FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 13, 2024
CALGARY, AB – Alberta’s K-12 education system has a major role to play in solving the province’s long-standing shortage of skilled tradespeople, according to a new report from think tank Cardus. A big part of the solution is making more vocational-technical (vo-tech) courses available in Alberta high schools, helping to get more young Albertans interested in the trades. That’s going to require many more of Alberta’s skilled tradespeople to step into high school classrooms as vo-tech teachers. But in Retooling Teacher Certification: Bridging the Vocational-Technical Teacher Gap in Alberta, Cardus concludes that the province won’t find enough vo-tech teachers until it stops requiring all Alberta-certified teachers to hold a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree.
“Does the Alberta government really believe tradespeople are going to pause their careers, give up good incomes, and spend thousands of dollars returning to university to get a B.Ed. just to teach in a high school?” asks Catharine Kavanagh, Alberta Liaison Officer at Cardus. “The B.Ed. requirement makes sense for most teachers, but not for subject matter experts who hold official certifications, licenses, or even doctorates in their fields.”
Alberta’s vo-tech teacher shortage is immense. Retooling Teacher Certification cites a survey from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which found that nearly one in five Alberta high schools offering vo-tech programs in 2018 reported that “vo-tech teacher shortages significantly hinder their school’s capacity to provide quality instruction.”
Alberta needs to make it easier for skilled tradespeople to become certified teachers in the province by learning from successful policies globally while still maintaining educational quality. Retooling Teacher Certification offers three ways for Alberta to get do this:
- Allow holders of trade certificates with relevant work experience to get the equivalent of B.Ed. training with the equivalent of one year of full-time study.
- Allow holders of trade certificates with relevant work experience to teach vo-tech courses part-time, giving them four years to get the equivalent of B.Ed. training in order to teach full time.
- Allow vo-tech teachers who are completing three years of teaching on a limited-scope Letter of Authority to have access to an Interim Professional Certification, enabling them to enter the regular process toward permanent certification.
“The solution to Alberta’s shortage of skilled tradespeople begins in the classroom,” says Kavanagh. “But we need the province to clear the roadblocks that keep skilled tradespeople outside provincial classrooms.”
Retooling Teacher Certification: Bridging the Vocational-Technical Teacher Gap in Alberta is freely available online.
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MEDIA INQUIRIES
Daniel Proussalidis
Cardus – Director of Communications
613-899-5174
media@cardus.ca
Cardus – Imagination toward a thriving society
Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.