Despite the measures taken by Quebec to facilitate the recruitment of educators, the shortage of staff in early childhood centres (CPE) remains marked, to the point where brand new premises built to meet growing demand are left vacant due to a lack of employees to make them usable. A situation that affects the quality of services offered to children in addition to forcing parents to put their careers on hold to take care of them.
“An educator will leave us to go clean up at the mine and make more money than here,” says France-Claude Goyette, the general director of the CPE La magie du rêve in Val-d’Or, to illustrate the challenges she faces in recruiting and retaining educators. At the bottom of the scale, a qualified educator currently receives a salary of $21.60 per hour. For unqualified educators, this salary drops to $18.52 per hour.
In this context, thousands of educators leave CPEs each year to work elsewhere, particularly in school-based daycare services, which generally offer more attractive salaries. A trend that could increase further this year at a time when the creation of thousands of classroom assistant positions to support primary school teachers has the effect of increasing the need for educators in the school network, several CPE directors fear.
“We’re definitely pulling the same blanket,” says Alexandra Rioux, assistant director of CPE La Ramée in the Magdalen Islands. Just a few days ago, another of her educators handed her resignation “to go to school.” A decision that this employee made reluctantly, with tears in her eyes, says M.me Rioux. “But financially, with the cost of living, she couldn’t do it anymore,” adds the manager, who claims to have lost six educators to the school network in one year.
“Salaries need to increase to be a more attractive environment,” she said, at a time when negotiations are continuing for this very purpose between the unions representing workers in CPEs and the Quebec government.
An inconclusive “offensive”
Since 2021, the government has implemented several measures totaling several hundred million dollars in order to reach its target of recruiting 18,000 new early childhood educators and qualifying 7,000 more by 2026. To do this, paid work-study training has been put in place, scholarships have been offered, while the criteria leading to obtaining the status of qualified educator have been reduced, among other things.
Thus, “between the 1er April 2021 and March 31, 2023, 3,686 net hires of educational staff were made by the childcare network, despite a labor shortage affecting several sectors. These are very encouraging results supporting the achievement of the recruitment target,” states in an email to Duty the Ministry of Labor.
The most recent data available, however, indicated a vacancy rate of 7% among CPE educators as of March 31, 2023.
“There was an offensive, but it did not succeed in reducing the needs on the ground,” notes the deputy general director of the Quebec Association of CPEs, Geneviève Blanchard.
The latter also expects that the “major project” that has been underway for three years to increase the number of CPE places in the province will make the lack of educators “more visible” in the “coming months.” CPEs are already forced to accommodate a limited number of children, compared to their capacity, due to the labor shortage.
“The other step is service interruptions,” warns Élise Paradis, general director of the Regroupement des CPE des régions de Québec et de Chaudière-Appalaches. Parents then find themselves called upon to come and take care of their children at the last minute following the departure of a CPE educator who was supposed to supervise them. “It’s something that happens from time to time.”
We receive calls from parents who are out of breath, on the verge of tears, but we can’t do anything.
Half-empty CPEs
In order to limit the occurrence of such situations, CPEs are increasingly relying on the recruitment of unqualified labour, which is more tolerated than before in the network, notes M.me Blanchard.
However, even these employees are increasingly difficult to recruit and retain, due to the working conditions and salaries offered to them.
“We are not able to open at our maximum capacity,” laments Alexandra Rioux. Due to the shortage of educators, her CPE can only accommodate 26 children out of a capacity of 80. As a result, parents must stay home to take care of their children instead of going to work, while others turn to social networks to try to find people willing to look after them on certain days of the week, the manager says.
“We receive calls from parents who are out of breath, on the verge of tears, but we can’t do anything,” continues M.me Rioux.
In Val-d’Or, the shortage is such that the CPE La magie du rêve does not always manage to meet “ministerial standards” regarding the proportion of qualified educators that must be in this establishment, confides France-Claude Goyette. “It has a big impact on the quality of the services that we offer,” she concedes.
“We don’t take the best possible candidate, we take the one we can get,” says Élise Paradis. “We end up with people who are inexperienced, poorly qualified, who require a lot of help and support from the team that is in place,” she adds. A situation that contributes to the “burnout” of the qualified educators in place and therefore harms their retention, she adds. “We have more staff turnover in the teams” than before, she notes.
Meanwhile, the aging of the population is making the shortage of early childhood centre directors worse every year, says Élyse Lebeau, general director of the Association des cadres des CPE. However, the vast majority of these directors are recruited from among educators, who are also in demand in the network. “It’s a bit of a vicious circle,” she says with a sigh.