In the Laurentides, a mountainous region northwest of Montreal, a small community school was done in by a teacher shortage last year.
“We had a school last year that had nobody,” says Laurier Teachers Union president Stephan Ethier, who declined to identify the school by name.
“Every single teacher in that school was [also teaching] emergency substitution on a regular basis… That took its toll on the staff.”
With no regular substitute teachers and no new teachers coming in, staff resigned or went on sick leave one by one. For the final weeks of the school year, students were left attending classes run by consultants and the board of education.
The school’s situation points to the serious effects of Quebec’s teacher shortage.
As of September 6, the province faces a shortage of 1,300 teachers, according to Quebec’s Minister of Education Bernard Drainville. But in an August 23 press conference, the education ministry had said the shortage was as high as 8,600.
The shortage has prompted Drainville to say he hopes to have at least “one adult per classroom” — a reference to the province’s practice of permitting individuals who are not professionally trained as teachers to teach.
More than a quarter of the individuals working in the province’s public schools as teachers have not been professionally trained to teach, according to Quebec’s 2023 auditor-general report. The report shows that, in the 2020-21 school year, 30,500 of the 111,000 people teaching in public schools were not legally qualified as teachers.
And this number is likely to increase further, says Josée Scalabrini, because the shortage of professionally-trained teachers is reaching heights not seen in 60 years. Scalabrini is president of the Fédération des syndicats de l’enseignement (FSE-CSQ), a coalition of 34 unions representing 87,000 teachers that is affiliated with Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), a union that represents 215,000 workers.
As schools scramble to fill positions, some students will have walked into their first day of class this year and found they have no assigned teacher. Other schools will have no substitutes available when teachers get sick.
No substitutes
With full and part-time teachers in short supply, substitute teachers are increasingly pulled in to work long-term in classrooms, says Scalabrini.
The result is a lack of substitute teachers, which leaves all teachers without a safety net when an educator gets sick or needs time off, says Nick Ross, president of the Chateauguay Valley Teachers.
“When a teacher calls in sick.. [many times the school is] going to have to get five teachers to teach during their non-teaching periods, to cover the absent teacher’s classes,” said Ross. It causes teachers stress and anxiety to have to constantly cover for their peers.
Another factor adding to teachers’ workloads is that many schools lack support staff like special education and social workers, says Scalabrini.
A survey by the FSE showed 100 per cent of teacher respondents said they lacked resources to help students with special education needs. Almost half reported their classrooms had children with learning challenges.
Canadian Affairs was unable to speak with any teachers for this story. Under union contracts, teachers are strongly discouraged from speaking to the media.
Tolerance d’engagement
The province’s solution to the shortage of professionally-trained teachers has been to drastically increase its reliance on individuals who aren’t professionally trained to teach, says Ross.
“It’s going to happen more and more often. It was more exceptional before whereas now it’s become the rule.”
Professionally-trained teachers obtain a teacher’s permit from the ministry of education after completing a post-secondary teaching program in Quebec or other provinces.
But schools that can’t find qualified teachers can seek the education ministry’s permission to bring someone who hasn’t trained as a teacher into a classroom. To obtain this permission — or tolerance d’engagement — a school must show the prospective candidate has a high school diploma and post-secondary training (completed or not) in a relevant field.
Schools usually look for individuals with a university degree first, says Ethier. If unsuccessful, they look for candidates with college degrees. Ethier confirmed that the Laurier Teachers Union, which represents 1,500 teachers, has hired educators under this contract, but did not disclose how many.
Tradespeople can also be approved to teach specialized courses — such as accounting or mechanics — provided they can present a vocational studies diploma or 3,000 hours of practical experience in lieu of a post-secondary diploma.
Individuals hired under a tolerance d’engagement are rarely hired for a full-time position, Ethier said. Rather, the bulk are placed in part-time or temporary placements.
But due to the shortage of professionally-trained teachers, many are now working more than 40 consecutive days in a position. Passing this threshold automatically entitles them to benefits under their union’s collective agreement, such as pay at salary scale and rights such as sick days and insurance.
The addition of untrained educators to a school’s staff can place an additional burden on professionally-trained teachers, Ethier says. They take on the role of showing their untrained colleagues the ropes while also managing their own classrooms.
“It is an incalculable burden added to their task,” says Scalabrini.
And “the quality of services offered to students may be impacted,” says Ethier.
Students with learning challenges may be taught by someone who is not trained to address their specific educational needs.
“There’s a reason why teachers need a [teaching permit] from the ministry to teach,” says Ethier. “Having a [permit] means that they are trained and qualified to offer educational services and to adapt services to students with special needs.”
It’s going to get ‘even worse’
Union leaders say decades of budgetary cuts under the Liberal, Parti Québécois and CAQ governments, as well as increased red tape, have led to the current crisis.
The cuts have led to large class sizes, significant demands on teachers and lower wages for teachers relative to other provinces, says Ethier.
“There’s a reason why we’re having all these problems right now,” says Ethier.
Ross worries the government isn’t taking low teacher retention and increasing retirements into account in its oversight of the province’s education system.
“The forecast even now is that it’s going to get even worse in the next five years,” says Ross. The “government, or especially this government, hasn’t valued the teaching profession.”
While the government’s guidance on tolerance d’engagements insists roles for non-trained teachers are “exceptionnelle et temporaire,” the medium-term trends suggest otherwise.
Editor’s Note: This piece has been updated to reflect more current data about the size of Quebec’s teacher shortage.
