B.C. funds more teaching spaces in effort to ease teachers shortage
VICTORIA — The British Columbia government moved Friday to tackle widespread teacher shortage issues by funding more than 100 new training spaces, but the teachers’ union says that does little to provide help immediately needed in classrooms.
B.C. Teachers Federation president Glen Hansman said the shortage has reached the point where some school districts are hiring teachers who don’t have proper certificates and qualified teachers in Vancouver are leaving for plentiful jobs in other communities.
“This week we’ve had stories of a mid-sized school district opening the floodgates to non-certified individuals in ways we haven’t seen before,” he said.
Hansman said the North Okanagan-Shuswap school district in the Salmon Arm and Armstrong areas has been forced to bring in teachers with incomplete training. He said there have always been small numbers of non-certified teachers primarily in trades classes in remote areas, but the Salmon Arm area is not considered remote.