Ontario adding 2,600 teacher candidate spaces amid shortage

Minister of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security Nolan Quinn, left, and Environment, Conservation and Parks Minister Todd McCarthy sit in the Ontario legislature at Queen's Park in Toronto, Monday, April 14, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston

TORONTO — Ontario is adding 2,600 spaces to teachers colleges across the province as it stares down a worsening teacher shortage, a move unions say is welcome though will not in isolation solve the problem.

The budget tabled last week by Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy contained a brief reference to spending $55.8 million over two years to train those new teachers by 2027.

Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn said the money will go toward adding new spaces at all schools offering a bachelor of education program and will start to be available as early as this September.

“There’s obviously a growth in the elementary and secondary school population with some of the immigration and asylum that has come to Canada, but recognizing that we do have a shortage of teachers into the future, this will provide about 2,600 new teaching seats,” Quinn said in an interview.

There is also a particular focus on northern and rural areas, technological education and French, which are all areas of heightened need, Quinn said. As well, some priority is being given to schools such as Queen’s University, Western University and Ontario Tech, which offer compressed programs.

Teachers college in Ontario is largely a two-year program, but some schools offer it in 16 months with no summer breaks.

The government is also looking at shortening the length of teachers college, documents previously obtained by The Canadian Press suggest. This funding for 2,600 new teachers is separate from those considerations, Quinn said.

“But we know that Ontario needs more teachers, and we’re going to continue to explore all avenues to getting more teachers into the classroom,” he said.

“Recognizing that going from a two-year to a one-year (program), there’s some complexities. We’ve had some additions to the curriculum that need to be looked at.”

Teachers college used to be one year in Ontario, but a decade ago the province was dealing with a teacher surplus, and the Liberal government at the time made teachers college two years.

Now there is a widely acknowledged shortage of teachers, with ministry officials predicting it will worsen starting in 2027.

Teachers union presidents say adding 2,600 new teacher education spots is a good start toward addressing the shortage but the government needs to work on not just recruitment, but retention.

“(The funding of new seats) is a good thing,” said René Jansen in de Wal, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.

“The problem is it ignores the real issues. So many teachers that are coming through the teachers colleges decide they’re not going to start teaching. They get to it and they look at teaching and go, ‘I’m going elsewhere.’”

The Ontario Teachers’ Federation estimates there are about 48,000 teachers who are certified but not currently working in the province’s education system.

Karen Littlewood, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, said the government should look more closely at improving working conditions.

“There’s 40,000 people who are fully qualified, who aren’t working in education right now, and that’s because of the working conditions -- the crumbling buildings, the overcrowding, the violence in the classroom,” she said.

“You can put more bodies in, but are they going to stay?”

Steve Orsini, the president and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities, said universities welcome the funding for educating 2,600 new teachers and $150 million a year for STEM education.

However, Orsini said, the government is not providing the needed amounts of operating funding.

“Without it, institutions will continue to face significant financial pressures that threaten their ability to support Ontario’s growing demand for highly skilled talent,” Orsini wrote in a statement.

Ontario’s colleges and universities have been increasingly struggling with finances in the face of low provincial funding, frozen tuition fees and federal cuts to international student permits. They say an additional $1.3 billion in funding over three years announced last year by the province does not come close to sustaining the sector.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 23, 2025.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press