All student teachers in Ontario will, for the first time, be required to take common training in how to work with students of diverse backgrounds and those with special needs, Education Minister Liz Sandals has announced. They will also get training in using technology in the classroom.

The sweeping new curriculum, which will launched in 2015 and spread over two years instead of one, includes 80 days of practice teaching instead of 40. As well, teachers’ colleges will admit only half as many students as they do now — 4,500 a year down from about 9,000 — to reduce the glut of unemployed teachers in an age of tight budgets and declining enrolment.

Sandals said only about 6,000 teaching jobs open up in the province each year.

“By modernizing our teacher education program, we can give students a greater depth of knowledge and also give them more opportunities to find jobs in their chosen field,” she said as she unveiled the new curriculum Wednesday at Lord Lansdowne Public School in downtown Toronto.

The Liberals, in their 2011 election campaign, had promised to bring in a longer, more detailed teacher education program.

Queen’s Park will also reduce the per-student funding it provides to the province’s 13 education faculties by about 20 per cent. The funding rate used to match that for the technology-focused engineering programs but it will now be on a par with law and social work.

The ministry will provide transition dollars to ease the initial blow to universities, especially those such as Nipissing and Lakehead, for whom eduction faculties make up a large portion of the student body.

“We need to turn the tap down on the supply of teachers and bring it more in line with demand,” said Brad Duguid, the minister of training, college and universities, noting 37,500 qualified teaching graduates in Ontario cannot find jobs in their field.

However, the Council of Ontario Universities warned that cuts to funding — which it pegged at about one-third less — could compromise the quality of teacher education.

“Ontario universities are already doing more for students with less money than universities in any other province,” said council president Bonnie Patterson, who warned a further drop in funding “threatens quality.”

Under the new curriculum, Sandals said, each student teacher will get at least some training in teaching diverse populations including aboriginal students, tailoring teaching methods to students of different abilities, using technology in the classroom, literacy and numeracy, mental health and addiction, and safe schools.

“Currently the requirements are not very specific and many of these items are not necessarily included (in each faculty) and the complaint from school boards for decades has been that not every teacher graduate has learned about special education,” said Sandals. “Now that will be a requirement.”