Organization: St. Kateri Elementary School

Alberta is adding thousands of teachers, classroom supports and student spaces as schools grapple with a surge of more than 90,000 students in four years.

According to Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, the challenge in rural communities is not only how much funding schools receive, it is also how they get specialized professionals through the door.

At a Sept. 10 rural media roundtable, he said the province is giving rural and remote school divisions additional funding to cover the costs of bringing in specialists such as occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists.

Nicolaides said school boards, not the province, are ultimately responsible for hiring staff, but acknowledged recruitment is harder outside major cities. Some rural divisions fly in specialists and cover accommodation costs just to provide services to students in need.

“Our view is that the school boards shouldn’t have to bear that extra cost to provide the same level of service,” he said. “That’s why we’re giving them funding above and beyond what other school divisions will receive to help cover some of those extra costs.”

The province is providing $25 million for staff training, specifically in rural and remote communities, Nicolaides announced.

“Apart from training, some of that funding will go towards helping our rural and remote school divisions pay the increased costs associated with bringing other specialized staff out to their communities to help support students,” he said.

Complexity funding rolling out

The province’s 2026 budget increased education funding by seven per cent. Nicolaides said the investment is part of a broader response to rapid enrolment growth, increasingly complex learning needs, pressure on school space, staffing and classroom support.

Nicolaides said the province carried out its largest-ever data collection effort last fall, gathering information from 108,000 classrooms to identify where those needs were most concentrated. It subsequently committed $218 million to create 699 classroom-complexity teams.

“These teams will now work directly alongside teachers in our classrooms to help address diverse learning needs and give students more focused time and attention,” he said.

As of the roundtable, 566 of those teams had been established, including 211 in urban and rural areas outside Calgary and Edmonton. Nicolaides said 81 per cent of all planned complexity teams are now fully staffed.

Southern Alberta investments

Livingstone Range School Division received one new Grade 7-12 classroom-complexity team for 2026-27, and Holy Spirit Catholic School Division received two. Both allocations were made in July.

Each division also received $405,000 for three full-time-equivalent teaching positions through the province’s Class Size Reduction Grant. The grant is part of a $200-million provincial spend aimed at hiring more than 1,400 teachers for kindergarten to Grade 9 classrooms this school year.

This year’s operational funding is rising for both local divisions as well. LRSD is projected to receive $48.97 million, up from $47.79 million, while Holy Spirit funding is increasing to $66.43 million from $63.16 million.

Nicolaides said all divisions are receiving increased funding for students with diverse learning needs, with amounts varying largely by enrolment.

“We know that there are students in every corner of the province that need additional help,” he said.

There are 11 active school projects in the region, including St. Kateri Elementary School in west Lethbridge under Holy Spirit. The new K-6 school is expected to accommodate 250 students initially and 400 at full buildout. The estimated cost is $22.6 million.

In Livingstone Range, a replacement K-12 school in Nanton is under construction, expected to hold up to 607 students at an estimated $57.4 million.

Nicolaides also said the province is spending $200 million this year on modular classrooms, expected to deliver 6,000 student spaces more quickly than permanent construction allows.

Supporting students with disabilities

Nicolaides said funding has increased for several targeted programs, including grants for students with hearing or visual impairments and those with language delays and other disabilities. Program Unit Funding, or PUF, which supports students with severe language delays and other disabilities, rose six per cent this budget cycle.

Nicolaides said post-secondary institutions also receive funding to expand opportunities for students with disabilities.

On psychoeducational and cognitive assessments, he said delays are likely to continue due to a shortage of qualified professionals able to conduct them, not a lack of funding.

Alberta students rank among global leaders

Nicolaides touted Alberta’s results in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment, released days before the roundtable. Alberta ranked first among provinces in reading and science, second in mathematics, behind Quebec, and above both the Canadian and OECD averages in all three subjects.

The province reported 520 in science, 499 in reading and 489 in mathematics against OECD international averages of 482, 461 and 489.

Nicolaides said Alberta has typically placed second or third internationally and has improved relative to other provinces. He noted that PISA scores have declined globally since 2018, pointing to pandemic learning loss and increased use of technology and artificial intelligence as possible factors in falling global reading performance.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association welcomed the results but urged caution against overinterpretation.

ATA’s president, Jason Schilling, said last week the scores reflect teachers’ work despite rising enrolment and classroom complexity, but raised concerns about new expedited teacher certification pathways and their potential effect on instruction quality.

“Fully qualified and certificated teachers understand that there is much more to teaching than simple subject matter knowledge,” Schilling said, adding that PISA results offer only “a limited snapshot” of what happens daily in Alberta classrooms.

Nicolaides said the results show Alberta remains a strong-performing education system, but acknowledged they do not mean the province’s education challenges have been resolved.

“There’s more work to be done,” he said, “but I’m really confident and happy with the steps that we’ve taken to date.”