(Quebec) The shortage of teachers is such that the Legault government is now calling into question the four-year teaching baccalaureate in force since 1994.
The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, is considering shortening the duration of this training to three years in order to make it more attractive and send reinforcements more quickly to schools.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESS
Bernard Drainville, Quebec Minister of Education
According to information obtained by The Presshe mandated his officials to seriously analyze this option.
The four-year baccalaureate is the main route to obtaining a teaching certificate and, thus, becoming a “legally qualified” teacher, as they say in the jargon.
Quebec plans to grant the certificate after a bachelor’s degree in teaching shortened to three years. The training could be condensed and the courses shortened. All scenarios are on the table.
Another option, which still involves limiting the baccalaureate to three years, would be to transform the fourth year into a full-time internship, “100% paid”, according to the expression used in Quebec.
The high school graduate would be hired and paid by a school service center, which would supervise and supervise him. He would be teaching a class full time, for a full school year. He would officially obtain his teaching certificate after this one-year exercise, if this scenario were adopted.
Currently, the fourth year of the baccalaureate consists of courses and internships in a school environment. The formula may vary from one university to another.
Expressway
Bernard Drainville promised at the start of the year to create a “fast track to a teaching certificate”, but he never went so far as to mention a shortened baccalaureate. It mainly focused on the creation of a shorter qualifying master’s degree, of 30 credits, intended for bachelor’s degree holders in relevant disciplines.
Three universities – TELUQ, Sherbrooke and Abitibi-Témiscamingue – have recently offered such training which can be completed in one year and leading to the teaching certificate. Quebec encourages other establishments to follow suit.
The regular qualifying master’s degree is 60 credits. It may take several years to complete it.
On August 23, when more than 8,000 teaching positions were unfilled, Prime Minister François Legault said that he was “not a magician” and that he could hardly send more qualified teachers into the network.
“A baccalaureate in education currently takes four years, so we can’t expect it to go quickly,” he said before making a remark that went under the radar.
“We are also looking, even if only temporarily, can we provide a university education that is less than four years? So are we able, perhaps, to take temporary measures? I think you have to be creative. »
He already feared an outcry. “Well, obviously, when you’re creative, it can be interpreted in all kinds of ways, like you want to lower the standards. It is certain that, in an ideal world, everyone, Bernard first and me too, we would like 100% of the teachers in our classes to be qualified with a baccalaureate, with a certificate, but we cannot do magic. »
Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc revealed in the spring that nearly 30,000 teachers, or nearly a quarter of the workforce, were not legally qualified in 2020-2021. This means that they did not have a teaching certificate.
“Yes, there are going to be a lot of non-legally qualified people this year necessarily” due to the shortage, recognized Bernard Drainville on the eve of the start of the school year. He said he hoped for at least “one adult” per class, even if this person had no university education.
In Quebec, universities are expected to resist the introduction of a three-year bachelor’s degree in teaching. There will be a debate on the merits… but also on the funds: cutting out a year of training would mean less income.
Nevertheless, aware of the glaring needs in schools, some universities, including that of Sherbrooke, are beginning to reshape the training to allow a real full-time job placement during the fourth year. Classes will be given in the evening or on weekends. These are pilot projects in force since the start of the school year or specific programs which will see the light of day soon.
Difficult recruitment
Quebec is struggling to increase the popularity of the baccalaureate in education. Despite a scholarship created last year for full-time students ($2,500 per session for a total of $20,000 at the end of the baccalaureate). And despite a 15% increase in the salaries of teachers at the start of their careers.
A teacher earns $53,541 at the bottom of the scale and $92,027 at the top.
Some universities reported an increase in registrations at the start of the school year based on preliminary data, but we are still waiting for an official portrait.
However, registrations for bachelor’s degrees in teaching were down last year, according to data from the Office of Interuniversity Cooperation. They decreased by 2.3% in fall 2022 compared to fall 2021. This erased the equivalent increase that occurred between 2020 and 2021. There were 17,887 students registered full-time and part-time in programs of baccalaureate leading to the teaching certificate in fall 2022.
Between 2004 and 2022, the number of new registrations for the baccalaureate in secondary education fell from 1,286 to 989. In the case of the baccalaureate in preschool education and primary education, this number increased from 1,531 to 1,789.
A $25,000 scholarship for future school psychologists
Quebec is creating a new $25,000 scholarship intended for psychology students who agree to join the education network at the end of their training. Future graduates will have to commit to practicing their profession in schools at least three days a week for two years in order to receive the prize pool. This scholarship is in addition to another, also worth $25,000, for psychology students who are doing their internship in the public network. For a student who is doing his internship in the public sector and who is starting his career in the education network, the scholarships will therefore total $50,000.
A reform against a backdrop of tensions
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The question of rapid routes to the patent is a source of tension between unions and the education sector.
Minister Bernard Drainville is undertaking a review of the teaching baccalaureate while the question of rapid routes to the certificate has been a source of tension between unions and the education community since last year. There were also flashpoints when the government adopted the four-year baccalaureate in 1994.
Mass resignations
A conflict between the government and the education community came to light last year. This was at the time when Mr. Drainville’s predecessor, Jean-François Roberge, authorized the qualifying master’s degree of 30 credits in three universities without waiting for the opinion of his committee of experts, the Accreditation Committee for training programs at teaching (CAPFE). The members of this committee resigned en bloc in May because Bernard Drainville’s reform (bill 23) provides for the abolition of the CAPFE. The future national institute of excellence in education, provided for in the bill, would be responsible for providing opinions to the minister on training programs, but it would only have the power of recommendation. The unions accuse the minister of wanting to create cheap training.
Be careful, says the Higher Education Council
The Higher Education Council, whose mandate will be reduced under the Drainville reform, has long noted difficulties in recruiting teachers and considers the shortage as “a real societal crisis”. However, in recent years he has raised significant concerns about measures adopted by the government to provide faster access to the teaching certificate. According to him, it is necessary to maintain solid initial training to provide quality education to students. He was nevertheless in favor of the recognition of prior learning to access the profession. It will soon publish a “report on the state and needs of education”, which will focus on pathways to the teaching profession in a context of shortage.
Flames in 1994
There were also flashes when, at the very end of its mandate, the Liberal government of Daniel Johnson introduced the four-year baccalaureate in teaching. Jacques Chagnon, who had just been sworn in as Minister of Education in 1994, made this decision, believing that the three-year baccalaureate was too theoretical a training course. Graduates were poorly prepared for classroom practice, he said. With the addition of a year of training, he had considerably increased the number of internship hours. Academics have an “esoteric language”, “have lost contact with what is done in the classroom” and must “get back with their feet on the ground, in practice”, he said, raising the controversy. With its reform, baccalaureate holders in other disciplines no longer had access to a one-year certificate to become teachers.
A surplus instead of a shortage
The context was quite different in 1994. The Ministry of Education maintained at the time that Quebec had no shortage of teachers. There were more teaching graduates each year than positions to be filled in the network, he said. Many inherited only part-time positions. Despite everything, we saw a turnaround in the situation emerging: around 40,000 teachers were going to retire within ten years, it was predicted in 1994. Above all, we saw it as a good opportunity to review teacher training, at a time when there was a change in family models, a greater presence of students from cultural communities and increasing school dropouts. The Chagnon reform caused a drop in new registrations in teaching baccalaureates during the second half of the 1990s.