Is the Ford government\u2019s plan to increase high school class sizes really going lead to better-prepared students?<\/p>\n
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Ontario Education Minister Lisa Thompson told CBC radio\u2019s Metro Morning the decision would benefit students across the province by making them more resilient.<\/p>\n
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“By increasing class sizes in high school, we’re preparing them for the reality of post-secondary as well as the world of work,” said Thompson.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n
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\u201cWhen students are currently preparing to go off to post-secondary education were hearing from professors and employers alike that students are lacking resiliency and lacking coping skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers\u2019 Federation, also spoke to Metro Morning and said the cap of 28 will only be an average and many classes could have up to 40 students.<\/p>\n
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The Toronto District School Board said the changes could lead to a loss of as many as 800 teaching positions in high schools.<\/p>\n
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Katherine Yu an English teacher at Oshawa\u2019s Maxwell Heights Secondary School says the change will lead to more students falling through the cracks.<\/p>\n
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\u201cA lot of students have learning modifications or individual education plans and they need more help than others. It\u2019s already tough the way it is to cater to every learner and increasing the number of students to 28 will only stretch a teachers attention thin,\u201d said Yu.<\/p>\n
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Yu doesn\u2019t think class sizes have anything to do with how prepared high school students are for post-secondary studies. Instead, she said students should focus on ways to be less distracted and meet expectations.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWork hard meet your deadlines and get things done on time. Teachers don\u2019t assign work and have expectations because we want to it\u2019s because we\u2019re preparing you for the real world,\u201d said Yu. \u201cAsk for feedback and challenge yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Adam Deluca a first year radio broadcasting student at Humber College says he benefited from having smaller class sizes in high school and believes future students would as well.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI came from a high school where we had about eight to 12 students per class and personally that really helped me succeed. The smaller structure gave me much more one on one time with teachers, helped me focus better as there were less distractions and held me more accountable,\u201d said Deluca. \u00a0 <\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n
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University of Guelph-Humber media studies professor Jamie Killingsworth says most students would prefer smaller classes but it\u2019s tough to compare high school to university.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSmaller is better there is no question about that I\u2019ve never studied it in depth but I do think I get better results in a tutorial setting,\u201d said Killingsworth. \u201cWhen you make classes bigger you\u2019re creating a greater distance between you and the students.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Killingsworth says there is a healthy discussion to be had on how much Ontario can fund for class sizes, but believes the government would have been better off being more honest.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHad the Ford government just been upfront about the fact that this is about the allocation of resources, I think people could relate to that and understand it better,\u201d said Killingsworth.<\/p>\n
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Is the Ford government\u2019s plan to increase high school class sizes really going lead to better-prepared students? Ontario Education Minister Lisa Thompson told CBC radio\u2019s Metro Morning the decision would benefit students across the province by making them more resilient. \u201cWhen students are currently preparing to go off to post-secondary education were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":8008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[174,47,62],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}