N.L. teachers' union says class sizes long overdue for review

The province's largest teachers' union is renewing its call for the provincial government to reduce class sizes.

Dean Ingram, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Association, said the provincial government promised to look at class sizes back in 2011.

"It's a very simple notion that the more students that are actually in a classroom, the less attention each student's going to get,"Ingram toldCBC Newfoundland Morning on Wednesday.

The Progressive Conservatives were in power in 2011, Ingram acknowledged, but said current Liberal Education Minister Brian Warrhas also said his department would look at class sizes.

"Minister Warr indicated that he would follow through [with] that at some point in time," Ingram said. "We certainly think we need to see more than the verbal [agreement]."

The NLTA has also added class composition to its list of priorities, focusing on the number of students who might have different specialneeds in a classroom.

"Within the classroom environment teachers will have to direct their attention to those students that have the highest cascading of needs," Ingram said. Those students need to have their needs met, and justifiably so, said Ingram, but teachers need to focus on those students.

"That means that within that classroom environment there are other students that are not having their needs met."

Warrsaid class sizes are not going up, contrary to Ingram's suggestion they are.

"Absolutely not.I've had this conversation on several occasions with regards to government and their intention," Warr said. "We have no intention of increasing class sizes, contrary to some of the statements that have been made."

Warr said work being done through the government's education plan, launched in 2018, is helping to bring more resources into the classroom, and will bring an additional 350 learning resource teachers into classrooms by the time it is fully implemented.

"I think we're getting there," Warr said. "After the full implementation of the Education Action Plan, it's time for us to sit down as a department and as a government again to take a second look at it and see where we stand."

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