Quebec Schools Resorting to Untrained Teachers Due to Severe Teacher Shortage: A Worrying Situation

On Sunday, this school service center (CSS) announced on Facebook that it would be holding an information meeting this week specifically for people “who have no training in teaching as well as retirees or retirees interested in working as a teacher or teacher in [les] schools”.

The reactions were quick. “I gave up teaching because the conditions were terrible,” one woman wrote in the post.

The teaching union in the Mitis region says it has received several emails from members who wanted to denounce this way of recruiting teachers. According to its president, this is the first time that an offer where it is so clearly indicated that you do not have to be trained in teaching has been posted by this service center.

At the end of May, the Auditor General of Quebec, Guylaine Leclerc, painted a less than rosy portrait of the state of the teaching force. In 2020-2021, a quarter of teachers, or about 30,000 people, were not legally qualified.

Monday, The Press asked the CSS des Phares which candidate profiles we wanted to obtain with such an announcement. After our email was sent, the call for “people without a teaching background” was removed from the service desk’s Facebook page.

“We have rectified our publications since the intention of our meeting was not to have untrained people, but to equip those who would like to see the options available to them as a substitute”, wrote Zoé to us. Ross-Lévesque, communications coordinator for this CSS.

The school service center specifies that even if the invitation has been withdrawn from social networks, the meeting scheduled for Thursday will take place for those who wish to do substitute teaching next year.

It is also indicated that currently, the substitutes have “at least a completed undergraduate university degree”.

For several years, in Quebec, people with a single diploma of 5^e secondary were called upon to teach students.

Education Minister Bernard Drainville recently told the Montreal Journal that it is not the “first choice”. “If the choice is between someone who is not legally qualified and no one at all…that’s the dilemma we are in right now,” he added.

“Worrying”

The Auditor General also noted in her report that the Ministry of Education does not know what the educational profile of people who are not legally qualified, mainly supply teachers, is. She expressed concern that “several students experience repeated teacher changes, which are detrimental to their academic success according to various studies.”

This is a concern shared by Jean Bernatchez, professor of educational sciences at the University of Quebec at Rimouski.

This is not the first time that schools in the province have made advertising campaigns aimed at unqualified teachers, but these advertisements are increasing. Last winter, it was the Montreal school service center that posted job offers for such candidates to work with “at risk” students.

These were positions in special education, a sector where the shortage of teachers is particularly glaring.

“We are there now in Quebec. However, there were very clear signals that had been sent over the past ten years indicating that we could experience such a shortage,” says Jean Bernatchez.

At the teaching union in the Mitis region, it is estimated that when it comes to recruiting teachers in Quebec, “it’s the world upside down”.

“We know that if we improved working conditions, people would stay and be interested in becoming teachers. Young people in the classes should not tell themselves that this is what they want to do later when they see their teachers go, ”says its president, Jean-François Gaumond.