PROVINCIAL POLICIES

There are two different types of schools within educational systems worldwide- public and private. The category of private school is used to refer to independent schools in which parents pay tuition to have their child attend. Designated public schools refer to neighborhood or ‘catchment zone schools’ in which students are assigned to a school by the school board according to the geographic location of their home. There has been a great deal of construction within educational boards and governments in terms of solidifying a regulation for class size. Ontario is a large Canadian educational jurisdiction of close to two million students and almost 5,000 schools. 72 school boards provide education, organized into four school board systems: English language public boards; English language Catholic boards; French language public boards and French Language Catholic boards. All boards offer junior and senior kindergarten and all but two northern boards offer a full range of classes to grade 12. The province of Ontario is one of the few provinces that have begun to take action against large class sizes. Ontario has aimed to make a difference for students by changing school and classroom practices across the province while also generation public support and engaging teachers and other education staff in a positive way. Ontario has introduced a Class Size Reduction Initiative as of 2007-08. It has identified 2 different regulations on class size: one for the primary grades and one for the intermediate grades. This initiative put a cap on class sizes in the primary grades with a ration of 20:1 with the following guidelines: at least 90 percent of a board’s primary classes had 20 or fewer students, and up to 10 percent of a board’s primary classes could have a higher cap of up to 23 students. This is due to flexibility within a class (students changing schools and such factors.) This was initially introduced in 2004-05 with a total of 90 million dollars in funding. This pathed the way for an additional 1200 primary teaching jobs in the Ontario region. Intermediate class sizes in Ontario followed a different protocol under this new reform. Classes differ from board to board. In the 2008-09 school year, the average class size was recorded for each school board. The government has been continuously providing funding grants to gradually lower the average amount of students in intermediate classes. They have predicted a change of about .5 students, on average, will be reduced in each intermediate class. This proves to be a long, dragged out process with minimal results. On the Ontario Ministry of Education website, there is now a “class size tracker” available for parents, and teachers to view exactly how many students are in a certain class, in a specific school. Ontario seems to be one of the more advanced regions in terms of recognizing the benefits of smaller class sizes within schools and making changes to see this take effect. On the contrary, the province of Manitoba has taken the opposite view. In the Manitoba Education Act, it now shows a great deal of emphasis on welcoming caring and respectful safe schools- but how do they intend to accomplish this? Manitoba, in the final report of the Commission on Class Size and Composition, tabled in April 2002, concluded that a blanket approach, with provincially legislated caps on class size, would fail to address local needs and that class composition is more important than class size. It also states that not every class will have to reach the specified class number, just as long as overall the particular jurisdiction’s class average is achieved. This means that some classes could have upwards of 35 students in a class, and others have as few as 15 to even out the average overall. The Albertan guidelines states the following for the suggested provincial guidelines: junior kindergarten to grade will have between 3 - 17 students, grades 4 to 6 will have 23 students, grades 7 to 9 –will have 25 students and grades 10 to 12 will have 27 students. This being said however, the 2012 budget recognizes that smaller class sizes can have an impact on students, especially in Kindergarten to Grade 3 classes. Since 2004, more than $1.6 billion has been invested in the “Small Class Size Initiative”. In Budget 2012, class size funding increases from $226.3 million to $232 million or 2.5%. This funding accommodates a 1% increase in grant rates as well as an expected 4% increase in Kindergarten to Grade 3 students. School Boards will be required to post their class size survey results by January 15 of each year to ensure these funds are being effectively used to reduce class sizes.

. The province of British Columbia is divided into 60 school districts, which administer publicly funded education until the end of grade 12 in local areas or, in the case of francophone education, across the province. The British Columbia Liberals passed legislation in 2002 that stripped the firm class-size limits from their collective agreement with teachers, while also passing legislation that caps individual class sizes from kindergarten to grade three, as well as district-average class sizes in other grades up to 12