Community News
The important Issue of the recruitment and retention of teachers in Canada needs to be addressed
BY PAUL JUNOR
The ongoing shortage of teachers across Canada has prompted diverse responses from educational stakeholders. In a CBC Radio report on Monday, March 11th, 2024, Mouhmad Rachini mentioned that “Teacher shortage has staff across Canada in survival mode.”
The report features an interview with Gurpreet Kaur Bains who is the head of the language department at a high school in Surrey, B.C. She told Matt Galloway of the program Current, “We are always short teachers, and it’s a hard time filling out certain positions. Personally, for learning support teachers, sometimes we don’t get teachers to replace us who can do the job, so there will be individuals in our classrooms who are not familiar with the work.” The important issue of the recruitment and retention of teachers need to be addressed first as this is crucial to keeping new teachers in educational spaces.
Data revealed from Quebec for the school year 2023-24 indicated that there were over 8,500 teacher vacancies that remain unfilled, which includes almost 2,000 full-time positions. Nathalie Reid (Director of the Child Trauma Centre at the University of Regina) expressed concerns about teachers without certification in the classroom. She notes that there has been, “A dramatic increase in the inclusion of non-certified or non-qualified teachers in classrooms across Canada.” It was even more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Ontario, the five teachers’ unions have voiced concerns about the impact of the chronic shortage of certified and qualified teachers in the classroom. The Ontario government asked the Ontario Teachers Federation (OTFL) to increase the number of days that retired teachers can work from 50 to 95 in order to increase the available pool of teachers. The OTF refused this request.
On Tuesday, March 19th, 2024, three teacher unions: ETFO, OECTA and OSSTF/FEESO issued a joint statement titled, “No more band aid solutions: Ford government must deliver a real plan to address the growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis.” This statement presents the unions’ practical positions on how to address this issue.
The statement reads, “This is an emergency that the Ford Conservatives government is refusing to address. Ford and his government are actively exacerbating the crisis by their refusal to invest in publicly funded education, their obvious disdain for the teaching profession and its importance, failed policies, unconstitutional wage suppression legislation, and their willful ignorance of the support and resources: students, teachers, and education workers need to succeed.”
The statement identifies some of the areas that the government’s actions have impacted students. There has been the joining together of different classes into one, and the cancellation of others across Ontario. This is being felt directly by: students whose learning environments are compromised, teachers who are overstressed, and education workers who are overworked as they adapt to this.
The statement mentioned that while the focus has been on the lack of teachers, it is more aptly interpreted as a failure of the government to recruit and retain new teachers. The statement notes, “The crisis is not due to an actual shortage of teachers. Ontario has tens of thousands of qualified individuals who are leaving the profession.”
The reasons why teachers are leaving have to do with the nature of the learning and working conditions in Ontario coupled with the decade-long suppression of teachers credentials and expertise.” The statement lists four critical areas: compensation issues, growing violence in schools, need for small class sizes, and resources and support for special education.
The statement concludes by presenting actions that the government can take to resolve this crisis. “The solution to the teacher recruitment and retention crisis is to foster healthier schools and workplaces, for staff and students alike, which is where this government could be devoting its time and energy if it really cared.”