“… if we continue to demand more and more from our teachers in the name of accountability and offer them less and less in the name of restraint, we run the risk of making the profession less and less attractive to the next generation.” Teachers in Crisis: A Crisis in Teaching? 2014
Just a few weeks ago, the news networks across our province covered a meeting of the Nova Scotia government’s Human Resources committee. At issue was the province’s supply of teachers. According to the Deputy Minister of Education, Tracey Barbrick, the number of people we have willing to pursue teaching qualifications is “heading in the right direction.” For his part, NSTU President Peter Day seems to feel that the government is focussing on the wrong part of the issue. To quote Day, “We can’t recruit our way out of a shortage”.
One of the key issues that inspired the meeting of the committee in the first place was a decision a few years back by the Houston government to offer new graduates from B.Ed. programs contracts right out of school as a way of dealing with Nova Scotia’s crippling teacher shortage. Although sounding good on paper, those contracts caused some teachers who were working towards a contract to be overlooked. Teachers who may have been slogging it out in our system for two or three years were understandably put out that brand new grads were being handed contracts. This would be analogous to newly trained tradespeople being handed their red-seal over other those who had already been apprenticing.
That’s why Day’s comments on the matter resonate so soundly with me. The major problem with government’s approach to teacher shortages is that they focus mainly on recruitment as opposed to retention. Indeed, I have been criticising that particular ideology for about a decade now, and have seen little appetite from government to adapt their approach.
Certainly, Stephen McNeil’s abject failure to authentically listen to teachers during his reign of error did little to solve the issue. In 2017, government again ignored retention issues, choosing instead to allow non-licenced people to fill in as substitutes. In 2019, a decision was made to increase the number of days retired teachers could work in schools, addressing supply issues as opposed to demand. Coming out of COVID, it was decided that B.Ed students could moonlight as substitute teachers. By 2024, the solution was to create a shorter route to getting a teaching licence.
Time and time and time again, the focus has been on ensuring there are enough people to answer our educational “help wanted” ads as opposed to asking why there are so many postings in the first place.
This somewhat misguided approach to the staffing crisis is not unique to us here in Nova Scotia. As the worldwide shortage of teachers drags on, there seems to be very little appetite for jurisdictions to learn the lesson that focussing on recruitment targets does not solve the problem. A great example of this comes out of the UK, where in 2014, a government program was offering B.Ed graduates bursaries of about $45,000 in order to entice young people into the profession. At the time, it was estimated that teacher recruitment targets had fallen as much 67% below expectations in some subject areas.
Fast forward to today and the number of teacher vacancies in the UK is at an all time high. A recent report from The National Foundation for Educational Research revealed that of the eighteen broad categories of secondary subjects, only 5 (English, Biology, History, Physical Education and Classics) were able to meet their recruitment targets. Seven subject areas (Business, Physics, Computing, Design and Technology, Music, Modern Foreign Language and Drama) failed to reach even halfway towards their target numbers.
To its credit, the bursary program, (which has recently been increased by about $9300 CAD) is noted as the most likely reason those five subjects were successful in recruiting young people into the profession. Since these teachers are no more likely to leave the profession than non-bursary recipients, there is some hope that this particular strategy will help in the long run. However, the same report showed that in the 2024/25 school year, a full ninety percent of teachers had considered leaving the profession.
Hitting recruitment targets seems unlikely to help with that particular nuance.
These numbers, although shocking, are relatively consistent across global jurisdictions. One report out of the US revealed that of the approximately 3.2 million teaching positions available, over 400,000 went either unfilled or were filled by unqualified people in the 2024 school year. Here in Canada, the Canadian Teachers Federation recently reported that almost half of all teachers were looking to leave the profession. A 2024 report from Education International that spanned 121 countries called the lack of teachers a global crisis. In 2024, UNESCO estimated that the world will need an additional 44 million teachers by 2030. The same report saw attrition rates among elementary teachers double between 2015 and 2025.
As consistent as the numbers are across the globe, the solutions are easily as comparable. Regardless of jurisdiction, teachers’ reasons for leaving the profession are remarkably similar. Feeling undervalued as professionals, experiencing lack of autonomy in decision making, poor working conditions; particularly in regards to student discipline and parental oversight, and wages top the list of reasons why folks pack their bags and head for the school house door. To that last point, that same report out of the UK noted that after a 5.5% increase in 2024, teacher salaries had returned to a level comparable to 2011 as measured in today’s dollars.
Hardly incentivising numbers to remain at the front of the class.
The frustrating bit for me is that these issues are not new, nor are they a surprise to anyone. Furthermore, each and every one of these elements is within the purview of governments to improve upon, with some simple policy changes and a loosening of the purse strings. All that is required is the political will to do so, and authentic collaboration with the people on the frontlines.
It could very well be that here in Nova Scotia, our teacher numbers are leveling out. If so, we would easily be the envy of many jurisdictions. However, I remain a tad pessimistic.
Recruitment efforts, although welcomed, have not, in any other instance, solved the staffing crisis in education. Without combining those efforts with a robust retention strategy, we will continue to need to fill the gaps in our classrooms with underqualified individuals.
The price our kids and our province pays in the long run from that shortcoming will easily outstrip the cost of any investment in retaining our current cadre of professionals.
frostededucation 