Ontario Reduces Funding, Cuts Number of New Teaching Students by Half

Education Minister Liz Sandals announced a sweeping new curriculum for student teachers that will soon be implemented across the province.

These changes include:

• Training  in working with students of different backgrounds and those with special needs;
• Training in how to use technology in the classroom;
• Reducing per-student funding it provides to the province’s 13 education faculties by roughly 20 per cent;
• Doubling the amount of time it takes students to earn their degree, from one year to two;
• Halving the number of students admitted into teachers’ colleges every year, from 9,000 to 4,500.

“By modernizing our teacher education program,” Sandals said, “we can give students a greater depth of knowledge and also give them more opportunities to find jobs in their chosen field.”

Downsizing the number of accepted students is a much-needed response to the growing surplus of unemployed teachers in the province. According to the Ontario College of Teachers, one-third of graduates were unable to find jobs in their field, a radical jump from just 3 percent in 2006.

Ontario-trained teachers have difficulty finding teaching positions outside the province as well. This is due in part to a glut of teachers across the country, as well as the longer training period of student teachers outside the province and outside Canada. Doubling the length of study in Ontario and incorporating much-needed training on how to work with a wider variety of students with diverse needs will help Ontario graduates compete in an over-saturated market.

“Currently the requirements are not very specific and many of these items are not necessarily included (in each faculty) and the complaint from school boards for decades has been that not every teacher graduate has learned about special education,” said Sandals. “Now that will be a requirement.”

Meanwhile, the Council of Ontario Universities warned that the proposed cuts to funding — which it pegged at about one-third less — could compromise the quality of teacher education.

“Ontario universities are already doing more for students with less money than universities in any other province,” said council president Bonnie Patterson.

The new curriculum is set to launch in 2015.