Teacher shortages persisted this school year. What's being done to fill the gap for the next?

For several months this year, Katherine Korakakis' kids had substitute instructors that were "not qualified to teach the subject," said the Montreal parent, whose province started this school year thousands of teachers short.

"It wasn't a math teacher who was teaching math. It wasn't a French teacher who was teaching French."

She was already worried about learning loss after the pandemic, and scrambled to get her teens extra tutoring, a luxury she knows not everyone can afford. 

"Having a child score in the high 90s … one year in math and then having a non-qualified teacher coming in the second year and the child scoring a 50 — there's something wrong here," she said.

Teacher shortages have become an issue in nearly every province and territory. Kids facing one substitute teacher after another. French taught by a non-speaker. Relying on uncertified adults to supervise classrooms.

While some governments suggest an aging workforce and growing populations are behind the shortages, teachers themselves point to working conditions. So what's being done to improve the situation for next year?

In Surrey, B.C., Anne Whitmore noted that in her children' 17-class elementary school, four teachers were on leave as the school year concluded. Whenever a classroom teacher was away, her kids said, they sometimes got a substitute for part of the day, but also likely saw another class's teacher, the librarian, the music instructor and the principal fill in.

"How do you learn in an environment where you have no continuity?" Whitmore asked. "They're trying to scramble and have some kind of educational content, but really they're just getting through the day." 

Constantly backfilling others leaves fellow teachers, support staffers, guidance counsellors and administrators delaying their own responsibilities to students, "who now don't have access to those adults when they need them," said Brampton, Ont., high school science teacher Jason Bradshaw.  

Alison Osborne, who served as president of the Ontario Principals' Council this year, describes the situation as the worst she's seen in her 17 years as a principal, with administrators "constantly monitoring our phones just to see what the situation we're going to be walking into the next day," she said. 

The overall number of educators in K-12 public schools rose slightly — around three per cent — from 401,286 in 2018-2019 to 413,667 in 2022-2023, according to Statistics Canada, but depending on the region, the figures have wavered during that period.

CBC News asked each provincial and territorial ministry of education about teacher shortages, with B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec and New Brunswick responding. Some cited retirement of an aging workforce and rapid population growth as key factors influencing current shortages. 

Limited housing and a higher cost of living have perennially kept more teachers from certain regions, including remote and rural areas, said Clint Johnston, president designate of the Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF), the national group representing the unions of more than 365,000 K-12 teachers and education workers.

Yet Johnston says today's working conditions are what's behind current shortages, as teachers bail on the traditional 30-to-35-year teaching careers.