This morning, Dalton McGuinty will begin making good on the signature education policy of his second term.
To achieve it, he'll need to backtrack on the signature education policy of his first.
For years, the Ontario Premier devoted himself to lowering class sizes for the youngest students. But in order to implement all-day kindergarten on a limited budget, he's set to raise them again.
Mr. McGuinty will announce today that, at a cost of $200-million, 35,000 children will be enrolled in the province's new early-learning program next September. The province will invest another $300-million in 2011-12, much more in the years that follow, and – if all goes according to plan – every four- and five-year-old in the province will have access to a full day of kindergarten by 2015.
That's the good news. The less-good news is that class sizes, which the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to lower to an average of 20 kids from kindergarten through Grade 3, will shoot back up to 26 for the two youngest cohorts.
Contrary to previous reports, 26 won't be the cap – it will be the average. The cap, which is presently 23, will presumably be in the range of 30 – assuming there is one at all.
Under the proposal put forward last spring by Charles Pascal, the former deputy education minister enlisted to recommend a model for the Liberals to make good on their campaign promise of full-day learning, it would have been much easier for the government to stick closer to its previous class-size targets.
But it also would have required doing battle with teachers unions, which objected to the notion that their members would only have been in the classroom half the time, with early-childhood educators – who make considerably less money – carrying the load the rest of the time.
Instead, the government opted to protect its record of labour peace by acquiescing to teachers' demands that they be in the classroom the entire day. They'll be paired with early-childhood educators, which means that the staffing costs will often exceed $100,000 for a single class. If the government spent that much on every 20 students, its rollout would be much slower.
The irony is that the teachers unions, which fought heavily for smaller class sizes, won't likely be thrilled by this arrangement. But more important is the question of what effect it will have on the students.
The Liberals are quick to point out, correctly, that with both a teacher and an early-childhood educator in the classroom at all times, the student-to-adult ratio will average out at 13:1. So in theory, at least, each child will actually receive more attention, not less.
In practice, a classroom filled with 30 small children might not be the most conducive place for learning, even if it's of the play-based variety. Holding the attention of that many kids, marshalling them from activity to activity and preventing the whole thing from descending into chaos will be a challenge.
How well it's achieved will depend heavily on whether teachers and early-childhood educators tossed into classrooms together will be able to work co-operatively. The power struggle that has played out between their representatives over the past few months could have disastrous consequences if it is carried over into the classroom.
One assumes that, with time, they'll arrive at a constructive working model; if the class sizes prove unwieldy, the government will presumably shrink them in future years. But that might not be much comfort to parents whose children will be enrolled next year, and who will be looking for reassurances that their kids are not guinea pigs.
