Teacher shortage continues one month after school went back: BCTF
Posted October 2, 2017 5:31 pm.
Last Updated October 2, 2017 5:36 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A tenth of the school year is over, but many students across the province still don’t have a permanent teacher, according to the BC Teachers’ Federation.
President Glen Hansman says what was once a glut has now become a drought of substitute teachers after the Surpreme Court of Canada ordered the province to hire more instructors.
Hansman says schools boards and the province need to do a better job of attracting and retaining teachers with incentives like student loan forgiveness, professional supports, and help with housing and moving expenses.
“Other than Quebec, which has lower standards, new teachers in BC have the lowest starting salaries when compared to other provinces. It makes it tough to convince the necessary number of candidates to come to BC when starting salaries are so low, there a very limited number of places to rent, and cost of living is so high.”
Hansman says it’s affecting special programming.
“Some of those school districts including Vancouver and Surrey are cancelling, or reassigning, the special ed teacher or the ESL teacher and reassigning them to a classroom. We simply can’t allow this to become the norm.”
