Local Catholic board pushing for faster trainings

The London-area Catholic school board is pushing for shorter teacher training in Ontario as it faces educator shortages this fall.

“We've had a teacher shortage for two years now and we are actively looking to recruit more teachers,” said education director Vince Romeo. “In fact, we would be in a position to hire well over 200 teachers if we could find them.”

Romeo, who heads up 1,500 teachers and just over 3,000 employees, said the board will keep pushing for a review of the teachers' certification program, which was bumped to two years from one in 2014.

“We would support moving back to a one-year teacher certification in our universities,” he said.

The largest gaps in the system are for teachers specializing in French, math and music, Romeo said.

One reason for the shortage is the board is adding another 800 students this fall – roughly enough to fill two elementary schools or one large high school – to its base of about 24,000 students, he said.

Most of those new students, who live in north and northwest London, St. Thomas and Woodstock, reflect COVID-fuelled migration down Highway 401 from the GTA, Romeo said.

The board will continue to recruit teachers over the summer for schools in London and Middlesex, Oxford and Elgin counties, he said, and despite the acute shortage, every classroom will have a teacher come fall.

“Like many school boards, we continue to rely on newly retired teachers who come back and join the occasional teacher list,” Romeo said.

Western University education professor Bill Tucker, former director of the Thames Valley District school board, said returning to one-year teacher training is not the answer to the teacher shortage.

“That would be a short-sighted solution,” he suggested. “I believe the two-year bachelor of education degree is much more rigorous and better prepares our candidates for the real world of teaching.”

The root of the problem is the number of retirements combined with the global pandemic, Tucker said.

“First of all, you have the demographics of an education system where individuals are well into retirement age and decide to leave the profession,” he said, adding that has opened up many opportunities for newly trained teachers.

And thanks to COVID -19, boards have the added burden of replacing staff who are sick, required to quarantine, taking leaves of absence or retiring early, Tucker said.

“That . . . has really tipped the scales in the direction of teacher and other educational worker shortages that, at some point in time, will self-correct,” he said.

Eventually, he said, the number of retirements and leaves of absence “will ebb.”

“We'll return to a more sustained environment of staff replacements and hiring,” he said. “At least for one more year, school boards will have to remain creative especially in terms of hiring occasional teachers.”

Thames Valley recruiters are in the process of hiring more than 200 elementary and 150 high school teachers, a board official said, but aren't reporting any teacher shortages.

“Staff allocation is an annual process at TVDSB and will continue during the summer months where several factors are considered such as student enrolment, collective agreements – as it relates to class sizes – and TVDSB's commitment to student achievement, equity and well-being,” human resources superintendent Linda Nicholls said by email.

“We continue to receive and process applications and are on track to have robust staffing in place for the fall.”