Students paying the price for education cuts

Five years from now, there will be 10,000 fewer teachers in Ontario schools — 994 from elementary schools and 9,060 from high schools. This year alone there are 2,286 fewer teachers than there would have been under 2018/19 student-teacher ratios.

Those are not opposition figures, nor are they from some Ford-unfriendly media outlet. They’re from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, established in 2013. Its job is to provide “independent analysis on the state of the Province’s finances, trends in the provincial economy and related matters important to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.”

In other words, it’s a non-partisan, authoritative voice. The Ford Progressive Conservatives have used its findings before when the information suited their purpose. Which is probably why, even though this damning information lands like a grenade in the middle of an election campaign and provincial bargaining between education unions and the province, no one on team Ford is disputing the number.

Ten thousand fewer teachers. Is this because there will be correspondingly fewer students? No, according to the FAO, which says “growth in the school-age population” will continue to result in higher school enrolment numbers.

So how is the education system better and more effective with 10,000 fewer teachers and more students? And how does this fit in with the government’s insistence that “not one teacher” will lose their job because of government-mandated classroom size changes?

Well, that was simply not true, as we saw nearly right away when the changes were announced. Contracts were not renewed, cherished LTO (long-term occasional) vacancies (mat leaves and such) went unfilled and layoff notices went out. Jobs were lost. To claim otherwise is a flat out lie.

But the government says its promise has been fulfilled, and to a point, the FAO confirms that. The report says the government’s $1.6 billion attrition fund is enough to stave off teacher layoffs as bigger classes are phased in by not replacing retiring or resigning teachers. But the FAO also says government investment in education is not keeping pace with increasing costs.

What does the high school classroom of tomorrow look like? Consider some of the things we know are happening already due to the changes. Many classrooms are over capacity, with numbers like 45 and 47 students not being unusual. Other classes, like anthropology or history, used to operate with 20 students, but that doesn’t meet the benchmark now so those classes are being cancelled. Students who want those options are forced to pick other subjects they may not be interested in.

Stacked classes, in which students from different grades and different streams (like academic and applied) are mixed together, have become much more common. That means teachers in those classes have to teach different material to separate groups in the same class to students who have varying levels of skill and comprehension.

All this is from the current school year, when class sizes are only slightly bigger than last year. Imagine what that’s going to look like three, four and five years from now, as the number of teachers in schools drops and class sizes get bigger?

Most aware observers knew from the start that the Ford government’s class size changes had nothing to do with improving education quality and outcomes. They were all about saving money, and no doubt they will do that.

But at what expense to students, their families and Ontario’s future?