There is good news on the horizon for early-career teachers. The College’s 2014 survey results mark a turning point for Ontario’s teacher job market. The previously growing surplus of teachers is starting to recede, and this trend will accelerate over the next few years — largely because fewer people are entering the profession.

The survey shows that unemployment rates are now starting to fall for Ontario’s recent education graduates. This is welcome news after seven years of steady rises in this key employment outcome measure.

Far too many new teachers are still unemployed or underemployed, the latter being employed teachers who would like the opportunity for more teaching days. The wait time for full employment is still measured in years for the majority; however, the queues are becoming shorter and new teachers with historically in-demand qualifications are once again finding job success earlier in their careers.

The latest Transition to Teaching survey found that first-year teacher unemployment among Ontario-resident graduates dropped to 33 per cent from 41 the previous year. Fewer education graduates over the past few years, fewer teaching licences sought by individuals educated elsewhere, and more early-career teachers leaving the profession produced less competition for teaching jobs in Ontario in the 2013–14 school year than in recent years.

Elementary and most secondary first-year teacher job search outcomes in Ontario in the 2013–14 school year show clear gains over findings the previous year. Unemployment among French as a Second Language (FSL)-qualified teachers, as well as graduates of French-language programs, is down to about one in 10 through the first school year. And some secondary English-language qualifications that used to bring early career job success are emerging once again as more sought-after credentials. Graduates with secondary mathematics, sciences or computer studies as teaching subjects report much lower rates of unemployment than those without qualifications for any of these subjects.

Many early-career teachers licensed in Ontario continue to wait in long queues as they slowly make their way toward full employment. They proactively seek teaching jobs in Ontario’s publicly funded school system, in Ontario’s independent schools, in other provinces and abroad. Success is starting to come earlier; however, half of early-career teachers are still not fully settled after three years in the profession, and two in five of them after five years.

Improvements in job outcomes appear to be largely a result of fewer new Ontario teachers entering the crowded job market within the past few years. The annual number of new teachers in 2012 and 2013 — both Ontario faculty graduates and newly licensed teachers educated elsewhere — averaged 2,000 fewer per year than during the previous four-year period.

Job competition is also easing because Ontario licensed teachers are allowing their College memberships to lapse in steadily rising numbers. Analysis of College registry data finds that the five-year loss rate among Ontario graduates increased from under one in 10 (9.5 per cent) in 2005 to almost one in eight (12.2 per cent) in 2012. The loss rate now stands at more than one in seven (15.5 per cent).

New teacher licences in Ontario in 2014 and 2015 are forecast to again fall well below the very high 2008 through 2011 levels that caused much of the teacher surplus. Ontario’s enhanced teacher education program, which starts this September, will mean very few new Ontario graduates in 2016 and annual levels thereafter at about half of recent numbers.

With teacher retirements in the province forecast to hold steady through the end of the decade, this adds up to an improving jobs picture for future graduates.

Many of today’s surplus pool of unemployed and underemployed teachers have little Ontario teaching experience. Some are Ontario’s faculty of education graduates from the past five years who have had years of limited daily supply teaching or unemployment, or who left Ontario to teach elsewhere. Others are internationally educated teachers and Ontarians educated abroad who may have substantial teaching experience elsewhere but have largely been unemployed since first acquiring Ontario teaching licences.

As the shrinking Ontario teacher surplus improves new education graduate job prospects, Ontario school boards will likely need to recruit more vigorously for occasional, long-term occasional and regular teachers than in recent years; especially for French language school and FSL in English school staffing and secondary teaching subject specializations, which are already starting to show reduced unemployment rates. Some of this staffing may come from Ontario teachers licensed in years past with very little teaching experience or experience limited to other jurisdictions.

ABOUT OUR SURVEY

The Transition to Teaching study of new teachers in the 2013–14 school year examines the job-entry and professional experiences of teacher education graduates of 2004 through 2013, and new-to-Ontario teachers educated elsewhere and Ontario certified in 2012 and 2013. Web-based surveys were used with large samples from each of these groups of new teachers.

Responses were received from 4,037 teachers. Response rates varied from 14 to 34 per cent of the samples, with an average 22 per cent return overall. Accuracy rates for the individual surveys range from 2.6 to 6.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The Transition to Teaching study is made possible by a grant from the Ontario Ministry of Education. This report does not necessarily reflect the policies, views and requirements of the Ministry.

The full report of this year’s study is available at oct.ca.

Teacher Hiring Process

Legislation introduced in the fall of 2012 supports transparency in hiring by Ontario publicly funded school boards. The standardized procedures define a pathway to permanent employment that normally requires new teachers to start with daily and short-term occasional teaching, then apply for longer term occasional assignments and eventually compete for permanent employment opportunities with a board. This context is important for understanding the 2013–14 survey findings. As employment opportunities continue to improve for early-career teachers, this staged progress toward full employment is expected to continue for most new Ontario teachers. The legislation does not apply to Ontario independent school hiring processes.