Study finds Alberta public school funding declines as enrolment numbers climb highest nationally

Desks in Edmonton Catholic Schools have been distanced as far as possible for the return to classes on Sept. 2, 2020.

With the school year about to begin across the province, one group says funding in Alberta per student has seen the biggest decrease nationally.

A study from the Fraser Institute think-tank released on Tuesday shows funding isn't keeping up in Alberta, while teachers and school boards say class sizes provincially are growing. According to the study, over a nine-year period from 2012-13 to 2020-01, Alberta had the biggest increase in the number of students in Canada at 12.4 per cent. The province saw a 10-per-cent decline in per-student funding during the same period.

Those numbers come as no surprise to Alberta Teachers Association president Jason Schilling.

"We've seen increases in class size across the provinces, and especially here in Alberta, and the Fraser Institute report today just confirms that we've not been seeing funding by the government keep pace with inflation and enrollment," Schilling told CTV News Edmonton. "Teachers across this province are feeling that in their classrooms."

Trisha Estabrooks, the chair of Edmonton Public Schools, says they're adding 5,000 more students this coming school year, increasing enrolment to more than 114,000, with high schools across the city at maximum capacity.

"When we have record enrollment in our school division, when we are running out of space -- in particular in the southeast and southwest part of our city -- and we don't have a funding formula that keeps pace with our growth, we start to feel the crunch," Estabrooks said, adding concerns over space and funding are part on ongoing conversations with the province's education ministry.

"We're always looking in the rearview mirror, we're never truly funded for the actual numbers of kids in our classrooms so that makes it challenging."

Edmonton Catholic Schools, which is expecting 47,000 students in their classrooms to start the new school year, said its trustees continue to advocate for a change to the way the province funds new students. It said in a statement to CTV News Edmonton that 1,000 of its new students won't be fully funded.

A statement from the office of Alberta's minister of education said this year's budget increased by 5.2 per cent, including $820 million earmarked to address enrolment growth over the next three years.