Over the last number of years, New Brunswick has faced a shortfall of qualified teachers, a problem that is only expected to get worse with a wave of retirements over the next half a decade.
This year’s budget includes $604,000 to put together a recruitment plan, but Liberal education critic Francine Landry says it’s clear the government has failed to act quickly enough.
“We’ve seen an in increased number of students in the province, not only this year, we saw that in the two previous years as well and what has been done? Nothing,” she said.
“We need a strategy up and running.”
New Brunswick’s population has exploded in recent years, adding thousands to schools. It’s estimated that the population has grown by over 60,000 since 2020. A recent study from the University of New Brunswick warned that the growing population, along with a wave of teachers hitting retirement age, may lead to chronic staffing shortages.
Education minister Bill Hogan said the money earmarked for recruitment will bring together the school districts, along with the francophone and anglophone teacher’s associations to craft a strategy to carry the province through the next few years.
“We want to form a partnership with the districts to provide the expertise that we have and provide a quality recruitment tool for when you go to different job fairs,” he said.
Hogan says that one of the biggest struggles is that the province’s education programs aren’t full and many grads get snapped up by other provinces quickly. He also added that the process in order to approve spending for new positions takes so long that by the time school districts are scheduling interviews, other provinces are making offers to graduates from New Brunswick programs.
“One of the challenges is they need to wait to get their budget before they know how many contracts they provide, they need to see how many retirements they see how many B contracts they can offer,” he said.
“I think that there’s ways of knowing ahead of time how many teachers we’re going to need so we can offer more permanent contracts and we can help out a little bit with that.”
But Green education critic Kevin Arseneau says the best way to recruit new staff and retain those already in the system is to improve the working conditions.
“Number one, better salaries,” he said.
“Number two, the resources teachers need inside the classroom and number three, smaller class sizes.”