internal promotion mechanisms exist that allow an agent to move between categories over time, generally by passing an internal concours or meeting specific promotion criteria, though the details depend on the corps and administration involved.

Is category A always harder to enter than category B or C? Not automatically; difficulty depends on the ratio of candidates to places for a specific concours in a specific session, but category A does generally require a higher qualification bar at entry, which shapes who is eligible to compete at all.

Do all category A posts require a concours? Most category A civil service posts are filled through a concours, though the specific format, externe, interne, troisieme concours or another mechanism, varies by corps.

Is a professeur des ecoles paid the same as an attache d’administration? Not necessarily; both are category A, but pay depends on the specific grade, echelon and applicable indemnities, which differ between the teaching and administrative career tracks.

Where can I check which category a specific concours recruits into? In that concours’s official opening notice, which specifies the corps, the grade and, by extension, the category the recruitment applies to.