The Alberta government says previous governments have thrown away billions of dollars in targeted funding that has done little to nothing to reduce class sizes.
“What we’re hearing from school boards is that, as a whole, this has not met its objective and that we have continued to throw ever increasing dollars — $291 million alone last year — and we have not moved the needle at all in terms of addressing the class size issue,” Education Minister Adriana LaGrange told reporters Friday.
“So what I’m looking to do is to gather in education partners and talk about the complexities of the classroom and how we can address those in a more tangible way.”
According to a report released Friday, over the past 15 years Alberta has invested more than $3.4 billion in a class size initiative.
Kindergarten to Grade 3 class sizes have decreased on average by 1.4 students in that time period, the report said.
“The report also highlights that, in general, school authorities across the province view our class size funding model as ineffective,” LaGrange said. “School authorities have told me they would like more flexibility in how they spend the dollars they receive from the province, as they know best the needs of their specific students and their communities.”
The audit was part of the UCP government’s election platform promise to determine what happened to previous funding dedicated to class size reduction.
The report notes that while some literature outlines the benefits of small class sizes, other studies question the effectiveness and recommend evaluating other cost-effective strategies to improve education standards, such as classroom complexity and teacher quality.
But the report also showed that average class sizes in Alberta for grades 4 and up were well under the guidelines laid out by Alberta’s Commission on Learning.
For instance, the average classroom size seen in grades four to six was 22.8 students between 2017 and 2019. For grades seven to nine in that same time period the average class size was 23.5 students, compared to a target of 25. And for grades 10 to 12 the average size was 23.5, while the guideline set was 27.
The report did not say how big classes would have been without the funding.
LaGrange said there will be no cuts to education when the budget is unveiled next Thursday.
A new model is expected to be in place for the 2020-21 school year.