December 1997
College Bulletins
continued
JET
The Blue Pages

Back to the
Front Page ...

New appointments to Council
 Council Approves Bylaw Change
 Council Approves Two Key Regulatory Changes
 New Professional Misconduct Regulation Sets Clear Rules
 1998 Membership Fees
 Membership and Service Fees
 Highlights of the Ontario College of Teachers Brief on Bill 160
 Information Sessions Link College to Providers

1998 Membership Fees

Members of the Ontario College of Teachers will pay their 1998 annual membership fee early in the new year.

School boards must submit the fees they have deducted from teachers’ pay by February 5, 1998. The same timetable will apply to private schools whose teachers contribute to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

The membership fee of $90 remains unchanged from 1997.

Members who do not pay their fees through payroll deduction are invoiced individually. For example:

  • members who paid their 1997 fee by any means other than payroll deduction will automatically receive an invoice for 1998. The due date for these invoices is March 6.
  • members who are newly employed and whose employers perform payroll deduction will also receive an invoice for 1998. After ensuring their employer has deducted the 1998 membership fee, the member should disregard the invoice.

The College will reconcile its records and issue individual invoices in early March for members who dropped off payrolls since the 1997 fee was collected.

Payroll deductions for the 1997 calendar year occurred in May and June because the College was required to wait until the government passed the regulation authorizing the membership fee. From now on, fee collections will occur early each year.

The College is working to make fee collections as cost-effective and efficient as possible so that administration costs are kept low. In 1997, about 130,000 of the College’s 162,000 members paid their membership fees through payroll deduction.

Membership in the Ontario College of Teachers is a requirement to maintain your licence to teach and to be employed by any publicly-funded school board or provincial school in Ontario.

Membership and Service Fees

The College’s current fees are:

Annual membership fee $90 (GST exempt)
Registration (initial) $25 (includes GST)
Evaluation  

teacher education outside of Ontario but within Canada

$125 (includes GST)

teacher education outside of Canada

$225 (includes GST)

reassessment of basicqualifications

$100 (includes GST)

additional qualification acquired outside Ontario

$50 (includes GST)
Penalty for late payment of annual fee $25 (includes GST)
Reinstatement of suspended membership $100 (includes GST) plus annual membership fee
Reinstatement of revoked membership $100 (includes GST) plus annual membership fee
Registration appeal $100 (includes GST)
Duplicate of Certificate of Registration and Qualification $50 (includes GST)
Duplicate tax receipt $10 (includes GST)
Duplicates (any other document) $25 (includes GST)
Statement of good standing $25 (includes GST)

Highlights of the Ontario College of Teachers Brief on Bill 160, the Education Quality Improvement Act, 1997

The Ontario College of Teachers Act, 1996 was passed to enable the government to discharge itself from the business of regulation and defer to the profession when making decisions about the teaching profession. All those who are directly associated with the College take this responsibility very seriously.

Contained in the proposed Education Quality Improvement Act, 1997, is a series of clauses that will give the Minister of Education and Training broad regulation-making powers that could be used to permit the hiring of individuals who are not teachers, and therefore not governed by or subject to the authority of the College, to deliver education programs to elementary and secondary students.

Clause 170.1 (4), in particular, would allow the creation of two classes of teachers in Ontario’s publicly-funded schools – those required to be College members and subject to the requirements of the College, and those who are ineligible for College membership and cannot be held publicly accountable for their conduct or teaching practice by the College.

If the Minister uses these new powers to establish qualifications and duties of new classes of teachers, the Minister would need to regulate how their right to practice is obtained or can be lost.

That would require the Minister to re-establish a structure within the ministry to regulate non-certified instructors in parallel with the College of Teachers’ regulation of qualified teachers.

The use of the term "new classes of teachers" in clause 170.1, subsection (4), collides with the realm of the regulation-making powers granted by the Legislature last year. Section 40. (1) of the Ontario College of Teachers Act, 1996 gives the Council of the College powers to make regulations on classes of certificates, qualifications and registration of teachers as well as how the right to teach can be obtained or lost.

After examining the implications of Bill 160 for the College of Teachers, the Council of the College resolved that:

"The Council of the Ontario College of Teachers recommend to the Minister of Education and Training that references to clauses 170.1 (3) (e), (4), and (5) of the Education Act as outlined in section 81 of Bill 160, and clause 262 (2) of the Education Act as outlined in section 118 of Bill 160 be withdrawn."

These clauses read:

Clause 170.1 (3) (e):
"The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations, (…) designating positions that are not teaching positions and duties that are not teachers duties and prescribing the minimum qualifications for a designated position or for performing designated duties"

Clause 170.1 (4):
"A regulation may establish different requirements for different classes of teacher, class, position, duty, school or any other variable"

Clause 170.1 (5):
"It shall not be presumed that a person is required to be a teacher solely because he or she holds a position that is not designated under clause (3) (e) or performs duties that are not designated under that clause"

Clause 262 (2):
"A person who is employed in a position or who performs duties designated by a regulation made under clause 170.1 (3) (e) is not required to be a teacher"

The Education Quality Improvement Act, 1997, if adopted with these clauses, permits individuals who are not certified teachers to be in charge of classrooms and deliver education programs to elementary and secondary students. It also creates a secondary class of teachers whose qualifications are unknown to the College of Teachers.

The College of Teachers believes the proposed legislation undermines the work of the College when it comes to protecting the public interest by ensuring that teachers are knowledgeable, competent and qualified.

Issues of Qualifications and Public Accountability

For parents and students, quality education means they have the right to expect that teachers who are licensed to teach have the knowledge and the qualifications to do so. They have the right to expect that teachers have completed pre-service teacher education programs and are participating in ongoing learning activities that enable them:

  • to plan the delivery of the required curriculum over the school year in a manner which connects the content being taught to that of previous and future years of schooling and to other subject areas in the curriculum
  • to adapt to evolving curriculum and understand how it is organized, and how it should be communicated
  • to develop varied strategies and design or select motivating tasks that best foster the learning of all their students
  • to assess the progress and achievement of their students and to help them meet expectations and fulfil their potential
  • to understand and provide for the differing learning needs of exceptional students, as well as the differences within the classroom based on culture, language, family context, prior schooling, student potential and responsiveness to preferred approaches to learning.

Teachers are specially trained to teach children and adolescents. Musicians, computer technicians, and athletes, unless they have successfully completed a pre-service teacher education program, are not.

Students require trained professionals who understand the curriculum to be delivered and know how to teach their students. Parents have different expectations about the instruction that a child receives when he or she joins a baseball team, receives swimming instruction or attends art classes on the weekend, than they do about the education received in their child’s school.

The College can not ensure that the training of these instructors meets the standards set by the College for the teaching profession. We certainly can not ensure that these individuals will adhere to a code of ethics or be subject to professional discipline if they breach this code.

Instructors, Other Professionals
and Paraprofessionals

Teachers are accustomed to working with other regulated professionals in the schools like social workers, speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and psychologists, when appropriate to "meet the physical, emotional and intellectual requirement of high needs students" (The Education Improvement Commission, The Road Ahead, p.20).

These professionals make independent decisions about students and may give advice to teachers on how to adapt students’ programs to suit their learning needs.

When teachers’ assistants and paraprofessionals such as library technicians, youth workers and native counsellors work with a teacher, they assist him or her with program delivery.

Teachers are always responsible for program planning, student assessment, as well as for the supervision of the individual who assists in the classroom.

It is the view of the College that recommendation 3.2 in The Road Ahead ignores the learning needs of the student, and fails to acknowledge the contribution of teachers to student learning. Teachers, in addition to having curriculum expertise in specific fields, are above all education specialists who do much more than just transmit a particular content and set of skills.

What is Teaching?

The current and former governments’ support of the establishment of an Ontario College of Teachers sent a clear signal to the public and teachers themselves that self-regulation would be the vehicle for making the teaching profession publicly accountable, and that the profession would have to take responsibility for the regulation of entrance into teaching and for defining the standards of practice of the profession.

By bringing into the school system individuals who will have neither the training nor the experience expected of certified teachers, and by sowing the seeds for a parallel regulatory structure, the government sends the wrong message to parents, students, school boards, teachers, and faculties of education with whom the College must work to fulfill its mandate.

Teachers who are qualified and accountable for their practice are best able to transmit the skills that students need to know and learn because of what qualified teachers know and are able to do.

Qualified teachers know their students and their needs, learning styles, abilities and learning backgrounds. They are able to use this knowledge to diagnose learning difficulties and identify learning needs and adapt the program to meet these needs. They know and understand the interdisciplinary nature of subjects and the underlying skills that are common to all subjects.

They are best trained to develop in their students skills such as thinking, communicating, reflecting, problem solving, risk-taking and managing information.

Above all, teachers must be trustworthy and must understand the legal and ethical responsibility of being a teacher. Members of the profession deeply appreciate the trust that it takes for parents to place their children in the care of teachers and take very seriously the profession’s responsibility to uphold that trust by regulating our members.

Key among the guiding principles of the College is that the pre-service teacher education program "is a developmental process that is the first stage of a life-long professional journey." The pre-service program should provide a strong foundation for the beginning of the teaching profession, with courses that integrate education foundations, teaching methodology and practical skills.

In considering matters of discipline and fitness to practice, the College is adopting procedures that emphasize public accountability, the protection of the public interest, due process and rehabilitation where appropriate. The College’s proposed professional misconduct regulation was recently reviewed and approved by Cabinet.

The College must continue this very important work. We believe it provides the groundwork to an excellent education system.

Conclusion

When we look at issues that affect the education system and the teaching profession in Ontario, the College of Teachers has developed the habit of asking this simple question, "What is the public interest here?"

When the issue is "who is best suited to uphold standards of quality and provide an improved level of service to students?", the answer has to be, unequivocally, that certified teachers are best prepared to teach the Ministry of Education and Training’s curriculum.

Teachers are faced with classrooms that have become increasingly heterogeneous, with children who have unique needs and diverse backgrounds. As the challenges facing Canadian society grow in magnitude, so does the need for teachers with the skills and strategies that will ensure children are able and ready to learn.

We submit to you that it is one thing to augment and/or facilitate the teaching practice in the classroom through the help of trained assistants or paraprofessionals; it is quite another to contemplate the substitution of qualified teachers with individuals who are not trained to teach students.

The College has the mandate, the resources and the commitment to move forward. This legislation undermines the ability of the Ontario College of Teachers to work with its members and the public to deliver on that mandate.

The government made a commitment to protect the public interest through the establishment of the Ontario College of Teachers. Surely the government must continue to honour that commitment.

College Chair Donna Marie Kennedy, Vice-Chair John Cruickshank and Registrar Margaret Wilson presented the College brief to the Standing Committee on the Administration of Justice on Monday, October 20. The full text of the College presentation is available here.

Information Sessions Link College to Providers

During three days of information sessions held this September, the College brought groups and individuals together to provide ideas and suggestions about the accreditation of in-service learning programs.

Representatives from school boards, faculties of education, teacher federations and the Ministry of Education and Training, as well as subject associations and private program providers, attended the three-day event.

Joe Atkinson, the co-ordinator of the Professional Affairs Department, together with managers Linda Grant and Janice Thomson, briefed participants on the work of the College and the department, including the preliminary work that has been done on standards of practice and education.

Input Appreciated

Participants provided input about the accreditation of in-service programs and offered suggestions on how to recognize and acknowledge professional learning. Small working groups were formed to respond to questions like, "How does your organization currently offer professional learning opportunities for members of the College?" and " What does the College need to know about an organization and its mandate in the area of professional learning?"

College staff also asked for the representatives’ views on other questions like, "How could your organization support the self-directed, purposeful learning activities of members of the College?" and "In addition to programs that we are all familiar with, what other kinds of activities could be recognized as on-going professional learning?"

Suggestions ranged from the formation of "focus groups on specific issues in education", to the continuation of the College’s efforts "to seek input and reaction on the standards, professional learning framework and accreditation of providers as they are developed."

Participants said they felt better informed about the College and the work of the Professional Affairs Department following the sessions. They also indicated the event afforded them an excellent opportunity to contribute ideas. "You obviously value the opinions of the members and that is evident through the process followed today," said one participant. "It was great to hear educators speak openly about how proud they are to be teachers," said another.

A complete list of the questions and responses are posted on the College web site at www.oct.ca/english/prof.htm and will form the basis of an article in a future edition of Professionally Speaking.