Posts tagged with teacher.
Why cutting 1,000 places from Ontario’s teachers colleges will not work
Ontario's Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, John Milloy, announced this week that Ontario will cut 1,000 spaces from its teacher training programs in an attempt to correct an oversupply of unemployed B.Ed graduates.
Cutting enrolment at public universities is one of the few methods available to the government to be seen as addressing this problem. The cutting back of spaces in the province may have no impact on the oversupply of qualified teachers - but it will ensure that more teachers come from privileged backgrounds, with parents who could afford paying for a teacher's degree from elsewhere.
There already exists a market for foreign institutions - especially those in U.S. border states such as New York - offering teaching degrees to young Ontarians who are rejected within the province but whose parents can afford to pay for them to attend out-of-country. The Ontario government has no control over these universities and degrees from "Western Nations" are fully recognized when graduates return to the province in search of a full-time teaching position.
I'm already hearing from contacts that teachers' colleges along the border have engaged in a media buy and are likely to expand their enrolments this September to profit from the increased demand for out-of-province spaces.
There are many interests vested in keeping the status quo.
Students
Despite a glut of qualified teachers applying for a limited supply of teaching jobs (with the exception of certain high-school specializations), the rewards of securing a full-time teaching job more than outweigh the risks of unemployment - especially for those holding undergraduate degrees who find themselves already facing poor employment prospects.
With above-average pay, lots of time off - including two months in the summer - and union protections that prevent all but the absolute worst teachers from being fired, it should not be a surprise that many young people are pursuing a teaching career. It's one of the few career paths that offer job security in today's economy.
Students have little desire - but plenty of interest - to decrease spaces. After all, most people believe they're the exception to the rule and will find their dream job (teaching Kindergarten for many) immediately upon graduation.
Universities
Universities have little interest in regulating the flow of graduates from their programs - once they have the student's tuition and government funding units, their interests are fulfilled.
School boards
School boards benefit from an oversupply of teachers who fill the ranks of their supply teaching availability list.
But here's the twist: School boards are also dealing with a shortage of qualified teachers in specialized disciplines, such as French and high-school science. While they are able to better balance their budgets by hiring supply teachers - both retirees and recent graduates - because they do not have to pay benefits, they are also forced to spend more money recruiting teachers in specialized disciplines.
Sometimes they are forced to settle for less than ideally qualified candidates to fill positions; for example, having a non-French major who can speak French instructing the subject at the elementary level.
All parties could benefit from a serious plan to address the current imbalance in teaching graduates - both in numbers and qualifications.
A suggestion
The problem of an imbalance between teaching graduates and jobs can be solved by pre-screening candidates entering teachers colleges for jobs at local school boards when they graduate. To gain entrance to teachers' college, a candidate should be required to prove they have a position lined up with a public or private school waiting for them when they graduate.
This would enable school boards to directly recruit undergraduate students in specialized disciplines and for the creation of incentives for these in-demand graduates to pursue a teaching degree. As undergraduate students would require the endorsement of a school board to enter teachers' college, there would be significant incentives for those wishing to teach to be volunteering at primary and secondary schools. This pool of potential volunteers could be the basis of a comprehensive effort to increase educational outcomes at schools in the poorest socio-economic areas of Canada's cities.
Engaging children in Canada's poorest neighbourhoods - with role models attending university - would achieve more to increase the representation of our nation's lowest social classes in higher education than any present government program. This could help address the increasing gap between the well-off and the poor.
Schools would have an interest in "sponsoring" teaching candidates with roots in their local communities. This could also result in more students from rural, poor and inner-city areas, as well as from native reserves, attending teachers' colleges, which could do more than present "access" programs to encourage socio-economic diversity in the teaching profession.
The oversupply problem was not created overnight and it will not be solved with a knee-jerk reaction. The greatest cause of the current crisis was the knee-jerk responses of previous governments to the supply and demand crises they faced.
It is time for a serious review and restructuring of the teaching profession, and the best place to start is revamping the present assembly-line teaching colleges, which are producing too many graduates who are generalists and not enough who are specialists.
The only party with the power and motivation to act is the government.
What do you say, "education premier" Dalton?
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JOEY COLEMAN