Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services

Promoting an Efficient Labour Market for Teachers
A looming shift in demographics has characterized much of the thinking about the education
sector’s workforce during the past 20 years. By the late 1990s, evidence showed that people
working in the education sector were older on average than people in other sectors, but had
a lower age of retirement. 39 This in turn led to forecasts of the labour market for teachers.
Ministry discussion papers prior to the 2004 provincial labour framework discussions projected
that 32 per cent of the teacher workforce would retire by 2014. 40
The late 1990s’ threat of a teacher shortage also prompted the government and university
community to increase teacher education efforts. Funding for additional spaces was provided
to Ontario’s faculties of education, and new bachelor of education (B.Ed.) programs were
accredited at several Ontario universities. In addition, universities based in the United States
and Australia offer Ontario-accredited B.Ed. programs.
As a result of these dynamics, and the relative increase in compensation and benefits, the
number of certified teachers in Ontario increased during the past decade. The Ontario College
of Teachers (OCT), the province’s regulatory and licensing body, tracks and reports on the
labour market for new teachers. According to the OCT, the number of graduates from Ontariobased
teacher colleges who became certified teachers grew by over 3,000 per year between
1998–99 and 2009–10, a total increase of 49 per cent (3.7 per cent per year average annual
growth). 41 The rate of teacher retirement also decreased over this period; the OCT noted that
the number of new teachers exceeded the number of retirees by 1,800 per year in the early
part of the decade, but this gap has now widened to 7,600 a year. 42
Continued growth in the supply of teachers will lead to an inefficient labour market that fails to
capitalize on the skills of post-secondary graduates. The proposal to convert B.Ed. programs
to two years in length, with enrolment in each cohort halved, offers some prospect of reducing
the oversupply of teachers.
39 Andrew MacKenzie and Heather Dryburgh, “The Retirement Wave,” Statistics Canada Perspectives on Labour and Income 4 (February
2003), no. 2, downloaded from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/00203/6449-eng.html.
40 Ministry of Education, “Teacher Excellence — Unlocking Student Potential Through Continuing Professional Development,” August 2004,
downloaded from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/nr/04.03/teacherexcellence.pdf.
41 Ontario College of Teachers, 2010 Annual Report, downloaded from
http://www.oct.ca/annual_report/2010/en/downloads/OCT_16_New_Members_by_Faculty.xls.
42 Ontario College of Teachers, Transition to Teaching 2010, downloaded from http://www.oct.ca/publications/PDF/transitions10_e.pdf, p. 2.
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