Students risk losing school spots under Alberta’s stop-gap home learning plan

By ZOE MASON on October 7, 2025.

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zmason@medicinehatnews.com

The government of Alberta outlined a number of measures intended to support families impacted by the teacher strike that began Monday. Among those measures is a home education incentive, which provides a grant of up to $450.50 per eligible child to both families and to independent schools overseeing homeschooling programs.

However, children enrolled in this program will not be guaranteed a place back in the same school they attended prior to making the change to home education.

“It makes me question the seriousness of this process and negotiations,” said ATA president Jason Schilling at a press conference on Monday. “If we’re willing to do what the government has indicated there and say you cannot maybe go back to the school that you left, is this a way to further undermine and erode public education in the province?”

Schilling added that private schools in Alberta already receive government funding that amounts to 70 per cent of the funding received by public schools.

“In Budget 2025 public education saw a 4.5 per cent increase. Private education saw a 13.5 per cent increase, and will see a 30 per cent-plus increase by the end of fiscal year of 2027,” he said. “This is a government that says they value choice in education, but they sure seem to value one aspect of it a little bit more than the other.”

Teachers went on strike Monday in a move Schilling described as the largest labour disruption in Alberta history. Roughly 51,000 teachers across the province are on strike.

According to a statement Schilling gave at his press conference Monday, teachers are demanding better teacher-student ratios, support for complex classrooms and fair pay.

In addition to the home education incentive, the Alberta government introduced other measures including an online learning toolkit and a childcare subsidy.

Schilling also raised concerns about the online learning toolkit, which he said does not reflect the Alberta curriculum and borrows from an American-based curriculum instead.

The Minister of Education and Child Care’s office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.