The Rocky View School Division (RVS) recently completed its annual class size survey for every grade and every class in their schools and the superintendent says the results don't show much change from last year.  

Each year, every school division in the province must complete the survey and post the results in their Annual Education Results Report.  RVS Superintendent Greg Luterbach says the government asks for the information to be broken down into two groups. 

"They ask for it to be broken down into different groups, what do your class sizes look like from Kindergarten to grade 3, what about grade 4 to grade 6 all the way up to 10 to 12.  They also say, what does it look like in your core subject areas, your English language arts, your math, your science, your social studies and then what does it look like in all subjects."

Luterbach says the overall results are much the same as they were last year.

"When you look at all the classes, really our class size averages are about the same, slightly lower in some areas and a little bit higher in a couple of areas, so not much has changed from last year.

Based on enrolment numbers as of Sept. 30, RVS core subjects class sizes averaged 21.4 students in Kindergarten to grade 3, 25.2 in grades 4 to 6, 27.4 students for grades 7 to 9, and 25.1 in grade 10 through grade 12.

For all subjects, the numbers show kindergarten to grade 3 class sizes averaged 21.4 students, there were 25.1 in grades 4 to 6, 26.2 students in grades 7 to 9 and 24.6 in grades 10 to 12.

When asked if he was pleased with the class sizes in Rocky View, Luterbach said, "Certainly, given the amount of resources that are provided to school jurisdictions, our board has made direct classroom instruction a priority.  In an ideal world, we'd love our classrooms to be slightly smaller but given the resources we have overall, it's where we're at."

Rather than look at the overall class sizes in Rocky View, Luterbach says they prefer to look at them on a school by school basis.  

"That's where the rubber meets the road," he says.  "When you roll it all up over the 50-odd different schools, I mean it gives you a general picture, but really it's more important when you look at these on a school-by-school basis.  We know for every class where we might be at 17, in a Kindergarten class, we know we've got another class sitting at 23.  We look at them individually which is much more important to us than overall."

The Alberta Teachers’ Association is making classroom sizes an issue ahead of the upcoming provincial election.  They've distributed 400,000 postcards that look like sardine cans with students in them.  The unconventional advertising campaign is highlighting the issue of class sizes.  Accompanying radio and online advertising says, "Kids deserve quality classrooms, not sardine cans."