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Don’t worry about the Doug Ford government increasing class sizes or bringing merit back to teacher hiring in Ontario. The people who actually run the provincial education system will never allow it.

One can make a rational case for slightly larger class sizes, since studies around the world fail to show significant educational benefits from smaller classes. One could certainly condemn the practice of hiring teachers based on who has stuck around longest on the fill-in teacher list, rather than on merit.

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To make those changes, Ontario’s teachers’ unions would have to agree. The class-size policy is locked into their contracts, which expire at the end of the summer. The hiring policy is in some of the contracts, too. For teachers, fewer kids mean less work and easier-to-manage classes. The abolition of hiring on merit effectively let the unions set the rules for hiring.

One could certainly condemn the practice of hiring teachers based on who has stuck around longest on the fill-in teacher list, rather than on merit.

Ontario teaching unions’ have little history of looking beyond narrow self-interest. Don’t expect them to start now. Sure, the province has a deficit of up to $14.5 billion and one of the reasons is generous contracts that have increased teachers’ pay while reducing their workloads, but why is that the teachers’ problem?