After prolonging the suspense, the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, revealed on Friday the most recent data at his disposal concerning the number of positions to be filled in the education network. These indicate 1,406 regular full-time teaching positions and 4,298 part-time positions to be filled.
This data was provided by the province’s school service centres (CSS) to the minister over the weekend. In recent days, school principals and then the Parti Québécois have been eager to consult this rapidly evolving status report. The Ministry of Education’s dashboard will be updated every week from now on, in order to take into account the recruitment efforts that are continuing in the school network.
“The goal is to give our children the best possible start to the school year,” assured Minister Drainville, at a press conference in Montreal Friday morning. He hopes to be able to have one teacher per class in time for the start of the school year, in a week and a half. To do this, “obviously, we have to continue to find teachers” so that the number of positions to be filled drops to “zero,” he added.
The picture provided on Friday is much less bleak than the one presented by the Minister of Education on August 23, 2023, a few days before the start of the school year. The latter had then reported 8,558 missing teachers in the network based on data that had been provided by the CSS before they had completed their annual assignment session, an important moment in the recruitment process. Result: a week later, the ministry reported 3,420 teaching positions, a number that fell to 1,810 the following week.
This year, for the first time, the deadline for CSSs to complete the teacher assignment process was set for August 8 so that the vast majority of positions are filled three weeks before the start of the school year. An administrative change that undoubtedly contributed to limiting the scale of the figures presented this Friday regarding the teacher shortage.
“The assignment on August 8 will not magically make teachers appear,” but it will provide a “much more reliable picture of the shortage” that is raging in the network, and thus facilitate preparation for the start of the school year, Mr. Drainville argued on Friday. The number of positions to be filled has thus decreased by a third this year, compared to last year.
Growing demand
The anticipated shortage of teachers is partly explained by the noted growth in the student population. Some 20,000 new students are anticipated in the province’s elementary and secondary schools. However, this is similar growth to that noted last year and at the start of the 2019 school year, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
More details will follow.