NBTA appeals to Holt government to help relieve teacher shortage, but how?

The New Brunswick Teachers' Association president says he wants to ensure the province addresses recruitment and retention of teachers, but he is short on the specifics of how to achieve that.

But with the projected retirement of 1,200 teachers over the next four years, it's important to come up with a plan for filling staffing gaps with qualified teachers, Peter Lagacy told reporters Tuesday.

Lagacy said he wants to work with Education Minister Claire Johnson, Post-Secondary Education Minister Alyson Townsend and Minister of Finance René Legacy to have a plan for shaping the public education system.

"We believe that if all can come together and align efforts, it will address both immediate needs and long-term priorities," he said. 

Lagacy didn't release the details of such a plan and how it could be achieved, but he did say he hopes to collaborate with Townsend to look at how the number of seats in universities for education students could be increased. 

At the start of the school year, Lagacy spoke of the 132 local permit teachers — teachers without education degrees — who stepped in to fill staffing gaps. At the time, he said he appreciated the work of the teachers on local-permit contracts but worried the province was too reliant on them.

Lagacy said he knows some universities are looking at how local-permit teachers can advance their training to get an education degree. 

At Tuesday's news conference, he said recruitment is easier to achieve than retention, which will require looking at how to improve classroom composition and working conditions, something also highlighted recently by Kelly Lamrock, New Brunswick's child, youth and seniors' advocate.

Lamrock said the latest provincial assessment results, which showed lower scores in younger grades, are a red flag for the education system and show an urgent need for changes to either classroom size or composition. 

Areas of higher need

Lagacy said he has requested "school specific data" from the province to help understand what areas of the province may be experiencing higher need for teachers.

"Quite often you look at an entire district, and some of them have, you know, 60 schools, and, you know, 1,800 teachers," he said.

"If I'm going to lose an upper level math or, you know, a specialist in that school, where can we find a replacement and start looking at those solutions now, and not in, you know, June, July and August when the school year is ready to start."

Lagacy said having talked to his colleagues across the country, he's aware of a Canada-wide teacher shortage. 

But he said there should be consideration going forward into potential incentives to keep education graduates in the province and then mentoring those new teachers.

"When I first started teaching, we had a great [program], it was called a beginning teacher mentorship program, and it was really good and renowned across the country as one of the best," said Lagacy.