Category(s):
Population Dynamics and Immigration
Status: Active
Principal: Ted McDonald
Project Number: P0091
Year Approved: 2023
In the face of marked demographic changes and increased retirement rates for older teachers, schools and districts in NB are tasked with maintaining standards of teaching quality, which requires continuous attention to recruitment of new teachers and retention of currently employed teachers.
In the last few years, there has been increasing awareness raised around a teacher shortage in NB, specifically in specialty areas such as French immersion and STEM classes. In 2018, the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association (NBTA) announced they were expecting to lose 170 to 210 teachers to retirement every year for the next five years, with limited teachers able to fill those positions (Smith, 2018). This, coupled with some earlier research that revealed that about 30 percent of Canadian teachers leave their jobs within their first 5 years of service (CTF, 2004), may present a supply and demand imbalance for teachers in the NB Education system. With post-pandemic surges in the provincial population from other parts of Canada and other countries, supply shortages are further exacerbated.
It is also vital to understand which NB communities and districts are experiencing more pronounced issues in retaining qualified teachers and which require concerted recruitment efforts in coming years so as to ensure equitable delivery of education in NB.
To help address these challenges, the current study investigates the retention and mobility of teachers in NB within the last 10 years, identifying factors influencing their decisions to stay or leave the profession, and the province. In addition, the study considers one important pathway for new teachers to enter the NB education system, namely the transition of graduates from NB University B.Ed. programs into employment in the province’s Francophone and Anglophone school districts.
CTF. (2004). Recruitment and retention of teachers: Why teachers entering the profession remain or leave. CTF Economic and Member Services Bulletin(2004-5), 1-20
