B.C. funds more teaching spaces in effort to ease shortage

Teacher shortages across British Columbia have prompted the provincial government to announce more funding for training and recruitment.

B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Glen Hansman said the shortages have reached the point where some school districts are hiring teachers who don’t have proper certificates and qualified teachers in Vancouver are leaving for plentiful jobs in other communities.

“This week, we’ve had stories of a mid-sized school district opening the floodgates to non-certified individuals in ways we haven’t seen before,” he said.

Hansman said the North Okanagan-Shuswap school district in the Salmon Arm and Armstrong areas has been forced to bring in teachers with incomplete training. He said there have always been small numbers of non-certified teachers, primarily in trades classes in remote areas, but the Salmon Arm area is not considered remote.

“Parents, rightfully, are very concerned about this,” he said.

But the extra funding announced Friday is a positive step, said Greater Victoria school district superintendent Piet Langstraat.

“The areas I see that I think will be very helpful for the Greater Victoria school district are, first of all, the additional spaces for specialists,” he said. “So like everyone else we do have challenges hiring qualified special-education teachers, French teachers, secondary math teachers and physics teachers.”

Total added funding to help those areas is $571,000.

“I’m very happy to see that occurring,” Langstraat said.

Langstraat said more funds being committed to Frenchimmersion teachers are also welcome.

“French immersion for us is also a challenge.”

As well, he praised the plan for Indigenous teacher training to be offered in Williams Lake/Quesnel to approximately 20 students.

“We actively recruit Indigenous teachers but the supply is so limited,” Langstraat. “To see funding to support that is fantastic.”

Education Minister Rob Fleming said the added funding comes in response to a task force appointed to identify challenges facing school districts across the province.

The task force report determined 54 school districts of the 60 in the province had difficulty finding and retaining teachers.

B.C. moved last year to hire 3,500 teachers following a Supreme Court of Canada decision that ruled former B.C. Liberal government legislation that stripped teachers of the right to negotiate class sizes and composition was unconstitutional.

The B.C. Teachers’ Federation said in a statement that 16 years of underfunding education by the former government cannot be made up overnight and investing in more teacher programs is only one necessary step toward a solution. The statement relates to a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada decision that restored B.C. teachers’ 2002 contract language regarding class size and composition.