There are so many excess teachers that the province has doubled the time required for an undergraduate degree to two years and cut funding to the universities offering teaching degrees by 25%. Nipissing University cancelled a 12-year-old program, offered in conjunction with Sir Wilfrid Laurier University, that offered both a teaching degree and a bachelor of arts. The University of Toronto got out of undergraduate education degrees altogether and will concentrate on post-graduate programs, thereby extending the study period – and the start of the job hunt – even further.
Teaching jobs are so scarce that graduates are looking to Australia or the UK, where the grass is greener. British schools have jobs available because the conditions aren’t nearly as attractive as in Canada. British recruiters are actively seeking to sign up frustrated Ontario graduates.
The reason teaching is so popular is simple: it’s a good job with excellent pay and attractive benefits. Yet, faced with an oversupplied market, a glut of jobless graduates, and a provincial government with a $12.5 billion deficit and a self-appointed deadline to balance the books, Ontario’s teachers unions have surveyed the situation and reached the least sensible of possible conclusions: they’re complaining loudly about poor treatment and demanding members authorize the right to call a strike unless the province offers improvements. (more...)
Commentary from Subway to Damascus:
Ont teacher strikes? Here we go again! @KellyMcParland has written a great oped in the NP http://t.co/S4F2FpgjIw #onpoli #onted
— Soc for Quality Educ (@SQESocQualEd) January 6, 2015
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