Ontario Liberals commit to cap class sizes for all grades at 20 students

The Ontario Liberals are promising to cap class sizes at 20 students for every grade across the province, if elected.

Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca says it would ensure every student gets the focus and attention they deserve.

The Liberals say to achieve the hard cap they would hire 10,000 teachers, recruiting some from other provinces and helping qualified teachers immigrate to Ontario. The party says they would also work to attract some of the 80,000 Ontario-certified teachers they say are not currently employed by schools back to teaching.

At a morning news conference, Del Duca declined to commit to a specific timeline for achieving lower class sizes, but said the promise would have "the full weight of the premier and the premier's office" behind it. 

"With respect to teachers, 10,000 is a big number. But it is the right number to get us where we need to be on a hard cap of 20," Del Duca said.

"We recognize it will take a little bit of time," Del Duca continued, adding that the goal would be explicitly included in a mandate letter to a Liberal minister of education.

He said that a Liberal government would begin by prioritizing schools that have the largest class sizes already and those schools in neighbourhoods that were particularly hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Del Duca also stressed that the Liberal proposal is for a hard cap for every single classroom, not a provincewide average of 20 students which results in some classes having significantly more students.

The Liberal leader said he sought advice of the major teacher unions before announcing his plan.

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario applauded the move.

"Smaller class sizes help improve student engagement, achievement, and well-being, and are especially critical as we move to a post-pandemic recovery," the union said in a statement.

As well, the Liberals are promising to end a mandatory graduation requirement for two online credits introduced by the Progressive Conservative government.

Del Duca said he will be releasing more planks in his education platform, but that he wants to address pandemic-related learning gaps and review and update the standardized testing system.

The NDP has promised to introduce a cap of 24 students for Grades 4 through 8 and hire 20,000 teachers and education workers if elected in June, as well as scrap the requirement for two online courses.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the previous Liberal government let class sizes balloon and froze teachers' wages.

"No matter what Steven Del Duca says now, he had 15 years to to make sure we had smaller class sizes, and the Liberals refused to do it," she said in Toronto.

"They had 15 years to pay attention to our public education system, but instead, they didn't do that work."

Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford said the Liberal government actually closed schools.

"So they won't have to worry about capping anything because they won't have the schools to put the students in," he said.