Feb. 12, 2026
We appreciate
today’s announcement to support student complexity. Classroom complexity has been a central theme to the
Board’s advocacy for many years.
The CBE will receive targeted funding directed to 118 schools to hire a classroom complexity team. The government has determined that this funding is to be used to hire one teacher and two education assistants per team.
This additional funding is a positive step forward to addressing the realities we see in our classrooms every day.
CBE will move quickly to allocate funding and resources, but additional hiring and onboarding of new employees at this point in the school year may take some time. We will keep you informed as we receive additional details.
It is critical that school boards can prioritize areas of greatest need. We appreciate that government will provide flexibility to request different schools for the allocation of funds, as classrooms may have changed since the data was collected.
As always, our goal is to allocate resources in the best interest of student learning. The Alberta Classroom Insights Survey results are shown as raw data. When school leaders are determining classes several factors are considered, such as the number of students in each grade and physical spaces available in the school. Leaders also consider the availability, experience and skill sets of teachers and support staff, as well as class resources available with the funding provided.
For more information see CBE Class Sizes and Composition by Division
Today’s announcement will make a difference, and we continue to advocate for increased, sustainable education funding. Over the past four years, the number of CBE students with special education needs in our system has grown to approximately 27,500 or about 1 in every 5 students. In addition, about 31% of students (44,000) are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL), 17.6 percentage points higher than the rest of the province.
As a Board, we look forward to the upcoming provincial budget announcement and learning more about how these supports will be sustained in future budgets.
