There’s a Teacher Shortage in Ontario

But the main reason why is the elephant in the room

Image from Graduate Programs for Educators

By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

The Toronto Star is reporting that Ontario Education Minister Steven Lecce is “looking at every option possible” to address the teacher shortage. In the article, some reasons for the problem are suggested, but not discussed in any depth, so I am providing that below:

The teacher training program (two years) is too long: Most students emerge from their undergraduate studies with a pile of debt, on average $28 000. If they are to pursue teaching, they will have to do two more years of university and take on more debt (an average of $14 000 based on the previous number). Young people have to ask themselves if that is wise. Rather than go into more debt, they could work and actually make money! To justify going into more debt they would have to be sure that in the long term they will be better off, either financially or in some other way. It’s true, there is more to life than money, and doing a socially meaningful and rewarding job is attractive to many people. But teacher training did used to be one year. Why did they increase it? Are teachers better prepared now than they were with the one-year program? Are the additional courses really necessary? 

Demographics: Our population is aging, and so is the workforce. The teaching profession is not immune, and the number of teachers reaching the point of retirement (able to collect an unreduced pension) has been increasing. But teachers are retiring ASAP even though that means a big loss of income (see below).

Retirements: Although, due to demographic factors, more teachers are eligible to retire with an unreduced pension, they are taking a substantial financial hit doing so. For example, a teacher who started in the profession at age 27 (typical) can retire with an unreduced pension at age 56. That is because her age plus years of service (29 in this case) adds up to 85 (the so-called 85 factor). However, she will receive, at that age, a 58% pension (58% of the average salary earned during her best 5 years) because the formula for the pension is 2% for every year of service. But at 56, many people are still paying off mortgages, have kids in post-secondary education, and may be facing elder-care costs for their aging parents. So the financial incentive to keep going for a few more years is very strong. The fact that high numbers of these people are nevertheless retiring (often continuing to work elsewhere), is telling.    

The pandemic: True, student academic achievement, behavior, and mental health were all negatively impacted by the pandemic which certainly has not made teaching easier or more rewarding.

Sick leave: Yes, teacher sick leave increases the need for supply teachers, which are hard to find. A day-to-day supply teacher lucky enough to get a job most days of the school year makes about $40 000 and get no benefits whatsoever. So when there is no supply, Senior classes are routinely canceled and the students sent to the cafeteria to study. Due largely to the ever-increasing on-the-job stresses, teachers are taking a fair number of sick days. Young teachers, eager to prove their mettle, are encouraged by school administrators to take on more than they can manage and find themselves physically and mentally exhausted. Teachers can access 11 sick days per year plus 120 days of short-term disability (at 90% pay), so rather than pace themselves (a new teacher should be acclimating herself with her main job, not running a long list of extracurriculars and volunteering to lead board initiatives) they end up relying on all that sick leave. It was not always so. Until Dalton McGuinty, in his wisdom, introduced that sick leave program, a beginning teacher got a maximum of 20 sick days per year. They could be banked- a strong incentive to stay healthy and build up short-term disability protection should a serious illness come along later. A portion of unused sick leave could be cashed in at retirement too- more incentive to stay healthy. 

Solutions?

So what does the Minister of Education propose to do about the shortage? According to the article, nothing! He boasts that he has cleared the way for retired teachers to do more supply days (they are usually limited to 50 days per year) which is obviously counter-productive as it encourages teachers to retire, exacerbating the teacher shortage. Then he brags that he has enabled unqualified trainees to teach in the schools. Anyway, these steps to address the problem obviously have not worked and he has nothing new to propose. 

For their part, school boards (yes, the same ones who are pushing teachers to do all that non-teaching volunteer work) have come up with “attendance management” programs to try to bully teachers into dragging themselves into work sick. As if firing teachers for booking off sick too often would help.

And as usual with its education reporting, the Toronto Star misses the mark. Ask a high school student today if they would consider getting into teaching and they will usually smile uncomfortably and say no. They can see what the system has become and are just eager to get out and move on. 

No, the above reasons the Star gives for the teacher shortage are part of the mix, but they are not the main ones which account for why we have a teacher shortage. The real reasons both have to do with the job no longer being desirable, and thus considered unattractive by young people. 

1. Declining pay: After six years (minimum) of university, you would hope to find a good paying job, with potential for advancement down the line. But it can take years of poorly paid supply work with no benefits before you land that first contract job and teacher starting pay is relatively low and has been declining for years.

   This chart compares teacher raises to the rate of inflation since 2012 and takes into account the latest arbitrated retroactive pay increases the Ford government fought so hard to prevent:

   

   As you can see, raises are consistently below inflation. Young people are not idiots and can see a clear trend. They know that this career path will lead to declining real wages over time.

2. Poor working conditions: Starting salary for a teacher (about $56 000) may be below average, but after ten years it will nearly double (not in real terms as the above data shows) to well-above average, so that can’t be the only reason young people are eschewing a teaching career. Anyway, people might be willing to accept lower pay if they thought that the job was satisfying and rewarding. No, the larger issue is that teachers today are frustrated and demoralized and many are quitting or hunkering down and counting the years until retirement. Why is this the case?

   • Ever lower academic expectations and standards: School boards want “equitable” academic outcomes, meaning members of identity groups considered marginalized (blacks and indigenous mostly) need to be doing as well as others. They want “marginalized” kids to have the same credit accumulation and graduation rates as others. They don’t want these kids failing courses or dropping out of school. That is all well and good, but to get these kids to stay in school and pass their courses, the simplest solution is to just lower the bar and make it easier, which is exactly what the boards are doing. Teachers are told they are not allowed to give marks of zero for work not handed in, but rather average whatever work was submitted. Failed tests are to be retaken, multiple times in some cases. If a student misses an exam, the term mark is awarded. Late work must be accepted with no penalty, etc. etc. Students and parents game the system (why wouldn’t they?). For teachers, who want kids to learn and therefore want high standards, it is all very depressing.

   • Near-zero behavioral expectations: School boards want “equitable” discipline, meaning kids belonging to “marginalized” identity-based groups are disciplined at the same rate as others. To achieve that, they are simply not handing out discipline for anything but the most egregious offenses (if that). Principals are not allowed to call police no matter what without board approval. This is why a major brawl recently went on right outside of the main office of a PDSB high school for over 7 minutes with absolutely no administrator taking any kind of action. They were on the phone with the superintendent to get instructions! For teachers the lack of consequences for inappropriate behavior means that if a student frequently skips your class, you are asked how you can better relate the curriculum to the student’s “lived experiences”. If a student tells you to “fuck off”, you are asked what you did to trigger him. Students who are violent are not dealt with and continue to pose a threat to teachers and other students alike. Brawls and drug dealing/use in schools is rampant. Sex acts, often for money, are commonplace. School administrators are aware of all this but the board won’t support them to take any effective action out of fear that this may “further stigmatize marginalized students”. Who wants to go to work every day in such an environment?

While it is true that the system has been going downhill for many years now, things have gotten much worse recently. The reason why is clear, but cannot be spoken. Not by teachers, not by administrators, not by school board trustees, and not by the Minister of Education or Premier Ford. Why is there a deafening silence on this matter? Politics, pure and simple.

Self-described diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has captured our institutions and no one wants to fight it because, politically, the numbers just don’t add up. If you’re a teacher you question it, you will be relentlessly attacked ad hominem by certain colleagues and administrators and the school board will put a target on your back. Your union will not defend you as they too have been captured. The College of Teachers, also totally captured, will investigate you. 

School board trustees who are opposed to DEI principles and want schools to be fair and champion equality and reward effort, merit, hard work, and self-discipline are attacked and shut down. As for our provincial government, they have done the political math and come to the conclusion that they have more to lose than gain by taking on DEI. Its proponents are well organized and well heeled. General population voters may be mostly opposed to DEI (if they even know what it really is), but they have higher priorities (like getting food on the table and paying the rent) and are not going to expend much energy or capital fighting DEI in schools. 

If you’re reading this you probably know that DEI, which sounds, at best, laudable, and at worst innocuous, is in fact anything but. 

Diversity in this context means absolute ideological conformity, equity means equality of identity-based group outcomes, and inclusion means exclusion of “privileged” people, the apex of privilege being white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and male (biologically actually male, that is). It should be noted, however, that Asians, who are high academic achievers (on average) are now described as “white adjacent” and are also subject to exclusion. 

DEI is the socio-economic axis of evil that is destroying Western liberal democracy and Canada is a hotbed of it. It is deeply entrenched in the schools at this point and teachers know it is not going anywhere anytime soon. They want out.

Last year, there were more teacher resignations than retirements in the Peel Board. That statistic alone should tell you the main reason why there is a teacher shortage, and Ford and Lecce have no credible plan to do anything to return high academic standards and effective discipline to the schools. They have been enabling the DEI industry for years and, politically, will live or die with it. As long as that is the case, expect finding qualified teachers to continue to be a major challenge.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Peel District School Board Claims to Hire Based on Merit

BREAKING NEWS: James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Gave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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