With school back in session after the holiday break, conversations around Saskatchewan's education system have returned.
The province's political parties have seen some back and forth, with the Saskatchewan NDP saying that a recent report shows the system gained 15,000 students and lost 86 teachers.
STF President Samantha Becotte talks about the numbers and what they're seeing in the school system.
"The numbers that have been talked about by the NDP and the staffing report that's come out from the ministry really do show exactly what we've been talking about for the last number of years with budgets not keeping pace with enrollment growth or inflationary pressures for schools across the province."
"It is continuing to be a challenge to meet the needs of all of our students as we see more students coming into our schools with more needs and more diverse needs and yet we have fewer professional supports available in schools to support each of those students."
The Saskatchewan government did reply that they had hired 200 more educators this year and that the ratio of students to teachers has stayed solid compared to last year.
Becotte says that even with those points the system still needs more work from the province.
"We've talked about the decrease in per-student funding that we're experiencing in Saskatchewan where we used to be first in the country for per student funding and now we are one of the lowest in the country. So when we look over that longer period of time, we are seeing larger class sizes, we're seeing more students with more intensive needs and yet we have fewer professional supports, not just teachers, but educational psychologists, speech language pathologists, mental health counselors, when we know that those needs are very high across the province in all areas."
"We're also seeing more classes even if their numbers may not be high, we have more classes where we have split grade or multi-curricular classes. So teachers are really having to split their focus and cover 2, 3, 4, even up to six topics within a single period and that's really not fair for kids who are struggling in their learning as well."
Becotte says that in order to make a better education environment the province needs to focus on both recruitment and retention.
"I'm hearing from so many teachers who are talking about burning out from the workload that they're being put under and having to support more students or to support all of those additional needs when kids are waiting for a speech-language pathologist, for example, and I've heard the wait lists are up to two years, if not more, in some of our rural and remote areas."
"Then the teachers are trying to fill the gaps in the interim and they can't do all the things and be all of those specialized professionals, for each of their individual students in their classes. So I'm hearing a lot of burnout from teachers and hearing about a lot of education students not entering the teaching profession, hearing about teachers who are retiring early and moving on to a different profession, or even leaving the province to go teach elsewhere."
Becotte says that she hopes to see more work done by the
"We know that the challenges within public education are significant and we've been talking about this now for at least a decade and that means that we have a generation of kids who have gone without what they need for their public school. But we can change course and teachers are ready to work with other educational or education sector partners, including the government and school boards, to ensure that every single student in our province coming into our schools has the support that they need and has the best quality education possible to set them up for success into the future."