Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides says the government's goal is 'to use these recommendations to create learning environments where every student can succeed.'Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
The Alberta government released a report on aggression and complexity in schools on Friday that echo what the teachers’ union and others have spent years calling for, prompting critics to accuse the government of dragging its heels.
The report from the Aggression and Complexity Action Team, created in June, addresses issues that were top considerations for the Alberta Teachers’ Association during its bargaining with the province in the lead up to the teacher strike last month.
It sets out seven recommendations to help deal with violence and aggression in schools and complexity, a term that refers to the challenges teachers face when classes are composed of students with different needs, whether they be English language learners or those with other learning challenges.
“Our goal here is simple, to use these recommendations to create learning environments where every student can succeed,” Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said. “I am confident this report gives us a clear path to tackle the challenges facing our classrooms.”
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Alberta’s 51,000 educators at public, separate and francophone schools walked off the job on Oct. 6. While the province offered to go to mediation with the teachers’ union, the government refused to negotiate on classroom complexity and student to teacher ratios. Teachers were forced back to work on Oct. 29 after the government invoked the notwithstanding clause to end the strike.
Premier Danielle Smith said her government has invested $10-billion in education and schools this year and is committed to hiring 3,000 new teachers and at least 1,500 new education assistants in the next three years.
“Albertans deserve to know that we are focusing these resources on the classrooms that have the most needs,” she said. “They deserve to know that we support the success of every single student.”
The report’s recommendations include developing class size criteria, hiring additional teachers and educational assistants, clarifying educator roles in supporting students’ clinical and therapeutic needs, and expanding program unit funding and streamlining access to services for children before they enter Grade 1, among others.
“These recommendations are not just ideas. They represent the experience of teachers and others who work in classrooms and support students,” Mr. Nicolaides said.
But critics say these solutions have long been called for, and the government needs to show greater urgency in tackling problems in schools.
“These are not new ideas. Teachers and school leaders have been calling for them for years,” said Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. “Classrooms are overwhelmed. Complexity is unmanageable. Early learners are falling behind. Teachers and school leaders do not have the time or resources they need to support students who deserve far better.”
The report confirms everything the association had been raising for years, including during negotiations with the province that led to the teachers’ strike last month, Mr. Schilling said.
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Now, the government must implement the report’s recommendations, he said.
“We need to see government to actually act on these, unlike the Alberta Commission on Learning report that we saw in 2002 where those recommendations stayed in the realm of guidelines, they were never actually put into place,” he said.
Amanda Chapman, the education critic for the Alberta NDP, said the government has been too slow to address problems in classrooms across the province.
“There’s a complete lack of urgency,” Ms. Chapman said. “What we don’t need is more studies, more committees. We need a government that is willing to step up with the resources, that will actually prioritize public education.”
Earlier this month, the province created a class size and complexity cabinet committee, co-chaired by Ms. Smith and Mr. Nicolaides, to guide government policy to address the challenges set out in the report.
Ms. Smith said the committee will be acting on the report’s recommendations “over the next few months.”