Teaching in Ontario

There is a profession absolutely vital to the well-being of any nation; those who teach. At the elementary and high school level, for example. Where, in Ontario alone a huge number of teaching professionals are graduated, despite that the system cannot absorb them. Ontario teachers colleges graduate roughly 9,400 annually, with additional numbers who graduate out of U.S. colleges in New York state which function to serve Canadian teaching graduates.

It is estimated that there are about 20,000 redundant teachers presently in Ontario alone. It's been years since graduating teachers could be assured they would find employment upon graduation. Figures from the Ontario College of Teachers inform that a mere 31% of new teaching graduates had full-time jobs. They're the fortunate ones who have been tapped to fill in the gaps where older teachers have retired. Whereas nine years earlier it was likelier that 70% of newly graduated teachers would find work in their chosen field.

The math tells it all: far too few job openings annually for teachers in Ontario, and 12,000 new yearly graduates to join the long and growing lists of those seeking full-time employment in the teaching workforce. Many of those patiently awaiting their big break have signed up as surplus teachers, to be called in as the occasion demands when full-time teachers become ill and take time off work, as "occasional teachers".

These fill-ins don't really teach, they know the curriculum, but it's hard to pick up where the full-time teacher has left off, for a day, and they end up student-sitting. The list of teachers has gradually accumulated to a very long one, yet the Province of Ontario sees the hiring of only 200 teachers a year to augment the current 4,500 teachers staffing public school board teaching facilities across the province. And they have the option of calling on a growing list of part-timers.

Even the newly-introduced full-time kindergarten program will only end up extending the list of full-time teachers by 19 jobs. Why this oversupply? It is a tediously familiar story, the polar opposite of what happened with medical schools. At about the same time that a report announced too many doctors in the system, another reported a shortage of teachers, with a surge of retiring teachers leaving the school boards short.

Just as medical teaching schools chopped their acceptance numbers for entries to medical teaching programs, teachers' colleges expanded their programs and U.S. border schools also took advantage of another opportunity to meet market demand. And just as the numbers of medical practitioners plummeted leaving Canadians bereft of the care they needed, the numbers of teachers increased, filling the shortage in the space of two years, then growing the list of unemployed teachers.

For the issue with too many qualified teachers, it would be nice if a system of quality control could be introduced whereby working teachers would have to demonstrate their ability to adequately meet targets of teaching children what they need to know throughout their learning years in elementary and high schools. Teachers who are not proficient in relaying information to their charges, those who simply are not good at the job, should exchange places with those who can and will do a superior teaching job.

Teachers' unions would just be thrilled about that, wouldn't they? The students labouring to learn subjects their teachers aren't adept at stimulating them to become engrossed in through lack of teaching suitability, would gain much with the introduction of teachers who are a credit to the profession.