Ontario considers removing kindergarten, primary class size caps

Ontario is considering removing caps on class sizes in kindergarten and in Grades 1 to 3.

Education Minister Lisa Thompson announced Wednesdaythat she is launching consultations with education partners on class sizes and teacher hiring practices.

Currently, the kindergarten class size cap is 29 students, and the average of class sizes across any board can't be more than 26. For the primary grades the cap is 23 students, but at least 90 per cent of classes in any board must have 20 or fewer students.

'Going to have to make some difficult decisions'

"The province's current fiscal circumstances require an examination of whether changes to class size would allow school
boards to deliver better value for government investment," the document says, noting that educator staffing costs make up about 80 per cent of government funding to school boards.

Sam Hammond, the president of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, said in a meeting with government officials Wednesday,the officials made it clear they need to work toward balancing the budget.

"Given that, they're going to have to make some difficultdecisions and there's no doubt that some of those decisions are going to affect publicly funded education," Hammond said, adding that moving from hard caps to a system based on averages "would be an absolute disaster."

The government document says the ministry has heard in previous talks that implementing hard caps on class sizes is expensive anddifficult for school boards to manage.

"It has been suggested that board-wide class size averages offermore flexibility for classroom organization and allows for moreefficient use of board funds," the document says.

Teaching-hiring practices also being reviewed

The consultations are also looking at changes to teacher-hiringpractices.

"Understandably, we remain committed to protecting locally negotiated class size limits that respond to local circumstances and support student achievement as well as the staff complement that provides for excellent and unique programming around the province," Bischof said in a statement.

The Tories are in the midst of trying to trim a deficit they peg at $14.5 billion though the financial accountability officer saysit's closer to $12 billion.

Hammond thinks Wednesday's meeting and consultation is aharbinger of both what's to come in the budget for education, andnegotiations that are to start this year ahead of teacher contractsexpiring in August.

The previous Liberal government negotiated the last round ofteacher and education worker contracts as two-year extensions toexisting deals, which ensured they wouldn't have to contend with heated teacher bargaining ahead of the 2018 election.

That deal for elementary teachers came with $56 million to hire teachers and early childhood educators so the current kindergartencap could be implemented.

Under the existing contracts, high school, elementary, English Catholic and French teachers, as well as support staff, got four per cent salary increases over the two years.

They also got a one-time payment for professional development, supplies and equipment equivalent to a 0.5-per-cent salary increase.