Today’s announcement by Minister of Education Lisa Thompson was supposedly about modernizing classrooms, but in reality the government is continuing to move backward on publicly funded education and collective bargaining rights, says the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA). In particular, the intention to increase class sizes will lead to massive job losses and have a devastating impact on student learning and well-being.
Increasing class size averages in Grades 4 through 12 will result in the loss of approximately 5,000 teaching positions in Catholic schools. This means many schools will not be able to offer the same number and diversity of programs as they do today. Furthermore, some class sizes, including those in core subjects such as math, are likely to grow to more than 40 students.