One of many key points in Alberta’s ongoing academics’ strike is class sizes, but it surely’s tough to place exact numbers on simply how giant lessons have turn into as a result of the province not collects that information particularly.
Alberta used to publish class measurement information yearly, detailing the variety of college students in each class at greater than 1,500 faculties throughout the province.
In 2019, the newly elected UCP authorities put an finish to that apply.
The next yr, the federal government additionally modified the per-student funding components for varsity boards, which had tied funding development to enrolment development on an annual foundation, in favour of a three-year “weighted moving average” (WMA) as a substitute.
Bigger faculty boards in fast-growing cities specifically have lamented the brand new components because it was introduced in February 2020.
“It means our funding will be based on the numbers of students we’ve had in our classrooms in previous years,” Trisha Estabrooks, who served as chair of Edmonton Public Faculties, mentioned on the time.
“In essence, it’s sort of like looking in the rearview mirror and we can never catch up.”
Change took impact amid pandemic blip
The change took impact in September 2020, within the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, which noticed a quick interval of declining enrolment.
This was adopted by a surge in enrolment, however as a result of the brand new components makes use of earlier years’ enrolment figures as a part of its calculations, quite a few faculty boards acquired much less cash than they might have underneath the earlier components.
Complaints concerning the components have continued, yr after yr.
“This new WMA funding model benefits school divisions with declining enrolments, often found in rural areas,” the Elk Island Public Faculties authority, operated out of Sherwood Park, defined in a presentation from January 2025.
“For school divisions with increasing enrolment, the WMA model creates a funding shortfall.”
Precisely how this new funding components has affected class sizes, nevertheless, is tough to quantify for the reason that Alberta authorities stopped gathering class measurement information the yr earlier than it modified the components.
But it surely’s nonetheless potential to get a tough concept of how a lot Alberta’s instructing workers has grown in comparison with how a lot pupil enrolment has grown for the reason that change was launched.
Digging out the information
As a part of its annual finances paperwork, the provincial authorities publishes the variety of “certificated staff” working for varsity boards by way of full-time equal positions. These numbers present a way of what number of academics are working within the province.
It’s not an ideal measure, as not all certificated workers essentially work instantly with college students in school rooms, and there’s no breakdown of instructing workers by metropolis, not to mention by faculty, not to mention by class.
But it surely at the least lets us see, in broad phrases, how development in certificated workers compares to development in enrolment at a provincewide stage. (The Alberta authorities nonetheless publishes enrolment figures yearly.)
Once we evaluate these two figures, we will see that instructing workers and pupil enrolment tended to trace fairly shut to 1 one other till about 2021.
From that time on, a niche emerges, with enrolment development outpacing development in instructing workers.
That hole has persevered by way of to the college yr that led to 2025, the latest for which enrolment figures can be found. (These figures are nonetheless preliminary and topic to revisions.)
Total, by these measures, pupil enrolment has grown by 15 per cent since 2016-17, whereas instructing workers has grown by simply eight per cent.
Darryl Hunter, a professor of academic coverage research on the College of Alberta, reviewed this evaluation of the accessible information and cautions that it, alone, doesn’t reveal the change in funding components prompted the hole between pupil enrolment and instructing workers.
“As you know, correlations are not equal to causation,” he mentioned.
“You can point out that these happen to coincide … but whether it caused it is just another question altogether.”
College board officers, nevertheless, have had no drawback up to now instantly tying the WMA components to will increase at school sizes and funding shortfalls.
“This funding model is not in the best interest of students,” Edmonton Public Faculties trustee Daybreak Hancock mentioned in Could 2024. “And I hope that our government sees it and makes a change.”
The next yr, the federal government did simply that.
One other new components
As a part of its 2025-26 finances, the provincial authorities revealed a brand new, two-year weighted common to switch the three-year components.
The three-year components calculated common enrolment by trying on the earlier yr (which acquired a 20-per-cent weight), estimates for the present yr (30-per-cent weight) and projected enrolment for the next yr (50-per-cent weight).
The brand new, two-year components consists of simply the present yr (30-per-cent weight) and projected enrolment for the next yr (70-per-cent weight).
“Moving to a two-year [calculation] is our attempt to hopefully strike the right balance to be able to get dollars to fast-growing school divisions in a much faster way, and also provide as much long-term stability as we possibly can to smaller school divisions,” Training Minister Demetrios Nicolaides mentioned in March.
The Ministry of Training didn’t reply by deadline to a request for touch upon this story.
The brand new components takes impact for the 2025-26 faculty yr.
Alberta College Councils’ Affiliation president Ken Glazebrook described the change as “a positive first step.”
“It’s well-known that the classrooms are crowded and there’s been limited resources,” mentioned Glazebrook, whose group advances mother or father views and promotes dialogue between households and college officers.
“We’ll acknowledge that the government has tried to rectify part of that problem with changing the weighted moving average down to two years from three years.”
The 2025-26 finances additionally included the hiring of an estimated 1,045 new full-time-equivalent certificated instructing workers, which represents a 2.7-per-cent enhance over the earlier yr.
For the Alberta Lecturers’ Affiliation (ATA), nevertheless, this doesn’t go far sufficient.
Studies, suggestions and democracy
The ATA needs the federal government to do extra to handle what it describes as gathered shortfalls within the variety of working academics within the province.
ATA president Jason Schilling has mentioned greater than 5,000 new academics are required to succeed in the pupil-teacher ratios really helpful in a provincial report from 2003, which was revealed within the wake of the final main academics’ strike in Alberta.
WATCH | Does class measurement impression pupil educational efficiency?:
Does class measurement impression pupil educational efficiency?
A key concern within the Alberta academics’ strike is class measurement and complexity. Whereas the province rejects capping class sizes, an schooling knowledgeable weighs in on how teacher-student ratios impression educational success.
Whereas Alberta cancelled its detailed class-size reporting in 2019, Edmonton Public Faculties nonetheless tracks this information, which suggests class sizes in many colleges stay a lot bigger than the suggestions in that 22-year-old report.
Anecdotes from academics, college students and oldsters in different faculty divisions additionally recommend class sizes exceed these suggestions, however exact figures are more durable to come back by.
Hunter, with the College of Alberta, mentioned it could be “immensely helpful” to have the kind of detailed class measurement information that the province used to assemble and publish yearly.
“It might cause a bit of angst to put some of the stuff out in the public domain but, hey, we do live in a democracy,” he mentioned.
“Student-teacher ratio is a key performance indicator for any system … and people want to know what these numbers are.”
