Last Friday evening, Nova Scotia Conservative party faithful gathered in downtown Halifax for their annual general meeting.
In the midst of his keynote address the Premier turned his attention to education. In what seemed to be a direct response to the current staffing crisis facing our schools, Houston announced a new plan for graduating more teachers. Under new rules, university students would be able to apply to B.Ed programs after completing two years of a degree program as opposed to the current three.
The Premier indicated that this would return teacher certification rules to “the old days”, presumably referencing the now defunct Teacher’s College in Truro. That institution, which opened in the mid 1800’s, did offer a four year degree in teacher education, although it only achieved the ability grant degrees in 1989. The college was shuttered in 1997 as a result of the substantial budgetary cuts implemented by the John Savage Liberals during their time in government.
I mention the Teacher’s College specifically because during its existence, that particular institution did graduate a great many excellent educators , some of whom, to their credit, are still working in the system. Thus, the Premier is partially right in saying that the model is not new.
Considering how much attention is currently being paid (finally) to the declining numbers of young people willing to choose teaching as a profession, there is also a bit of logic in looking to streamline the process of getting them trained.
Finally, the success of all those teachers who graduated from the four year program would speak to the fact that a shorter program, if properly funded and supported, can produce quality educators.
However, things got a bit dicey when the Premier stated that talks about this change had been going on “behind the scenes” between the government, universities and the NSTU for some time now. Although there was no immediate comment from the universities, NSTU President Ryan Lutes was quick to call that claim into question.
Posting on social media, Lutes stated quite bluntly that “The NSTU has not had meaningful consultation on these potential changes.” Lutes further went on to chastise the government for focussing on the wrong elements of the issue. He wrote “Recruiting our young people into a career that many teachers say is currently unsustainable is a disservice to our teachers and kids”.
This may sound like just more union rhetoric, but even the stoutest anti-union shill would probably have to capitulate that if teaching was actually as easy as some seem to think, recruitment wouldn’t be an issue. The problem, however, is that focussing on recruitment does not get to the real heart of the matter. The question is not “How do we get more teachers?”. The appropriate question is “How do we keep the ones we have?”.
To date, there have been multiple efforts to solve the issue of understaffing in the education sector. However, each and every one of them has focussed on increasing the supply of workers as opposed to maintaining it. Allowing non-licensed subs to work in schools, increasing the numbers of days retirees can work, handing out contracts to B.Ed grads. These are employer-centric attempts to simply find more bodies to plug the holes.
When precisely, is government going to take a serious look at what is causing the holes in the first place?
As long as the employer has plenty of workers, they never have to address more complex issues that are plaguing the modern school house. Teacher attrition rates, violence in the classroom, toothless discipline policies, abusive parents, burnout. Ask anyone working in schools and they will give you a veritable laundry list of items that, if addressed, would go a long way to keeping them in the career.
When it comes to worker satisfaction, teachers aren’t really that much different than any other employee. Like most folks who slog for a paycheque, they want to feel valued and respected, to have their voices heard, to be part of the decision making process and be treated like professionals. Announcing unilateral changes to things like how the profession gets accredited, without consultation, is the opposite of that.
The teacher shortage is an international problem right now, so, yes, it is important that we do everything we can to recruit new teachers. However, the best thing that we can do to make our province a desirable location to work is to create the conditions that make the work desirable.
When it comes to recruitment and retention strategies for teachers, it’s time to reverse our focus and put teacher retention first.
If we can do that, I’m pretty sure the recruitment will take care of itself.
frostededucation 
I agree; let’s look after the ones we have. I invite anyone who feels a need to criticize front line educators to spend just 20 minutes in a classroom. I think criticism will turn to respect and empathy very quickly.
Unfortunately, what you’re seeing as a problem, other folks would seize on as an opportunity. The vision of “21st Century” model of public/private education that we appear to be fated to pursue (barring some unforeseen sea change in our political leadership) looks forward to an endless stream of poorly trained teachers on short term gigs and cheap, digitally mediated instruction as the alternative to teacher professionalism and teacher retention. I don’t really expect much better from government, but it is sad to see universities like MSVU so willing to merely cash in.
Hi Rory. Have to agree. The Liberals, however, eviscerated the Universities by insisting on accreditation. They must do as they are told or they will lose their ability to grant B. Eds. We need to fix that as well.