The University of Manitoba has doubled the number of minorities studying to be teachers — years after introducing an aggressive target to admit nearly half of all education students from diverse backgrounds.

Three in 10 students in the faculty of education are now classified as belonging to the U of M's diversity categories, such as Indigenous people, students with disabilities and those who identify as LGBTQ, department numbers show.

The jump is substantially higher than the 13.9 per cent of education students who were classified as belonging to the diversity categories in the last decade.

The faculty remains shy of the ambitious 45 per cent goal it passed in 2016.

The policy was criticized in some circles, with a national columnist dismissing the U of M for stretching the "definition of minority group accommodation to the breaking point."

But in practice, the U of M says every student entered the program on their own merits, and didn't bump another student to do it, Francine Morin, associate dean of undergraduate studies at the faculty of education, said.

"We'd really like to think that our policy is making a difference and our numbers have more than doubled and I do think that is significant," she said.

"When we're reaching out to potential candidates, that policy might send a message that we're a welcoming and supportive environment — a place that's going to be safe and inclusive."

Last fall, 66 of the 225 new students — 29.3 per cent — self-declared as belonging to one of U of M's diversity categories.

Diversifying the teaching pool

Morin can only guess the rationale behind the spike. She says that recruitment campaigns, a diversifying population and perhaps a greater willingness from students to self-identify has contributed, she said.

The new policy was intended to make the teaching staff in Manitoba schools more reflective of the student body. The majority of teachers are white and female.

"Our population of teachers is really not diverse enough to meet the needs of K-12 students and their communities," Morin said.

"We also believe that diverse people simply bring different perspectives, different traditions … and a whole range of interesting experiences into classrooms, and they can use all of that to enrich the lives of their students in schools."

The faculty of education instituted a diversity policy in 2016 that would allot as much as 45 per cent of student spots to minorities. In practice, minorities are comprising around three in 10 of all students who enrol. (Darren Bernhardt/CBC)

The faculty sought to fill 15 per cent of their spaces with Canadian Indigenous people, and another 7.5 per cent for persons with disabilities and 7.5 per cent for people with a diverse gender identity or sexual orientation.

Racialized persons, which U of M defined as students treated differently based on their "perceived racial background, colour, and/or ethnicity," and which includes non-Canadian indigenous people, had a target set of 7.5 per cent of seats.

Disadvantaged persons, defined as students who faced barriers or didn't have the opportunity to enter university, accounted for another 7.5 per cent of the slots.

In practice, the university is falling short in every category but racialized persons, which comprise 8.44 per cent of new students in 2019.

Over the three years since the new policy's been applied, an average of 9.6 per cent of the students have been Indigenous people from Canada, 7.8 per cent were racialized persons and 6.1 per cent were LGBTQ students.

The previous policy only categorized Indigenous people, people with disabilities and visible minorities as diverse students.

The faculty isn't fussing over the 45 per cent target. Morin said the goal is "relatively aggressive" and based on trends showing the province is getting more diverse.

"We're seeing that we're moving upward in every category," she said.

The university's progress is encouraging to Rob Riel, director of Indigenous education at the Winnipeg School Division, who says they're aggressively recruiting Indigenous staff.

Gap in Indigenous teachers

The division had around 13 per cent Indigenous staff in 2017-18, but the student body is nearly 30 per cent Indigenous, according to self-reporting.

Riel said teachers should reflect the student body.

"The number one thing is role models, seeing someone in the front of the class that looks just like you or has an understanding of you as a person."

To address the shortage in Indigenous staff, the division launched a program last year offering Indigenous students the chance to earn an education assistant diploma while earning high school credits. The program is run in partnership with the University of Winnipeg.

Lindsay Brown is hopeful the U of M's targets will make the teaching profession more diverse, but says it's not enough for schools to hire them.

Brown, a queer, non-binary teacher, says that teachers from marginalized groups can shoulder the responsibility of being the only one in the room, and they need allies to support them.

"You become the authority and you end up doing all of the work to educate other people and that can be exhausting and it leads to teacher burnout," Brown said.

Rodney Clifton, a former U of M education professor, is an outspoken critic of the university's policy. The senior fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy says it distracts from efforts to get the best possible people as teachers.

"Do you need to have somebody of your ethnic background or do you just need another human being who is competent in the subject?" Clifton said. "I would say the latter."

Other U of M faculties are also diversifying their pool of students. The Max Rady College of Medicine has a questionnaire highlighting students with varied economic and cultural backgrounds, while the engineering faculty joined a nationwide push to have 30 per cent of newly licensed engineers as women.

The education faculties at the U of W and Brandon University do not have diversity targets.

The U of M once admitted more than 300 students annually, but that hasn't happened since 2011. Morin said universities nationwide are struggling to find prospective teachers.

Morin said the U of M's education department will continue pushing diversity, as well as enrolment overall.