Update: here are the details of the Wynne Government's plans. I note that the plan calls for a 50% reduction in the number of B.Ed students in Ontario. I'm supportive of this aspect of the plan as the Wynne Government is stealing adopting a measure that I previously called for.
I am able to confirm that later this morning the Wynne Government will be announcing a radical shift in how teachers are trained at Ontario's universities. The announcement will centre around increasing the length of Bachelor of Education programs from one year to two years starting in 2015. Simply put, this is a terribly regressive policy lacking in any sensible public policy rationale. I've been following this issue for the better part of three years and the approach of Ontario's Government simply baffles me. Below I work through some of the underlying structural issues and expose how this announcement will be another massive blunder.
I am able to confirm that later this morning the Wynne Government will be announcing a radical shift in how teachers are trained at Ontario's universities. The announcement will centre around increasing the length of Bachelor of Education programs from one year to two years starting in 2015. Simply put, this is a terribly regressive policy lacking in any sensible public policy rationale. I've been following this issue for the better part of three years and the approach of Ontario's Government simply baffles me. Below I work through some of the underlying structural issues and expose how this announcement will be another massive blunder.
The Wynne Government is faces a number of problems with the teachers college file: (1) Ontario's universities are graduating 2000 to 3000 more teachers than the labour market can bear; (2) closing teachers colleges would prove unpopular to some degree; (3) approximately 15-20% Ontario's schools are scheduled to be closed over the next five years as the population ages, enrolment declines, and the birthrate continues to fall; (4) the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities is throwing good money after bad on operating grants for B.Ed students that have no hope of ever landing a job; (5) Ontario is subsidizing other Canadian (and foreign) jurisdictions that cannot (or cynically refuse to) train enough teachers to meet local demand; and, (6) Ontario faces a severe revenue problem, so any fix can't cost the government a dime.
Crafting a solution given these parameters is a difficult proposition and it's no surprise that the solution settled upon downloads all of the risk, debt, and uncertainty onto the backs of students (and their families). This regressive move has profound issues of intergenerational equity sitting at its core and it's clear that the Wynne Government decided to ignore a fair compromise in favour of a politically expedient one. Make no mistake about it, today's move is a policy in search of a problem and the changes will do little to address the underlying structural issues plaguing Ontario's young teachers (actually, I suspect the changes will make matters far worst).
The Wynne Government's rationale is that in lengthening B.Ed programs there will be an enhancement in the quality of teachers and a boost to student achievement. The narratives of "teacher quality", "student achievement", and "modernizing teacher education" are convenient lies to hide a massive policy blunder. To address these false narratives for a moment, I fail to see how an additional year of training would give rise to any of the aforementioned outcomes.
If anything on the student achievement front, schools need better funding and child poverty needs to be reduced. Teachers typically have at least five years of post-secondary education before they step into the classroom and a sixth year won't make for better teachers. Implementing a more selective admissions process might weed out students who aren't cut out to be in the classroom and properly resourcing schools to provide high-quality practicum opportunities would make more sense than lengthening degrees.
If anything on the student achievement front, schools need better funding and child poverty needs to be reduced. Teachers typically have at least five years of post-secondary education before they step into the classroom and a sixth year won't make for better teachers. Implementing a more selective admissions process might weed out students who aren't cut out to be in the classroom and properly resourcing schools to provide high-quality practicum opportunities would make more sense than lengthening degrees.
The core problem in all of this that Ontario's universities have been producing nearly double the number of teachers required to replace retiring teachers. The competition for jobs is fierce and often young teachers face years of underemployment or decide to leave Ontario to work. Currently there are tens of thousands of young un(der)employed teachers in Ontario who have never been given the chance to teach. With teacher retirements in Ontario hovering 5,000 per year there's a massive supply of untapped talent and wasted human potential.
Take a look at these graphs (the underlying data comes from OUAC statistics). There has been a long-term decline in the number of applicants to all of Ontario's teachers colleges. This would seem to indicate to me that students (and universities) are getting the message that a career in primary or secondary education isn't a sure bet. For the 2012-13 academic year there were approximately 6,751 students in Ontario's teachers colleges; additionally, for the 2013-14 there will be a decline in enrolment to 6,205 students. The problem that the McGuinty Government (and now the Wynne Government) set out to "fix" is solving itself on its own without unprecedented government intervention.
What's displayed in the graphs is one of the most massive policy blunders from the McGuinty era. Tens of thousands of students were admitted into teachers college in anticipation of a shortage of teachers that never came. Instead of admitting the mistake, both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities cynically decided to let universities peddle the impossible dream of becoming a teacher to thousands of students. This is how we arrived at this morning's announcement - sustained inaction combined with frankly stupid advice from senior bureaucrats in multiple ministries over a decade - with young workers taking a hit due to the rank incompetence of their elders and leaders who are clearly riding the short bus.
What I fear and what will no doubt become apparent in the years ahead is that a career in education will soon become impossible for young people coming from historically marginalized groups. With higher sticker shock from the cost of a two year B.Ed degree, the need to engage in prolonged periods of unpaid labour to acquire experience, and the need to incur high debt levels due to tuition costs - students from racialized communities, those with lower socio-economic status, and the children of immigrant parents will inevitably face extremely high barriers to entry. The face of the teaching profession will change to become more White, elite, and unreflective of Ontario's population.
I should note that I put a series of questions about the proposed changes to members of Premier Kathleen Wynne's Cabinet, namely Brad Duguid and Liz Sandals. Neither of them were prepared to provide answers to my questions.
For previous articles I've written on the structural problems facing young teachers and for some contextual background, see: here, here, here, and here. Finally, take a look at this video documenting the problems currently facing young teachers in Ontario.
I'm an unemployed teacher working as a server. I'm in debt. Luckily I have a parent that is still working at age 67 and able to support me while I struggle to find work.
ReplyDeleteLangille here. Thanks for the comment Jenny. Feel free to email me as I would like to hear about your experience looking for a teaching position.
ReplyDeleteShould you at least mention that every other jurisdiction in Canada requires two years' post-degree training for teachers? Ontario-trained teachers have a very hard time moving to another province and having their qualifications recognized, despite the labour mobility rules in the Agreement on Internal Trade, because of this gap.
ReplyDeleteDo other provinces have some remedy for the ills that are alleged to flow from requiring an extra year's training? Or is every one of them similarly deluded as to what's needed to produce good teachers?
Langille here. My mother started teaching in the late 1960s. She went to Teachers' College after high-school. It was a one year program. Forty-odd years on, students will now be required to have six years of post-secondary education to step into a classroom? Has teaching changed that drastically that five additional years of education is needed? No, clearly not.
ReplyDeleteWhat has changed is that a whole industry - be it the Teachers' Unions, the school boards, the universities, the regulatory colleges, or governments - which profit and benefit from the unpaid labour, debt, and competition from having thousands of young people feverishly competing for a scarce number of jobs. Students are being sold a bill of goods by the government who has betrayed them via policies that share no basis in reality.
As a way to curb the border-shopping university situation, is there a way to legislate home-grown teachers getting priority within the job search? If possible this would be an effective way to prevent a third-party from hijacking the movement on responsible teacher production.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I are recent graduates of UWO's B.Ed. program and are living in the UK to teach. Without this option I don't want to think about how we would have begun to pay our student loans.
I find it interesting that you are in the UK taking a job away from a 'home-grown' teacher while looking for legislation here in Ontario to stop a foreign trained teacher from having an equal opportunity at a job here.
DeleteWhat drives me bananas is that your professional status as a teacher in Ontario rests on two things - did you happen to graduate or otherwise look for a job between 1998 and 2003? And did you have the good sense to never move since? If you did these two things, you have a unionized teaching job. If not, you are a sub. And is there any accountability by the OCT? They could have refused to certify a certain proportion of teachers coming out of teachers college in the surplus-building years but of course they insiders with the Ministry and the Universities so would not want to call shenanigans on their friends. And who pays for this politeness? Young teachers, yes, but also teachers who for personal and other reasons have had to move and find themselves, due to Reg 274, at the bottom of the pile when it comes to teacher hiring and have to work as supply teachers after having worked for 20 or more years. It is absolutely ridiculous.
ReplyDelete