With Quebec short more than 5,000 teachers, education minister hoping for 'one adult' per class

Quebec Education Minister Bernard Drainville says there will be "a lot of unqualified teachers this year" due to a severe shortage of educators across the province. 

According to a survey conducted by the Fédération québécoise des directions d'établissement d'enseignement (FQDE), 5,000 full-time and part-time teaching positions have yet to be filled — about three times as many as last year. 

The number doesn't include positions in schools on the island of Montreal. 

With the start of the school year fast approaching, some 1,440 special education technicians, 1,608 daycare educators and 912 speech therapists and other types of special educators are also missing from the education system.

"Of course, there will be unfilled positions," said Drainville during a news scrum Wednesday in Quebec City. 

He said he's hoping for at least one adult in each classroom at the start of the school year.

"The first priority is to have a legally qualified teacher in the class, that's No. 1. If we are not able to have a legally qualified teacher, then we have to accept an unqualified teacher ... and in certain cases ... we hope to have one adult," he said. 

He said the adult would ideally have a bachelor's degree, but it's not a requirement. 

As of Friday, Montreal's main French school service centre, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM), said 500 full-time and part-time positions were vacant. 

'You can't just wing being a teacher'

FQDE president Nicolas Prévost says the situation heading into the new school year is far from ideal for students. 

"Is it normal to see people without a bachelor's degree teaching in schools? We can't accept that. Our students are entitled to optimal service by having qualified people in their classrooms," he told Radio-Canada in an interview.

"You can't just wing being a teacher, so … this will certainly have long-term repercussions. It's a worrisome start to the school year."

Josée Scalabrini, president of the Fédération des syndicats de l'enseignement (FSE-CSQ), says she's not at all surprised by the extent of the teacher shortage.

"We've been saying for years that the teaching profession has been undervalued, … and that we need to negotiate quickly and intelligently to send a positive message to teachers who want to leave the profession, but that hasn't been done. Now we've hit a wall," she said. 

Scalabrini, whose federation represents some 87,000 teachers in school service centres and school boards, says it's imperative that the province works to revalorize the profession to encourage those in the system to stay in the field. 

"We want to improve working conditions, and that means class composition, lessening duties and, inevitably, upping compensation, which ultimately also has an influence on all that," she said. 

Scalabrini says 25 per cent of young teachers leave the profession within the first five years, and, in recent years, even more experienced teachers have been leaving at higher rates. 

She's calling on the government to "seize this opportunity" to respond to teachers' demands by entering into "real negotiations … with the aim of improving their working conditions."

Drainville's office did not respond to Radio-Canada's request for comment. 

In January 2022, the Quebec government said it wanted to recruit and train 8,000 teachers over the next five years to counter the labour shortage in education — an objective it intends to achieve, in part, by calling on retirees.

The government had promised a lump sum payment of $12,000 in May to teaching staff eligible for retirement if they volunteered to remain on the job full time or return to classroom. 

A survey conducted by Radio-Canada in July, however, showed that fewer than a 100 people had accepted the offer to date.