8,500 vacant teacher positions in Quebec, days before start of school year

With the school year beginning in just a few days, schools in Quebec are facing the “considerable challenge” of filling thousands of vacant teaching positions.

Quebec Minister of Education Bernard Drainville says the province needs to fill 8,558 teaching positions – 1,859 full-time roles and 6,699 part-time ones.

This time last year there were 5,335 teachers missing. But Drainville warns those numbers may have been slightly flawed as only 57-of-72 service centers had responded to the ministry’s survey. This year, 71-of-72 centre provided figures.

“So it’s a considerable challenge, I don’t need to tell you,” said Drainville said from the National Assembly Wednesday. “Nor do I need to tell you that this is a reality for which there is no magic solution.”

Drainville says “the next few weeks will be will be decisive.”

“I’m counting on the recruitment that is active, the recruitment that is going on as we speak,” said the minister. “I’m hoping that there will be, for example, retired teachers who still have the passion for teaching and who, looking at the situation will say, I’m going to go give them a hand.”

Drainville says the province may have to rely on teachers who are “not legally qualified.”

“The objective is to have a teacher that has a diploma in education,” he said. “That’s my first priority. If I cannot get such a person, we will have to hire what we call a non-legally-qualified teacher, which means a teacher without a licence in education… with the hope that this person will develop a passion for education and will want to become a legally qualified teacher.”

RELATED: More than one quarter of Quebec teachers not legally qualified: auditor general

Premier François Legault says the problem is not specific to Quebec, but happening all over the world.

“It’s a society problem,” said Legault. “It’s tough today to be a teacher, especially when you have 30 to 40 per cent of the children having learning difficulties in your classroom.

“All people in all countries or provinces are worried about, first, the impact of the pandemic, the impact of seeing more and more teachers leaving the network. So, of course, we’re trying to do our best.”

Salary increase, assistant teachers

Teachers’ unions have argued the province is having a hard time finding people who want to teach because of current working conditions.

Drainville says the government has already made changes to address that.

“Well we’ve changed the working conditions in the past few years,” he said. “We’ve increased the salary. We’ve created a tutoring program, a mentoring program as well… I’m also pushing very hard to have assistant teachers, a second adult in the classrooms that will support the teacher.

“It’s going to be tested in 200 schools starting this year. Where it’s been tested, it’s incredible. The teachers love it because they have help.

“We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars to have these assistant teachers deployed in as many public primary schools.”

WATCH: Quebec schools in need of teachers as new school year approaches