Let’s bet on long-term solutions to the teacher shortage

The shortage of staff in our schools has been making headlines for several weeks now.

Several short-term solutions can be considered to help those who choose to come and lend a hand to the school network. The many pitfalls and the lack of support at the start of practice are obstacles to the recruitment and retention of teaching staff in schools.

Training and supporting “unqualified” teachers will help the network in the short term, but this cannot in itself be a lasting solution. A bit like our roads, we can “patch” here and there, but this is not viable in the long term.

Two studies, one published in 2006, highlighted that the majority of early career teachers consider themselves ill-prepared for certain aspects of the teaching profession. This statistic is alarming! Would we tolerate that nearly half of our future doctors claim to be ill-prepared to treat their patients upon leaving the university ranks?

To begin with, we could review the methods of university training for future teachers and the resulting qualification.

1. Reduce the baccalaureate to three years, thus allowing graduates to integrate the school network more quickly.

2. Offer the possibility of a fourth year, focused on research and educational innovation, leading to a master’s degree in teaching. If training as a lawyer, which involves three years of study and about a year of practical work, leads to a master’s degree, why shouldn’t this be the case in education?

While some countries in Europe require a master’s degree to teach in public schools, given our severe shortage, this is not an option here. On the other hand, we can review certain paradigms with regard to the hiring and remuneration of teachers.

A bit like for nurses, where we find different grades, such as “auxiliary”, “clinician” and “practitioner”, each requiring a different level of training and having different working conditions and salaries, we could implement teaching grades, such as ‘unskilled’, ‘tolerance’, ‘bachelor’ and ‘master’, for example, each grade reflecting different training and experience and involving working conditions that are unique to it.

How can we justify that a teacher who is not legally qualified obtains the same working conditions as one who has a bachelor’s degree in teaching?

The idea that all teachers should have identical working conditions across the province was certainly useful in the late 1960s, during the era of “schoolmistresses”, but that era is over. The union federations will have to adapt their vision of the profession according to this new reality of the teaching environment. Not all teachers are equal, so working conditions need to reflect that. If we want to encourage the next generation of teachers to enroll in university faculties and improve their careers, we must make this effort more appealing in the long term.

The shortage of teachers can be solved with short-term solutions as well as with a long-term vision of the profession, but this requires a real openness to changes in mentality and practice on the part of the actors of the network. When you demand change, you have to be ready to change.

The next generation of Quebec students deserves better. What are we waiting for to act?

Photo Pierre-Paul Poulin