Alberta Education Budget Falls Nearly $1 Billion Short to Meet Basic Needs, Teachers Say

Public education funding is not keeping pace with inflation, advocates say, and the situation is getting worse with the latest budget.

Classroom conditions are deteriorating in Alberta public schools while private and charter schools received a funding boost in the 2025 budget which passed Thursday, according to the teacher’s association president.

The Alberta Teacher’s Association, which represents over 50,000 members in the province, says Alberta’s 2025 education budget fell short nearly a billion dollars from what would be needed to bring per student funding up to the national average.

The ATA held a press conference Tuesday to sound the alarm about what it described as a budget shortfall for 2025 at a time when class sizes are increasing to new heights and teacher burnout and retention issues are straining the system.

ATA President Jason Schilling says the public school system is in crisis.

“They failed to meet the challenge of what’s needed in public education. We put out a statement that what would be needed is $11.35 billion in public education funding to bring us up to the Canadian average per student. We’re disappointed that the government hasn’t made public education a priority,” Schilling told PressProgress.

“Private schools received a more significant increase to their budgets than public schools did.”

The budget included a 4.5% increase for public education, landing short of government inflation numbers. The 2025 budget anticipates a 7.3% projected increase for inflation and population growth.

Overall the 2025 budget for public schools landed at $9.9 billion, well below what Schilling says is needed to bring Alberta up to the national funding per-student average.

This shortfall is having drastic effects on classrooms, Schilling says, having just wrapped a province-wide trip consulting with ATA members.

“Teacher’s concerns about the ability to meet their students’ needs are prevalent. Teachers talked about the availability of substitute teachers if they’re sick. I’ve spoken to teachers who are at their wits end, who are thinking of leaving the profession. Class sizes are growing into numbers we’ve never seen before.”

The ATA also cites increasing capacity of needs and a lack of facilities needed to accommodate growth. 

According to the Edmonton Public School Board, last year enrolment in public schools grew by the equivalent of one modular classroom size every day.

In 2024, the ATA noted Alberta ranks lowest among provinces in Canada in per-student funding, based on a calculation of 2020/2021 Statistics Canada data. This claim echoes findings from the conservative-leaning Fraser Institute.

However, this budget wasn’t without winners on the education file. Alberta allotted nearly half a billion dollars total to private and charter schools by 2028, which constitutes an over 30% increase.

This is part of the Smith government’s plan “to support new and expanding charter schools consistent with the government’s commitment to choice in education.”

Through one program, the School Construction Accelerator Program (SCAP), the UCP government aims to “accelerate school construction projects, expand modular classrooms, and support educational choice through capital support for specialized and public charter schools.”  

This amounts to government funding private school construction while shortchanging the public system according to Brad Lafortune, Director of the policy watchdog organization Public Interest Alberta.

“What we wanted to see with this budget didn’t happen when it came to education. They’ll be building a lot more schools but a lot of them will be private and charter schools. You can’t have a proper education system without a good work force,” Lafortune told PressProgress. 

Lafortune adds that the government should end public capital expenditure for private and charter schools, and end taxpayer subsidies to private schools, which currently stand at 70% per student in Alberta.

Alberta is the only Canadian province with charter schools.

“We want a system that makes sure we get education assistants back in the classroom with a good contract, while also recruiting and retaining new teachers. We don’t see anything nearing what we need to see in education,” Lafortune said.

“We’re so far behind on class sizes. We need a massive investment in the workforce.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story indicated the ATA ranked lowest in per-student funding in 2024. In fact, the ATA released this statement in 2024, but based its findings on a calculation of newly released Statistics Canada data from 2020/2021.