Ontario is facing a severe teacher shortage due to rising teacher retirements and continued growth in student enrolment. An internal Ministry of Education document raises concerns that the situation will get worse starting in 2027. According to the document, both student enrolment and teacher retirement rates are expected to increase in the coming years, while the supply of new teachers is expected to remain stable. This has led to warnings that the gap between teacher demand and supply will widen significantly starting in 2027. The education sector is already acutely aware of the teacher shortage. Teachers’ unions have cited deteriorating working conditions, increased classroom violence, lack of special education support, and insufficient budgets for classroom supplies as key issues, arguing that these issues are negatively impacting teacher recruitment and retention.
“Classroom conditions are getting worse,” said Karen Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO). “We are seeing more and more teachers leaving the profession within five years of their tenure,” she said. “The government is aware of the problem of teacher recruitment and retention but is not taking any real action to address it.”
In response, the Ontario Minister of Education said several measures are being taken to recruit teachers. “We’ve cut the processing time for domestic and international applicants in half, allowed second-year teachers to work as substitute teachers, and are expediting teacher recruitment by introducing a performance-based hiring system rather than seniority-based hiring,” said Edrita McKay, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Ministry of Education.
Just over a decade ago, Ontario was struggling with too many teachers, with unemployment rates reaching 40 percent for first-year teachers. In 2015, the federal government extended the graduate teacher program from one to two years, which led to a significant drop in graduate teacher enrolment. The number of students enrolled has dropped from 7,600 in 2011 to 4,500 in 2021, and unemployment among beginning teachers is now virtually non-existent. “I believe there is a lot of meaningful education and learning in the two-year program, but it may now be time to revisit that program and compress it,” said Karen Littlewood, president of the Ontario School Teachers’ Federation (OTF).
According to the Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF), there are about 48,000 qualified teachers who are not working in Ontario schools. “That just shows how poor the working conditions are,” Brown said. “It’s a job that can make a living as a teacher, but the poor working conditions are keeping many people from taking up this profession.”
The shortage of French-language teachers is particularly acute. There is a huge demand for French-language courses and programs in Ontario, but there is a serious shortage of teachers to meet the demand. The teachers’ union representing French-language school boards says the extension of the two-year program has exacerbated the problem. “French-language teachers were a minority when it was a one-year program, but now they are a rarity,” said Gabrielle Lemieux, a spokesperson for the French-language Teachers’ Federation.
The Ontario government has invested about $23 million in a strategy to recruit and retain French teachers from 2021-22, and said it is working to recruit more internationally trained French teachers. But despite these measures, the shortage of teachers remains severe. To address the shortage of technical teachers, the government has introduced regulations that will allow teachers with general qualifications to teach new essential technical courses.