Alberta’s students deserve better

By Lethbridge Herald on May 16, 2025.

Editor,

Nathan Neudorf, the UCP MLA for Lethbridge East riding, is celebrating the modernization, expansion, and building of schools in the Lethbridge School District, (Lethbridge Herald, May 9, 2025). But building and modernizing schools will not help if the education system itself is broken.

The Alberta government is starving the system of resources: Alberta has the lowest education spending rate per student in Canada. While the Canadian average spending rate is $13,332 per student, the Alberta average is just $11,601.

The Alberta government’s low education spending translates into overly large classroom sizes, and a lack of supports in classrooms, such as educational assistants, counsellors, and speech-language professionals. This is happening at a time when teachers are reporting a dramatic increase in the complexity and diversity of student needs, which means more students with higher needs.

The government is failing to meet these needs. The result is more teachers burning out and having to take stress leave. Some choose to leave the profession altogether.

If the Alberta government truly wants to make investments in the future of our children, (as it purports to do), it should heed the Alberta Teachers Federation and take the following action:

* Implement policies to reduce class sizes so that students can have more personalized attention;

*Increase classroom supports with additional teachers and education assistants, inclusive learning resources, and mental health services;

*Develop robust support systems for teachers, including professional development opportunities and resources to support student and staff mental health;

* Promote a culture of respect and trust between teachers, school leaders, parents, and government bodies, recognizing the critical role teachers play in shaping the future of education.

Anne Morris

Lethbridge

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Fedup Conservative

1 day ago

The are so busy filling the pockets of the rich Albertans, with the lowest oil royalties rates and corporate tax rates, in the world, they can’t be bothered looking after us average Albertans can they?

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IMO

1 day ago

Thank you for this, Ms. Morris.

Clearly, Mr. Neudorf is ignoring the realities faced by both teachers and students in the classrooms of Alberta today. In fact, a recent item in The Lethbridge Herald regarding Father Leonard Van Tighem school had school council chair Kaleigh Rey state regarding funding received for an outdoor classroom, “[c]urrent school spaces are maxed out and we want kids to be outdoors more, as with mental health problems on the rise, one thing we want people to do is being outside.”

Moreover, People for Education, a non-government evidence and research group in Ontario states:

• The right to education is a doorway to other human rights, including civil and political rights to freedom of expression, of association, of freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the right to vote, and the right to privacy and family life. It enables cultural rights, social and emotional well-being, and economic rights. And, according to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, education is “the primary vehicle by which socially and economically marginalized adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty.”

On the basis of People for Education’s statement of education rights, it could be argued that the government of Alberta is denying this right in public education preferring to deliver Alberta tax payers’ monies to private school operators and thus denying access to a quality education for the majority of public school students in the province.

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