Michael Zwaagstra: How Education Bureaucracy Is Forcing Split Classes in Ontario

Commentary

If there’s one thing that most parents and teachers agree about, it’s that split classes, where students from two or more grades are combined in one class, are a bad idea.

It’s not hard to see why parents dislike split classes. It strains credulity to think that children will get the same individualized attention in a split-grade class as they would receive in a single-grade class. Teachers don’t like split grades because of the extra workload that comes with teaching them. It’s much more difficult to create lesson plans from two curriculum guides than to focus on one curriculum for a single grade of students.

Given the unpopularity of split classes among both parents and teachers, one might expect them to be exceptionally rare. But they aren’t.

In fact, nearly 60 percent of all classes in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) are split. Things are only slightly better in the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB). Approximately 32 percent of all elementary classes in that board are split grades. And split grades have long been an unfortunate fact of life in remote school divisions with tiny schools and dwindling student populations. Combined classes cannot be avoided if a school only has a handful of students in each grade.

However, the TDSB and TCDSB are both located in a densely populated urban centre. In fact, they are two of the largest school boards in Ontario. It’s nothing short of bizarre that so many classes in these school boards contain more than one grade level. When a school has several hundred or more students, there’s no need for most of its classes to consist of split classes.

Unfortunately, these schools are stuck in a bureaucracy that makes it nearly impossible for administrators to use their professional discretion when creating classes. For example, classes in grades 1–3 in Ontario are capped at 20 students, although 10 percent of classrooms per school are allowed to have up to 23 students. Consequently, if a school has 20 Grade 2 students and 24 Grade 3 students, the principal has no choice but to create two split-grade classes, even though it would make far more sense to keep the Grade 2 students and Grade 3 students in separate classes even if they are larger than recommended.

In other words, principals are constrained by a class size cap that makes it more difficult to create class lists that make sense. As a result, both teachers and students suffer. To make matters worse, important decisions in large school boards are often made in the central board office rather than at the local school. Principals have no choice but to operate within the policies set by the school board, even when these policies are not in the best interest of students or teachers.

While Education Minister Paul Calandra recently placed several school boards (including the TDSB and TCDSB) under his supervision, it remains to be seen whether the minister will take the necessary steps to put power back in the hands of parents. For example, the Ford government could follow the example of the four Western provinces and Quebec and allow at least partial government funding to follow students to the school of their parents’ choice. Independent schools tend to be more responsive to the wishes of parents because they are held directly accountable by parents. If parents don’t like what’s happening, they can take their children to another school.

The Ford government could also allow for the creation of charter schools, similar to what already happens in Alberta. Charter schools are autonomous public schools that operate outside the authority of school boards. Like independent schools, they are more responsive to the wishes of parents because parents have direct control over which school their children attend.

Ontario parents deserve better than to see their children stuck in split-grade classes that don’t serve their individual needs. It’s time to break the unresponsive bureaucracy that keeps children trapped in failing schools.

Michael Zwaagstra is a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.