On October 26, Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce announced a revision to the increase in class size for secondary students. While the provincial government had approved a class size hike from 22 to 28 students, this new plan would see 25 students per class on average.

(Learn more about how class size averages are calculated.)

While this may seem like a generous offer on the part of the minister, the reality is that his revision will result in fewer adults in  our kids' classrooms. 

In addition, Minister Lecce's new "offer" comes with fine print! The Ontario Government wants to remove all existing class size caps, which means there will be no limit to the number of students in a class.

The Canadian Center for Policy Alternative blog provided some interesting stats on how these numbers will affect our students and teachers. According to the Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) this class increase will see 10,054 fewer teachers in Ontario’s classrooms by 2023-24. CCPA's Behind the Numbers blog shows that in York Region, this means 933 fewer teachers in the next 4 years.

You can read the full article here.

We need teachers and education workers in our schools. We want the best and brightest staff Ontario has to offer teaching our kids. Ontario student learning will no doubt suffer with these cuts - and in fact, we've heard from many that they already are.  

Images courtesy of Behind The Numbers' mapping tool, as found at http://behindthenumbers.ca/2019/10/30/board-by-board-impact-larger-class-sizes/