Student advocacy group says high enrolment, large class sizes, pandemic disruptions to blame for declining grades of Calgary students

A student advocacy group says declines in core subjects in the Calgary Board of Education’s (CBE) latest education report, aren’t surprising.

Higher enrolment, larger class sizes, and of course those disruptions in learning due to the pandemic.

CBE’s report states scores in science, math, social studies and English all dipped in the 2022-23 academic year.

According to Wing Li with Support Our Students Alberta, this has led to increased instability in Calgary classrooms.

She believes it’s not just the scores that have slipped, but also the reputation associated with Alberta’s public school system.

“It’s not just one thing, it is a systemic package of factors,” Li told CityNews.

“Funding is just not getting what we’re used to, because it’s frozen, and so the pie is shrinking and yet the part of people that need resources … and more students coming from other provinces and countries, that’s expanding.”

The Alberta government added $30 million to schools to help with unprecedented enrollment growth for the 2023/24 school year.

The CBE says it has seen an enrollment increase of about 4.6 per cent from September 2022 to September 2023.

But the Alberta Teacher’s Association said at the time it was not enough, and school boards are missing around $130 million in its budget, with President Jason Schilling saying the funding “does not even stop the situation from getting worse.”

Li says the issue with the scores isn’t one-dimensional, but rather a complex package of factors that have piled up.

“We’ve had a long pandemic, we’re still seeing impacts of that, health-wise and also in the system of education,” she said.

“So for us, we don’t see it as students falling behind, we see this as a natural consequence of an underfunded system that didn’t have targeted resources to address the very real and concrete issues and challenges that students have to go through.”

The CBE also attributes the decline to higher enrolment, larger class sizes, and disruptions in learning due to the pandemic.

In any case, Li says it’s the province that needs to step up its support so students don’t fall further behind.

She believes the lack of continuity in semesterized learning is also a setback for high school students, who are cramming core subject knowledge into one semester rather than an entire school year.

“So already, you have the semester system — which is truncated … because you have to fit in so many options and graduation requirements,” Li said.

“But on top of that, you have these longer-term gaps to make up for, so I think there needs to be some concerted effort to prolong the timing, add in more instruction hours or extra help.”

-With files from Nadia Moharib