Public School Funding In Alberta

The History Of School Systems In Alberta

In 1875, Alberta established both public and separate school systems. It has been 58 years to date since Alberta started providing public funding for private schools by offering an annual stipend of $100 per student.

Fast forward to 1994 and this is when the provincial government stripped school boards of the authority to levy property taxes for public education and implemented a distribution formula to public, separate and private schools that also included postsecondary education. 

This funding shift has caused an undeniable ripple. Why are classrooms overcrowded and underfunded? Why do public school teachers spend thousands of their personal income to adequately provide for the academic, social, and emotional needs of their students?

A closer look at this distribution formula that has generated a perplexing gap in the public education funding is due.

Taking A Closer Look At Public School Funding In Alberta

For nearly 6 decades, Albertans’ property tax allocations have not been directly attributed to the public and separate school systems. Rather, an increasing percentage of property tax allocations have been funnelled to private schools. 

Currently, Alberta has 1,575 public, 428 separate and 180 private schools.  Just three years ago, the Alberta student population was 492,362. Within the next few years, that population will increase to 800,000 K-12 students in Alberta.

Alberta’s teachers are poised for a strike in the next few weeks. Tensions are high on both sides of the bargaining table. It is time to take a pause, reflect and recalculate.

Follow The Money

The largest sums of money earmarked for public, private and post-secondary schools are absorbed in infrastructure and operational maintenance. Yet, even when these numbers are left out of the equation, there seems to be enough money to maintain small class sizes and a healthier teacher-to-student ratio than the current 1:25+. 

These calculations take into consideration all things being equal, such as:

• Professional fees

• Senior executive salaries

• Expense accounts

• Teacher salaries

• Support staff salaries

• Operating insurance

• Licensing fees

• Utilities

That being said, information that is relatively unattainable from simple internet searches is exactly how much public and private schools spend on licensing for digital and non-digital classroom educational resources.

From 30 years of professional experience, these education companies charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell their products to overburdened school divisions. In an attempt to compare apples to apples while also considering actual licensing costs, the monetary discrepancies for properly funding public education become glaringly apparent.

In 1967, Alberta became the first province to provide public funding for private schools, offering $100 per pupil annually. In 2018-2019, Alberta's per-student funding fell below the national average, a trend that has continued to grow in subsequent years. A consistent failure of provincial budgets that did not keep pace with enrollment growth and inflation has led to significant per-student funding reductions even though enrollments continued to increase. 

The Impact Of This Shift On Teachers And Students

The shift to make private and charter schools a priority has financially bullied public schools for the past 5 decades. Huge class sizes, less classroom support (EAs), and significant certified and non-certified staff attrition rates are the result.

Compounding these issues is the extreme nature of classroom complexities as more and more students arrive at school in significant need of social and emotional support more than any other time in the history of our province. The impact is a financial and mental survival contest for both teacher and student alike.

The Bottom Line

Why are classrooms overcrowded and underfunded?

The Alberta government pays 43% more to private K-12 schools than it does to public K-12 schools. 

Why do teachers spend thousands of their personal income to adequately provide for the academic and social/emotional needs of their students?

Private K-12 schools receive $24,136 per student while public K-12 schools receive only $10,388 per student. 

This gap in funding is unacceptable.

What Is The Solution?

While we await the outcome of provincial bargaining, we can collectively focus on what matters most, and that is the well-being of our students and our teachers. Neither one is any good to the other when they cannot be their best selves.

In order for that to happen, there will need to be a significant reformatting of funding and resources for public education in Alberta. This is extremely overwhelming, so we offer a way to streamline this process for teachers, parents and students.

The unit and lesson plans in our K-6 Learning Library can help your K-6 child or students develop confidence and proficiency in both English Language Arts & Literature and Mathematics in a straightforward and engaging way. The best part is that you can edit these resources so that your child or students can focus on what they can do right now and build on it, rather than internalize that they are not performing at grade level.

All of our resources include engaging instructional videos, audio functions, and high-definition images. These resources can be used both digitally and non-digitally at home or at school.

If you want to fully preview all unit and lesson plans, you can do so on our Teachers Pay Teachers page!

If you have any questions about any of our products, then you can email me at hello@educationrocks.ca.

Thank you for reading this blog post on public school funding in Alberta. I wish you and your child(ren) or students all the best during this interesting time!