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The minister of learning's enthusiastic endorsement of a draft report on teacher supply and demand that was leaked before it could be reviewed by stakeholders is just another example of the government's refusal to deal with real issues affecting Alberta's schools, says ATA president Larry Booi.
The draft report prepared by Nichols Applied Management was supplied to the Calgary Herald and contains projections suggesting that, for the next 10 years, Alberta's supply of teachers will continue to exceed the province's demand. The report was prepared under the auspices of an advisory committee established by the government, but had yet to be considered or approved by the stakeholder representatives serving on the committee. As a result, Marvin Hackman, ATA representative, did not have an opportunity to advise the committee of the draft report's serious deficiencies.
According to Hackman, the draft report assumes that 85 percent of teacher graduates will actually enter and remain in the classroom. However, national indicators suggest that, at best, only 75 percent of graduates go on to become teachers and of these, as many as 25 to 30 percent leave to seek other careers within their first five years of employment.
In fact, the situation in Alberta may be worse. The draft report fails to take into account the 10,000 certificated teachers who have left Alberta's classrooms well before retirement. In the 1998/99 and 1999/00 school years alone, more than 1,400 active teachers left the profession. This is in addition to the 1,670 who actually began receiving a pension during the same period. As it stands, the draft report falsely assumes that anyone of working age who holds a teaching certificate is available and willing to teach.
Among other specific deficiencies identified is the assumption that the supply of and demand for teachers is uniform across all subjects and in all geographic areas. As well, the report fails to consider the potential loss of Alberta teachers to other jurisdictions in Canada and the United States that are currently experiencing full-blown teacher shortages. Hackman points out that Alberta has traditionally relied on importing teachers from other provinces to staff its schools. These provinces are already beginning to experience acute teacher shortages themselves, and Alberta cannot assume that it will be able to access an ongoing national surplus of qualified teachers to fill vacancies here. Taken together, the deficiencies identified by Hackman led him to conclude that the draft report's underlying premises are seriously flawed and that its projections cannot be relied upon.
"The teacher shortage is not a figment of our imagination and it is not a problem to be wished away," said Booi. "It is international in scope and Alberta will not be immune from its effects. The College of Alberta School Superintendents is already reporting that its members are having significant difficulty recruiting qualified science, mathematics and Career and Technology Studies teachers. The problem is particularly acute in rural areas. The draft report makes no attempt to deal with these subject area or geographic variations in teacher supply and demand. Nor does the draft report consider the issue in a larger, North American context."
The ATA president questioned the government's political motives. "Dr. Oberg's rush to embrace the draft report on the teacher shortage smacks of political opportunism and contrasts sharply with his decision to suppress for almost half a year the release of a report on Edmonton Public Schools' Small Class Size Project. It appears that the minister's enthusiasm for research depends largely on the extent to which that research confirms government's preconceived notions."
According to Booi, the government's "cavalier dismissal" of the teacher shortage issue is reminiscent of similar statements that were made while nurses were leaving their jobs and the province in droves. "The government said then that we didn't have to worry about a shortage of nurses. They were wrong and our health care system suffered unnecessarily as a result. Does the government really want to repeat the same mistake in education?"
