In this new school year, the “shortage” of teaching staff is felt. The Quebec education system is struggling to find teachers to fill positions. But why? Yet teaching is seen as a reliable and interesting “good” job. So why a shortage? We offer one line of thought among many others.
The current situation in the education network is not a fatality, but rather the result of the political choices of the last decades. Remember that 40 years ago, in a context of public finance crisis, the PQ government of René Lévesque issued a series of decrees that specifically targeted teachers. If the 20% reduction in wages and the 1983 strike – severely repressed – then marked the imagination, there was also the beginning of a structural precariousness which durably marked the conditions of employment.
In 1981 and 1982, thousands of teachers were affected by layoffs and layoffs. The latter are then assigned at the last minute to new tasks, up to 50 kilometers from home, in areas where they are not trained and without adequate educational support. In short, the government has chosen to favor one-off savings rather than staff stability, giving up expertise and qualified professionals.
Added to this precariousness was a more complex and heavier workload from the early 1980s. In a desire to reduce the budgets allocated to education, the working hours of the teaching staff as well as the ratio of pupils per group have been increased. In a desire for integration for all, the government has implemented a special education policy to integrate students with disabilities or social maladjustments or learning difficulties (HDAA) into regular classes, without however, provide teachers with sufficient adequate resources or training. Professional and support staff have been shunted from one school to another, with less and less time to provide individual follow-up to students. However, the special education policy, which has since been regularly reformulated and corrected, remains a central issue for the integration into the work of new teachers as well as the retention of those in post.
As for new teachers at the start of their career, half of them leave within the first five years. To the complex conditions described is added a laborious hiring process marked by chance, strewn with substitutes and small fragmented contracts, often in subjects outside the field of training, which many begin. This process of entering the profession, which is often done without support, means that many have not yet acquired the skills to deal with the organization of teaching work.
This precariousness also implies many changes of class, level or school spread over many years. For many, this way of entering the profession includes making their time available, an overload of work, when they are often granted the most complex tasks because of the seniority system. Thus, several teachers are plunged “head first” into so-called “regular” classes which are no longer regular because of the school adaptation policy.
Added to these difficulties are the many forms of violence that many face, both physical (being hit, being bitten, being spat on, etc.) and psychological (being insulted by a student or parent). In this context, teachers are quickly overloaded with work and experience hasty disillusionment with this profession. Thus, while many choose this profession for the privileged link to the student, ultimately, it is rather a question of surviving from day to day before changing “branch”.
In short, education workers carry out an increasingly complex mandate, with fewer and fewer resources, and in extremely precarious conditions, while seeing their professional autonomy reduced. What is more, the neoliberal reforms of the last decades also tend to project the burden of student success onto each teacher, by denying the impact of the structural factors at work. In this context, it would seem rather necessary to speak of a “shortage” of decent employment and working conditions than of a “shortage” of teachers. Teaching remains a very good job, but a major catch-up is needed in terms of working conditions.