Tough lesson: Thousands of ‘unqualified’ teachers in Quebec schools

Education experts say Quebec is increasingly reliant on "unqualified teachers", putting the quality of education at risk and exhausting school staff. 

Monique Henry has been teaching English in Quebec for the better part of two decades without official certification. As a so-called “unqualified” teacher, she has had to learn her profession the hard way.

When she started teaching in 2006 she struggled with unruly students. As she never completed a university education program, she didn’t learn classroom management techniques.

“You kind of just do it on the fly and learn with time,” said Henry, 46, who teaches English as a second language at a high school in St-Jérôme, Que., on a yearlong contract. “There’s no one to help you out . … If you have a problem, you’re kind of on your own.”

Henry is one of a growing number of unqualified teachers in Quebec schools who, education experts say, the provincial government is increasingly reliant on as the teaching shortage gets worse, putting the quality of education at risk and exhausting school staff.

Unqualified teachers could have university degrees in non-teaching subjects, or no post-secondary education at all. They come from a wide array of backgrounds but have one thing in common: they aren’t officially certified by the provincial government to teach.

Traditionally, teachers in Quebec become certified after completing a bachelor’s degree in education and obtaining a teaching licence. In response to the labour shortages in the education system, the province has lowered the bar to getting that designation, but there is little incentive for unqualified teachers to become certified because they are in such demand that school boards are hiring regardless of a candidate’s educational background.

In December, the Quebec Education Department said there were 9,184 unqualified teachers in the province’s public schools, up from 8,871 in May 2024 and 6,654 in May 2023. But that number only includes teachers on longer-term contracts and excludes substitutes, who make up the bulk of unqualified teachers.

In 2023, Quebec’s auditor general released a report revealing that in the 2020-21 school year there were more than 30,000 unqualified teachers in the education network, mostly substitutes, a number that represented more than one-quarter of all teachers.