The opposition NDP are saying the provincial government has put themselves into the situation with the teachers strike.  Education critic Matt Love says the funding of education has not kept up with the needs of the province in terms of classroom complexity.  He describes it as having been “cut to the bone” and says the result is school divisions have very little control over what they can offer due to lack of resources.

He says it didn’t have come to job action but that they got here because the government has been intransigent. Love also describes the government as having gotten desperate in that it has provided misleading information to residents of the province.  Specifically, and most recently Love points to information provided last week by the Government of Saskatchewan which referred to per capita funding for students in the province.  The NDP notes that per capita funding is not a model used anywhere else in Canada.

Historically the province has reported funding as being on a per student basis. An STF news release issued just prior to the new school year indicated in a report on public school funding in Canada, the Fraser Institute has found that between 2012-2020, Saskatchewan recorded the second highest increase in student enrolment among provinces, while also seeing the second largest decrease in per-student funding.

(with files from DiscoverEstevan.com)