The Ontario government intends to eliminate thousands of full-time teaching positions over the next four years, according to a memo.

A provincial memo lays out the Ford government’s plans to cut thousands of full-time teaching positions in Ontario beginning this fall. 

In the 2019-2020 school year, the memo says, there will be 1,558 fewer full-time teachers in Ontario. By the 2022-2023 school year, that number will be 3,475 — about three per cent of Ontario’s current teacher workforce. 

The total savings for removing those full-time positions would be $851 million. 

The memo, which was sent by the Ministry of Education to school board administrators, also clarifies that the positions will be shed through attrition — meaning teachers that quit or retire and are not replaced — as well as changing student enrolment numbers and bumped-up class sizes. 

Class sizes going up 

Concerns about teacher job losses have been swirling since March, when the province revealed its education plan, which includes increases to class sizes for intermediate and high school students. 

The average class size requirement for Grades 9 to 12 will be adjusted to 28, up from the current average of 22.

Because those averages are determined by individual school boards, educators have warned that some classes — especially important prerequisites —  could balloon to the high 30s. 

On Friday, TDSB trustee Robin Pilkey told CBC Toronto by email that the memo doesn’t provide any new information, and that “the number of positions we anticipate being eliminated has not changed.” 

The TDSB’s enrolment is expected to climb by about 1,500 students in the next three years, according to a board report release in January, from its 2018-2019 level of 242,423 to 243,988 by the 2021-2022 school year

Word of the memo comes just one day after students across Ontario staged a province-wide protest over the planned changes to the education system, and a day before another planned rally set to be held at the legislature at Queen’s Park.