One week before returning to class, there are still 700 teachers missing in Quebec.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
To explain that it is necessary to recruit teachers (often without experience or training in education) at the last minute again this year, the Legault government blames the shortage of manpower.
The excuse is too easy.
Its labor shortage, the education network creates it itself: it is estimated that between 20% and 40% of new teachers in Quebec leave the profession in the first five years, according to Geneviève Sirois, professor in school administration at TÉLUQ University. (Quebec has no official data on this. It’s problematic. Even Burkina Faso has this information…)
Young teachers leave mainly because the working conditions are very difficult at the start of their career in the public network. They mostly inherit from the more difficult classes. They often have fragmented tasks (eg teaching several subjects at several levels). It multiplies the preparation time, the heaviness of the work. Result: many of them quit teaching.
To make up for their departures, we have to hire more and more people… who have never been teachers or studied teaching. In four years, the number of teachers without training in education has quadrupled, from 830 to 3,436 teachers in 2020-2021.
In fact, it’s not complicated: currently, if you have a baccalaureate and you pass an interview, the school service center hires you.
This summer, Quebec recruited 6000 teachers among retired teachers and those neophytes in education.
In theory, it’s a great idea to recruit high school graduates who want to reorient themselves and become teachers. These recruits are welcome in education, and it is normal that we do not force them to go back four years full-time on the benches of university to obtain their baccalaureate in education.
The problem is that they start teaching, often in the most difficult classes, without any training in pedagogy. (They can enroll in a master’s in education, but places are limited. Memo to universities: accept more students, it’s a rush!)
However, being a teacher is a profession that can be learned.
We understand that Quebec cannot deprive itself of interesting candidates. Except that he must frame them properly. It is inconceivable that no one at the Ministry of Education has thought of developing, in collaboration with a university, an accelerated virtual program of teacher training for these new recruits.
In the very short term, Quebec will find the 700 missing teachers and we will solve this back-to-school crisis.
However, the problem will remain intact: as long as the working conditions of young teachers are so difficult, their retention rate will remain too low, and we will continue to have to recruit urgently.
During its last mandate, the Legault government raised the salaries of teachers (+ 18% at the entrance), released budgets for specialized classes, tutoring for students and – a novelty – mentoring for teachers.
It’s good, but it’s far from enough. In practice, difficult cases are getting harder and harder, the promised help is not always forthcoming, and young teachers are often left to fend for themselves.
To lighten their workload, we need to better support our young teachers. Assign them more resources such as special education technicians and remedial teachers (this solution applies to all teachers). Rethink this system which systematically assigns the heaviest tasks to the weakest recruits.
By creating the conditions to keep its young teachers, Quebec itself would solve its labor shortage.
But above all, it would acquire better teachers in the long term. Because young teachers would finally be given the means to maximize their potential.