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Quebec trains its teachers differently, too. In that province, teachers take a four-year education degree that requires them to take up to 225 hours of courses in math education. In Ontario, teachers take a two-year course after completing a bachelor’s degree. The teaching course was only recently increased from one year.

Quebec also has a provincial exam in math that students must pass to graduate. That kind of rigour is passé in Ontario. It’s noteworthy that Quebec math teachers achieve their superior results despite maximum salaries that are $4,000 a year less than the average salary in Ontario.

The good news is that the Ontario government is taking the province more in the direction of Quebec, with the PC government’s back to basics math approach. There has been a realization that what is taught, how it is taught, and teacher training are key elements of success.

You’d never know it from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation’s one-note campaign against larger class sizes, though. If students in other provinces are producing better results in larger classes, what’s the problem?

It has been so long since Ontario has had a rational government that it can be difficult to remember what they do, but one of the hallmarks is weighing the cost of a program against its benefits. The province wanted to increase average class sizes in secondary schools by six students and nudge them up marginally in elementary schools. Over five years, that would have saved $2.8 billion, with 90 per cent of the savings from secondary class size increases. The government has now reduced its secondary school target by three students per class, forgoing more than $1.2 billion in savings.

In Ontario, we know what keeping smaller secondary school classes will cost. The benefit is a lot less clear.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and former Ontario PC candidate. Learn about his book Spiked at randalldenley.com. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com