CALGARY—The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) criticized the provincial government on Saturday for their recent decision to cancel an agreement between the two sides that gave teachers a co-lead role in developing and implementing Alberta’s curriculum.

This agreement was the 2016 memorandum of understanding between the Alberta government and the ATA. On Friday, the provincial government gave the ATA notice they would withdraw from this agreement within 30 days.

The agreement established the ATA’s role to assist the province in redesigning Alberta’s decades-old curriculum, by using teachers’ practical expertise and input. Teachers would ensure the content of Alberta’s curriculum was sound, and provide input on what they would need to ensure any new curriculum introduction was successful.

ATA president Jason Schilling was disappointed with Friday’s decision to scrap the agreement. He said the memorandum of understanding had been highly important to the ATA when the previous NDP government approached them to sign the agreement three years ago.

“As you’re going to look at developing curriculum, teachers are the experts on curriculum,” Schilling said.

“It was important for teachers to give input on just how the curriculum would be field-tested so it wasn’t at all overwhelming for someone who’s, say, teaching in a Hutterite colony as opposed to someone who might just be teaching a single grade.”

This decision came after the UCP government, elected earlier this year, halted a field test of Alberta’s new kindergarten to Grade 4 education curriculum, earlier this summer, to do a new round of consultations. This curriculum was initially planned for this fall at hundreds of schools.

Adriana LaGrange, Alberta’s minister of education, took to Twitter on Saturday to say the agreement with the ATA had been too restrictive, arguing she wanted to involve more partners in the curriculum redesign process.

“Minister LaGrange believes that every partner in the education system has a role to play in the development and implementation of curriculum. She is looking forward to working with all stakeholders, including the ATA, moving forward,” said Colin Aitchison, spokesperson for Alberta’s Ministry of Education, in a written statement on Saturday.

Aitchison added that the current curriculum working groups that are made up of teachers will remain in place, and the ministry will continue to engage with teachers and the ATA on implementing Alberta’s curriculum.

Schilling and the ATA argued against LaGrange’s claim that their agreement was too restrictive, saying nothing in the MOU was stopping the government from seeking advice from other groups and stakeholders. In a release issued by the ATA on Saturday, Schilling said the cancellation and the government’s overall approach seemed to be motivated “more by ideology than by a desire to ensure authentic engagement to benefit students.”

But Schilling added that teachers’ voices are important on this topic, because it’ll be up to them to ensure any new curriculum update is successfully implemented in classrooms.

“Teachers are the key stakeholder in a lot of this process, because they are the ones who are developing alongside other professionals the curriculum, but who are also the ones who will be implementing this in their classrooms. And there’s a lot of complexities to implementing a curriculum,” Schilling said.

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