A report released this past fall that measured well being in Saskatchewan is a bit out of date, according to the President of the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation. The Saskatchewan Wellbeing Index measured things like living standards, the environment, leisure and culture and education.

Patrick Maze says the report indicates that wellbeing is on the rise in education, with the average expenditure per public school student increasing by over 173 per cent between 1997 and 2014. Things have changed since then. Maze explains that student population has increased, including those with higher needs, and the funding has gone down in the provincial austerity budgets. He says around 2014 was when the economy began a downturn.

Maze calls it the perfect storm. To start with, schools are now more inclusionary than back in the 1960’s. Students with higher medical and mental health needs used to be separated, but are now where they should be, in the classroom with the rest of the students. Also, with more international students, many are learning a new language and some are dealing with the physical and emotional trauma of living in refugee camps. Maze says the budgets have been cut, so there are fewer supports like educational assistants and speech language pathologists, meaning teachers are having to try to effectively teach but with more students and more with higher needs in the classroom.