It’s all about class size

Re: Teacher unions need to budge at the bargaining table, Education Minister Stephen Lecce says, Jan. 13

From the outset, the Ford government has been misleading the people of Ontario on matters related to current negotiations between itself and the teacher federations.

The current minister keeps saying the main stumbling block in these negotiations is compensation. As if anyone believes the teachers are staging withdrawals of service over the one per cent difference.It’s all about the class size average.

In 2012, the province reconfirmed by regulation that the average of every school board’s secondary classes be 22:1, an average that has been in place since 1998. That ratio was chosen to allow boards to schedule smaller classes, such as the ones in the trades and other specialized courses, without having to create overly large offsetting classes in other areas.

A small class of 18 students in robotics, for example, would only require a class of 26 in English to maintain the 22:1 average. The Ford government is insisting the average class size change to 25:1. If that were accepted by the teachers, the robotics class of 18 would now need to be offset by an English class of 32.

But since 2012, there has been a decline of enrolment in secondary schools of nearly 52,000 students. This creates a problem; if you increase average class size and at the same time the number of students decreases, you will not have the students necessary to create the larger classes to offset the smaller ones.

Boards will no longer be able to schedule smaller classes of 15 or 16, which are not uncommon in the specialized courses, because they do not have sufficient students to offer the offsetting classes of 35 or 34 which would be required if the average was increased .

Teachers are on strike to resist these proposed cuts, cuts that will have only one effect: the diminishing of opportunities for students. Larry Newton Welland