As we have seen, the shortage of school staff, which will increase between now and 2030, has several causes. It will not be resolved by waving a magic wand, but by the various short and longer term measures presented by specialists in the matter. The Minister of Education still has to listen to them.
Improve working conditions and salaries for all staff
There is a need to substantially improve the working conditions and salaries of all school staff; current negotiations should move in this direction. This implies recognizing, and not just in words, the professional autonomy and expertise of everyone: teachers, school support and daycare staff, members of professional orders and school administrators.
In the short term, we must accelerate access to tenure for newcomers and reduce precariousness, which affects one out of two teachers. We should have recourse to the staff in place, for example the people of the daycare service who have cut schedules could, for remuneration, lend a hand in the primary classes, as well as the technicians in special education, knowing however that this does not reduce the needs of exceptional students. Lightening the workload of the teaching staff would certainly reduce the number of departures and sick leave.
Gradually, the number of students per class should be reduced, starting with classes where many students require professional services. In addition, we must try to drastically reduce the bureaucratic procedures imposed on the teaching staff for pupils in difficulty: other staff could very well take care of it. It will be objected that this will require more personnel, but it is possible by arranging access to the teaching profession in a different way.
Relax the conditions for access to education
Attention, it is not a question of reducing the requirements, as the minister proposes, with training at a discount. No ! Teaching to teach is an intellectually, emotionally and even physically demanding job and responsibility.
Teachers who are not legally qualified must be offered appropriate and accessible support so that these people are able to perform their tasks and enable them to access training that opens the way to a legal qualification to teach.
It is also necessary to relax the conditions for obtaining the qualifying master’s degree, which is already done in various programs, and to develop other training methods more suited to teachers already in the classroom than the four-year bachelor’s degree full-time.
The initiative taken by the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) is promising; it aims, among other things, to arrange students’ course schedules in order to facilitate the balance between studies and work and personal life.
Certain aspects of initial training could also be improved, including training relating to classroom management, since many new teachers resign, ill-equipped to deal with too much indiscipline. Retired teachers could offer professional integration support measures, as these measures are often sorely lacking even though they have a positive impact on the retention of young teachers.
Rethinking the organization of work
Instead of continuing to want at all costs to model the organization of work on private business, according to the precepts of new public management, we must think of the school not as a business that offers a product or a service, but as a fundamental institution that aims for the individual and collective emancipation of all students through access to basic knowledge in various areas of human knowledge and the development of complex skills such as knowing how to read, write, practice a sport or an art.
This also implies having more heterogeneous classes and gradually putting an end to school segregation which places the poorest in the least favorable conditions for learning. It is also necessary to ensure the stability of those involved and to ensure that real school teams exist.
All of this is perfectly doable. Moreover, interesting experiments are underway. Let us think of the establishment of what some call a strategic community defined as “a formal multidisciplinary inter-organizational structure to which we entrust the mandate to imagine and implement innovations”.
Various interesting local initiatives so that teachers spend less time doing supervision or dealing with different committees exist. We must draw inspiration from this to make the school a living environment for young people and adults alike.
In short, concrete measures can be put in place now. It will be objected that it will be expensive. We will answer that we must stop selling off our natural resources to private enterprise and seriously tax the income of large corporations. This requires political will that will have to be stimulated by the demands of the population and organizations working in education for policy changes to take place – which should be possible in a democracy.
* Co-signatories: Réal Bergeron, retired professor from the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, member of the Regional Group of Actors for the Valorization of Teachers; David Lefrançois, professor at the University of Quebec in Outaouais; Marie-Christine Paret, retired from secondary and university education. In addition, Suzanne-G. Chartrand is the spokesperson for Debout pour l’école! and Parlons éducation, and Geneviève Sirois is a member of the Regional Group of Actors for the Valorization of Teachers.