It's time to take a serious look at the Canadian teacher shortage. Yes, it is international as well, and the reasons are similar but that doesn’t help us much in Canada. It verges on trite to call it a ‘perfect storm’ of causes, but that seems to be the case. A deeper dive into the reasons, turns up urban-rural differences, unaddressed violence and disruptive behaviour, remuneration, immigration, professional autonomy, workloads, status, teachers bashing, and class complexity, right off the top. 

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A study by Karsenti & Collins 2015, already concluded that “low salary combined with increased workload” heavily 

contributed to the shortage. Teachers we consulted said “the governments seem determined to make this job a misery, perhaps to save money”.

A large part of the problem is based around the fact that provinces and boards cannot retain those teachers they already have. For over a decade, 46% of new teachers leave the system before their 5th year. The very same people who seem to believe that we must let the market decide the wages of CEOs, or senior government mandarins, or even doctors, seem to balk at the idea that supply & demand also applies to teachers. 

 

All governments, but especially conservative governments, look at provincial expenditures and notice that the highest expenses by ministry are health and education, and within  those ministries, expenses are driven by remuneration for nurses and teachers. They sadly conclude that to keep expenditures down, they must rein in the total cohort and wages of nurses and teachers. Of course, this is a false economy because a healthy, well educated economy is a happy, more productive economy. Health and education are investments, not expenses. Even in crude economic terms, education is human capital formation. 

 

Some will note, the shortage is a rural and small town problem because it is still difficult to find a job in Toronto or Vancouver. This is because most new teachers are in their mid 20s and many want to work ‘where the action is’, but even Toronto is experiencing shortages of substitute teachers. Although the Canadian birth rate is below replacement, federal immigration policy is keeping schools full and adding the expense of ESL on top.   

 

The Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF) President Heidi Yetman maintains that “there is no teacher shortage” meaning, correctly, that there is no shortage of certified teachers in the Canadian population, many of whom seem to have little interest in teaching. What this does indicate is that increasing teachers’ college enrolment, is not the solution.  

 

Teachers are telling researchers that increased violence in schools is going largely. unaddressed. This stems from a toxic blend of income polarization, unmet, often undiagnosed, mental health needs, which have accelerated  during and after the covid period. This is an aspect of the class complexity issue. There are too many ‘hard to teach’ students per class. Teachers are clearly frustrated and often even blamed for violent outbursts in class like throwing chairs, or stabbing with scissors, that go without consequences after referring them to the office. Teachers may be asked what “they could have done differently” to prevent the incident. This happens 2-3 times and the teacher then resigns. Everyone seems surprised. It took BC teachers over a decade in court to finally get a court ruling against the former BC Liberals, that they could even negotiate class size and complexity, again, after the government legislated it away. 

 

A significant issue in the USA which has its echo in Canada, is teacher bashing related to the culture wars over sexual orientation, race, book banning and even wild accusations of grooming and pedophilia. The spear tip in the USA is “Moms for Liberty”. Their center of gravity is homophobia, with a minor in racism. Some of this is just reactionary Christo-Fascist ignorance, but some is related to an ideological struggle to privatize education.  In Canada, the folks behind the “Million Person March” in September 2023 seems to lead this spin off sequel to the “convoy” crowd who lost it over vaccinations. Without covid, this group of right wing malcontents had to come up with a new cause. The 2SLGBTQ+ folks have always been a convenient scapegoat for social conservatives, with a new level of faux outrage over trans folks. Of course, the ultimate goal of the ‘officer corps’ of social conservatives has been public funding of private religious schools. There are actually two groups in Canada, Family Freedom, (secular) and Hands Off Our Kids (religious and anti 2SLGBT+).   

 

Some of these issues are difficult to untangle but at the same time, conservative parents are demanding more control over the education system in terms of curriculum, pedagogy, and administration, while teachers are voting with their feet. Any educational sociologist will tell you that job satisfaction is highly related to professional autonomy. Demands by both radical parents and conservative politicians to control teachers and control education are the very factors exacerbating the teacher shortage. In the vernacular, “the more you try to tell us what and how to teach, the faster we quit.” 

 

Even liberal parents can generate the eye rolling response from teachers with special requests for their child, vacations out of sync with the school calendar, endless emails, requests for do-overs on tests or assignments, demanding higher grades, which all rolls into a general hassle, and marking and planning that is pushed off to the weekend.  

 

Education is expensive but some economic distortions seem inexcusable. Right now Alberta is Canada’s richest province but has the lowest per student spending in the country. Alberta even wants to fund the construction of private schools. This, of course, is a massive insult to public school teachers and supporters. For years, under the previous BC, right of center Liberals, BC had the second lowest per student funding while it had the strongest economy. This seems perverse. 

 

Solutions to problems that have festered and been aggravated, for political reasons, for decades may take just as long to remedy. The first rule, when you have dug yourself into a deep hole, is to stop digging. Some of this is naturally, money related including teacher remuneration and working conditions. Premiers and their governing parties understand that when they prioritize highways to donors speculative properties, or tax cuts to the already affluent, they also signal their simultaneous lack of interest in health and education. At the very least, stop the chorus of teacher bashing, and discourage zealous followers from doing the same. Boards and senior administrators need to have a serious discussion with principals with regard to the lack of support for teachers about instances of violence and general chaos in some classes making teaching and learning very difficult. We all understand why a youngster may be disturbed, nevertheless, they cannot be allowed to turn the education of 25-30 other kids upside down as a cry of help.   

 

When the teaching cohort was in surplus, governments got used to pushing teacher’s professional and collective bargaining concerns to the side. They seem to have become a little too used to that situation, That is no longer the case. If you want to understand the teacher shortage, it might be time to listen to teachers.