Teacher cuts defended by Education Minister Hal Perry

With student numbers declining and finances tight, the P.E.I. government had no choice but to cut back on the number of teachers, says Education Minister Hal Perry.

CBC News learned on Sunday that the impact of the provincial budget would be 28 fewer teacher positions at the English Language School Board in the coming year.

"We have 300 fewer students, decline projected, coming in the fall into our system. That seems to be the trend," said Perry.

"It's been like that for the last 19, 20 years. If you go back 20 years ago we had 6,500 more students in the system, and if you look at the teachers, we had 22 more teachers at that time. So we're really doing good with our student-teacher ratio."

On Wednesday the P.E.I. Teachers' Federation responded to the cut in teaching positions by walking out on contract negotiations. It accused the government of bargaining in bad faith, because teacher numbers are part of what it hopes to include in the new contract.

Perry said the teacher numbers are simply part of the provincial budget, and that is what determined the timing of the news of the position cuts.

He said he is confident the contract negotiations will resume soon.