Tuesday June 17, 2003
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Year of the Great Student Squish
Universities in Ontario are turning tennis courts into classrooms to handle a surge in students this autumn after the province shortened high school from five years to four and is graduating two classes at once.
The province says the transition is going well, and students will not lose out. But teachers and students say the crush of the so-called double cohort will overload a system that is already strained by education spending cuts.
“The government has pressured the university presidents to put as many students into the university as possible because they promised parents there will be a place for your child. But they don’t say what kind of place.”
Ontario’s Grade 13 has been an anomaly in Canada for almost four decades, adding to education costs in the country’s richest and most populous province. The province decided five years ago to eliminate the added grade and this is its final year. (Reuters)