Teacher shortage myths enable social inequities

The Ontario government is changing teachers’ education from a two year program to one year. This change is largely because there is supposedly a shortage of teachers. But data shows this is not the case.

 In Ontario there are between 40–100 thousand certified teachers unemployed or underemployed. Teachers can wait many years before they have job security, if they ever get it.

 Even if some shortages exist in specific geographic areas like the North, or specific subjects like Special Education, those are specific and can be addressed with targeted policies. However, the shortage is often used by politicians in a more general way. There is no general shortage of teachers. 

Social media posts by Occasional Teachers (OT) and Long Term Occasional (LTO) teachers show many are concerned about finding daily work and their chances of securing permanent contracts. My PhD research into precarious teachers supports these experiences.

 Despite teacher absences and shortages being global headlines, in Ontario tens of thousands of precarious teachers struggle to find secure work. Precarious labour contracts can possibly help explain some of this confusing data.

For example, teachers, on average, are also getting older. Research from the Canadian Centre on Policy Alternatives (CCPA) shows that in 2003, 46% of teachers had been teaching for more than 15 years and nearly 25% of teachers were in their 20s. Twenty years later, 57% of teachers have more than 15 years’ experience and only 13% are in their 20s. Precarious work in the larger economy as well as in teaching combined with a cost of living crisis, could be variables leading to greater numbers of older teachers. 

My research showed some teachers are unable to find secure work after many years searching. Other teachers were waiting 10 – 15 years for job security. Long, indefinite wait times for secure work, while possibly being in debt from post-secondary education, could prevent people from becoming teachers on one hand, or encourage them to leave early rather than wait.

Waiting for years to get full-time hours contributing towards pensions, could encourage some teachers to teach longer than they would have had they gained permanent secure work once they graduated teachers’ college. Additionally, as industries shift under neoliberal policies and employment opportunities decline, some workers with reduced options may try teaching as a career later in life, further adding to the higher ages. Lastly, a cost of living crisis and increased post-secondary costs may encourage some teachers to stay longer so that they can help their adult children financially. I’ve heard quite a few teachers say this.

Unfortunately, the CCPA also highlights that there is currently no research that combines administrative data, statistical data, and qualitative evidence. That type of research could help give a comprehensive picture of the educational labour sector and explain why there are reports of absences and shortages, despite there being a large pool of certified teachers.

Shortages and absences are often blamed on school violence, which is a serious issue and may be the case for some avoiding teaching. However, precarity is itself a form of structural violence which research shows leads to poor health and lower living standards. Precarious work is often not considered a factor for why qualified teachers are either not teaching or teaching less than they would like.

Precarious work creates indirect violence through reduced living standards, ill health, and shorter life spans. It is systemic and structural to neoliberal capitalism because it is a policy choice structured into our political economic system with the intent of reducing labour power. Nobody needs to be precarious.

Studies into precarious work show that it is damaging to the health of individuals and communities. Precarious workers have reduced access to the social determinants of health, face social stigma, and live in constant states of uncertainty. Work from the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario (PEPSO) research group shows that precarious work has been growing in Ontario, and is having negative health impacts on workers, but not all workers.  

Cultural and public sector inequities help shape precarious education work. For instance, many precarious teachers are racialized and teaching is generally a feminized profession, whereas jobs like policing are staffed predominantly by white men. Yet, police have more secure employment once they graduate from police college, than teachers do graduating from teachers’ college.

What type of democracy, social equity, and value systems exist when teachers are precarious while police have much better job security?

Teaching is also one of the jobs most impacted by Covid infections. Covid is airborne, schools can be super spreaders, teachers work closely with many students in large buildings that are not always well ventilated, and students often come to school sick. Studies show that teaching along with healthcare workers, are the most vulnerable occupations for infections. Covid infections could lead to numerous other illnesses, like cancers, HIV like immune damage, neurological issues, dementia, Postural Orthostatic Tachacharia Syndrome POTS, heart issues, and more. Covid is a vascular disease impacting every organ and “a condition of long lasting immune compromise.”

OTs and LTOs have limited to no benefits or paid sick days and risk long term or permanent disability from Covid or any related issues. They can wear masks, but there’s social pressure to not mask. I’ve heard some teachers say wearing a mask might prevent administrators from hiring someone. Other teachers report the only way to be hired permanently, is to ‘befriend admin.’ 

After 5 – 6 years of post-secondary education, volunteer work, and teaching evaluations, why do people becoming teachers need to be precarious at all? If teachers face scarce insecure work with no benefits, this could disincentivize people to become teachers, as well as affect learning conditions because students can sense teacher stress. Students benefit when teachers are secure, but a significant number of teachers have LTO contracts which offer indefinite insecurity. 

LTOs could be probationary and become permanent after a short time, like a school year, a few semesters, or some established period that teachers can plan on. Daily OTs who wish to, could opt for  permanent contracts with benefits, become ‘designated OTs’, and be used in different roles when there is no OT work. Like police, teachers’ graduates could be offered secure probationary work with school boards upon graduation; they do not all need to become teachers. They could be researchers, support staff, prep support, work with local organizations like museums, parks, art galleries, and community centres. This would grow a secure unionized public education sector, build resilient local economies, create many jobs, and enable best teaching practices.

The current system is preventing best practices, like critical and engaged pedagogies that require time for teacher reflection and authentic student feedback. For example, secondary teachers might have three classes with over 30 students in each class. Why not hire another teacher or two, cut those class sizes into two or three classes, and enable more one-on-one time for students and more research and reflection time for teachers? Not having lower class sizes is a policy preference.

Insights from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and historical lessons from the Banks of Canada and England in a crisis, show that having a precarious teacher work force is a political choice, not a monetary issue.

Mike Harris took $2 billion from education funding in the 1990s. The Liberals never restored it and Doug Ford has taken out $6.3 billion more. To properly educate teachers and the public about our political economy, underfunding narratives need to go back to the 1990s or earlier, not just the start of the Ford government.

Who should be  paying for more secure, unionized teachers? Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks suggest that the case for a wealth tax is stronger than ever, arguing that incomes of $25 million would be a good place to start applying such a levy.

Many problems in schools can be fixed with that money.

What’s needed is a narrative for a different political economy, one that sees education as more than job training. One that uses the insights from MMT for growing public goods, like secure public sector jobs. Unions should educate their members about MMT, and community groups can also help educate the public about equitable government spending potential.

Not having a public education sector providing secure work for all, is a policy choice. This choice aligns with neoliberal values that support controlling labour, not collaboration, and sees education as job training, as opposed to something larger that helps people learn about themselves and relate to the diverse world around them.

 Etymologically, education and schooling are different, but they overlap in practice. Education is about the larger process of connecting self to others and larger contexts, schooling is more specific skill development. Teacher to student ratios that enable best practices are required to equitably navigate students through the overlaps. Lowering class sizes, hiring more secure teachers, and ending teacher precarity, can enable this.

Equitable and inclusive teaching requires schools staffed not with precarious skeleton crews but with teachers who hold secure jobs. In this way, all students may be guaranteed safe and equitable learning spaces with teacher to student ratios enabling best practices. But those are not the goals of pro-privatization policy planners.

 The teacher shortage myth hides top down restructuring of public education towards privatization, it disciplines teachers, and it sets limits on people’s understanding and imagination of what democratic governments could and should spend money on and their ability to create public goods and secure work.

Seeing through the myth creates hope, prevents gaslighting, and opens possibilities.

 

 

Andrew Wilkin lives in Hamilton. His research explores precarious teaching andeducational labour conditions in a polycrisis. He can be found on Facebook, X at @teachrprecarity and Bluesky at @teachrprecarity.bsky.social.