If you’re naturally angry, you shouldn’t read the Auditor General’s recent report on teachers. You could have high blood pressure.
One figure in particular caught our attention when it was published: there are some 30,000 non-legally qualified teachers in Quebec. Out of a total of 111,000. We are therefore talking about more than a quarter.
It is not abnormal to end up with non-legally qualified teachers within the network, but in such proportions, it is worrying.
Both the Auditor General and education experts have pointed this out over the past few days.
The quality of teaching will be affected and therefore learning delays are to be expected.
There is also, inevitably, an impact on the work of qualified teachers, which is bound to increase. They are often the ones who will have to give a helping hand to unqualified teachers.
The situation is untenable.
But none of this is entirely new.
The staggering number of teachers who are not legally qualified was revealed – more discreetly, it is true – two years ago thanks to research by Geneviève Sirois and Valérie Harnois, of TÉLUQ University.
This is precisely what is shocking: the Ministry of Education, despite alarm bells ringing left and right since the early 2000s about the shortage of teachers, has never taken the problem seriously. .
He never put forward a coherent action plan to prevent the shortage or, later, to remedy it.
What is even more shocking is that the Department has never seen fit to acquire the data needed to understand the issues related to this phenomenon.
The list, compiled by the Auditor General, is long. For example, the Department does not know precisely:
• the number of active teachers who are not legally qualified and their educational profile;
• the total number of positions already filled and to be filled;
• the average number of students per class;
• forecasts of the number of teaching posts to be filled in the future;
• retention, turnover and absenteeism rates;
• retirements;
• resignations and the reasons for them.
There is no worse blind than he who does not want to see.
The problem is also, of course, one of leadership.
You can’t really blame school service centers for the overabundance of unqualified teachers across the system. There are far too many vacancies for the number of qualified teachers interested in filling them.
In this file, it is Quebec that must be singled out.
The first to have held the post of Minister of Education in the Legault government, Jean-François Roberge, had presided over an increase in the remuneration of teachers with the aim of having a positive impact on attraction and retention. The salary of a teacher at the last level is now close to the Canadian average. The salary paid on entering the profession has also increased.
The Minister had also begun to address the subject of working conditions, the second aspect to be urgently reviewed to upgrade the profession. Among other things, by forming a committee on the composition of the class, which submitted its recommendations three months ago.
His successor, Bernard Drainville, must hasten to continue this work, which has only just begun.
The idea of adding “classroom assistants” (educators from the daycare service who give teachers a hand) is welcome, but it is far from sufficient.
Nor can we blame the minister for wanting to launch a new appeal to retired teachers, but that is not how we are going to solve the problem.
No. What Bernard Drainville must do is commit, as quickly as possible, to finding ways to lighten the workload of teachers in order to revalorize the profession and, within a few years, put an end to the shortage. Starting with a review of the composition of classes, in particular to better adapt to the number of students with learning difficulties.
This is perhaps his most complex challenge to overcome, but it is also the most important. The success of his term depends on it.