We have read that the shortage of teachers was a national tragedy. It is certainly a serious problem, but are there not other realities which more deserve the designation of national drama: the living conditions of the indigenous communities, endemic poverty, the decay of the French language in Montreal… Understanding the causes of this shortage, predicted for 20 years by MEQ demographers, allows us to be critical of the public authorities’ miracle cures.
As an element of explanation, there is the drop in the admission rate in university programs of secondary education and special education, then the high percentage of dropouts during studies. In the network of six Quebec universities, 50% of students leave their studies at the end of the first year and, among those who remain, 50% drop out at the end of the second. In 2019, at the baccalaureate for secondary education, only 53 to 55% of students graduated, and the rate is 68 to 70% for that of preschool-primary education. So there are fewer candidates for entry into teaching. The profession no longer attracts.
Too heavy workload
For those who teach, according to the 2015 survey by the Center for Research on Training and the Teaching Profession, the workload that is far too heavy is the first explanatory factor for dropping out at the start of their career. 25 to 30% of teachers leave teaching after the first year and up to 50% after five years (Létourneau, 2012).
But it is not only the new ones who drop out, the experienced teachers who also drop out, because for them, too, the task continues to increase and the conditions in which they have to work deteriorate. For a competent teacher, demanding of herself and her students and passionate about her work, a workweek is easily 45-50 hours (at a ridiculous salary).
Too many classes, including a large number of students considered to be at risk, having special conditions and requiring weekly monitoring by the teacher in primary school and the tutor in secondary school; frequent rudeness of pupils, which poses serious problems of classroom management, which takes a lot of time in and out of the classroom; often abusive interventions by parents and members of the school administration that undermine the authority of teachers …
It should be noted, however, that there are enormous differences between teaching in subsidized private schools (25% of pupils), in specific public projects (25% of pupils in the public) and so-called regular public classes, where they are held. massively find new teachers (the latter much less numerous). As there are differences between primary education and secondary education.
We must also mention the glaring lack of professional integration measures for newcomers, who are left to fend for themselves. Yet they have been claimed for decades. We even go so far as to ask experienced teachers to take charge of newcomers to help them!
Deprofessionalization
What is clear to those who taught in the years 1965-1990 is also the loss of professional autonomy and pedagogical freedom of the teaching body, which is increasingly experiencing a process of deprofessionalization and deskilling. This is explained by the new management of the neoliberal education system. The school must be managed like a business, according to the precepts of the New Public Management which advocates results-based management endorsed by recent Quebec laws, including laws 124 (2002), 88 (2008) and 105 (2018) ). From now on, we want to transform school principals and school service center leaders into managers, because they would know better than teachers how and what to teach and what a good school is! These managers demand results: pre-established pass rates and national graduation rates. The word “success” has replaced the word “learning”! What vision of education do we project to students, parents and the population?
It is indeed a diversion of the meaning of the school’s mission: to train human beings who, thanks to the knowledge and skills acquired, will become citizens capable of understanding to some extent the world in which they are live. To be able to intervene in the world as enlightened and critical citizens, in order to improve it and make it sustainable.