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Alberta lags in Class Size and Composition Across Canada
Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith would like Albertans and Canadians to believe that demands from the Alberta teachers (ATA), come out of the blue, that they are pie in the sky proposals. She is demanding that ATA forget about class size and composition, and settle this present struggle on a wages only basis. To Smith class sizes are just simply out of the question. In reality, class size research is fairly conclusive that lowering class sizes does lead to improved results. The famous Tennessee Project STAR may be the best research. Smith contends that international data like PISA and PIRLS shows that some, mainly Asian, nations can get very good results with large classes.
This is highly questionable. China, for example, only allows results from Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai and one high achieving province to be used. This stacks the results in advance. Singapore has all of its low skilled jobs done by Malaysian workers who enter Singapore in the morning and leave at night. Their kids are educated in Malaysia. South Korea has students study in private tutorial centers until 10PM every night. Only Japan is a fair comparison. PISA is a test of 15 year olds. In many Asian nations, unsuccessful students have already dropped out or have been counseled into ‘’agriculture or industry’’
In the west, only Finland, Estonia, and Switzerland offer serious competition to Canada but Finland has average class sizes of 19-20, Estonia averages 20-21, and Switzerland is 21-22.
When we look across Canada, 6 provinces and territories have either legislated or negotiated class size and composition agreements and these 6 represent about 80% of the Canadian population. It's not ATA that needs to check into reality, it's Danielle Smith and the UCP. It is critical that ATA establish the principle of class size and composition in this round of negotiations. Improvements can be made in future rounds.
