Retirements to open doors for teaching jobs

Looming retirements will open up doors at public, Catholic schools, says survey

The Ontario College of Teachers’ annual survey reveals nearly one third of its membership could retire in five or fewer years.

The grey wave of teacher retirements building in Ontario has already been felt at the local public and Catholic school boards.

“This doesn’t surprise me at all,” said John Howitt, a superintendent of education for the Greater Essex County District School Board.

“Greater Essex was actually a little ahead of the curve on this. We had a bubble of retirements a few years ago and we had to do some hiring.”

The survey revealed just under 70,000 of the college’s 238,143 licensed members are 50 years or older. The earliest a teacher can retire with a full pension is at 55.

As the pool of retirees has grown, employment rates for first-year teachers have improved.

The number of graduating English-language teachers finding fulltime employment in their first year rose to 47 per cent in 2016. In 2014, only 34 per cent secured full-time jobs.

Those unable to find teaching work dropped to 33 per cent from 40 per cent in 2014.

The unemployment rate for first-year teachers who can teach in a French language program is nine per cent. Only five per cent of those qualified to teach French as a second language were unemployed in their first year.

“(The job market is) more optimistic here than it has been in the last seven or eight years,” said Terry Lyons, associate director of the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board.

“We have 20 elementary teachers and 26 secondary teachers with 30-plus years. I’m not sure they’ll all retire next year, but I imagine we’ll get some numbers.”

Lyons said 20 per cent of the Catholic board’s secondary school teachers have 25 or more years of experience while 10 per cent of elementary school teachers have similar experience.

Officials for both school boards said it currently takes non-French teachers between five to eight years to get a full-time contract. Those with French qualifications land permanent jobs quicker.

“We can’t hire them right out of teachers’ college because regulations say we have to hire those who have been on our occasional teachers’ list for 10 months and have finished a four-month long-term placement,” Lyons said. “It’s still nearly a two-year process.”

However, those on the boards’ occasional teachers lists will get hired, creating space for new graduates to replace them.

Howitt said it’s hard for school boards to predict when teachers might retire even if they’re eligible.

“We have staff who are eligible to retire and have passed the old mandatory retiring age of 65,” Howitt said. “They love their profession, still think they’re good at it and have something to offer the students of Windsor Essex.”

Both boards said they’ve prepared for the staff turnover by engaging with the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Education and by analyzing the skill sets they’re losing and trying to hire accordingly.

Aiding the improving picture of teacher employment is the fact there are fewer teachers coming out of university to compete for jobs. The province’s move to extend teachers’ training from one to two years resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of licensed teaching graduates. In 2015 there were more than 12,300 graduates but the number plummeted to 3,600 in 2016.

Lyons said the extension of teachers’ college has resulted in attracting candidates who are truly passionate about teaching.

“People have to be more serious to make that extra commitment both financially and in terms of time,” Lyons said.

(The job market is) more optimistic here than it has been in the last seven or eight years.