Alberta’s Education Assistants Are Losing the Classroom Battle

Leeann Cole is wrapping up her 23rd year as an education assistant, with Edmonton Public Schools. She’s worked in elementary and secondary schools all over the city and has seen everything you could imagine — students throwing chairs, cutting hair, calling names and screaming. Her job has provided a front-row seat to view the ailments of the public education system.

As an education assistant, or EA, Cole’s focus is working with students with behavioural issues, which have become more prevalent.

A 2024 survey by the Alberta Teachers’ Association found “one in two teachers have encountered bullying or violence, and 95 per cent of the aggression they experienced happened in person at school.”

Cole says each part of the city holds its own challenges, from high parental expectations to food insecurity. A mother of six now-grown children, she was a working single parent for long stretches of her life. She empathizes with parents and has first-hand experience of raising a child with behavioural issues.

Behaviour issues in the classroom are not new, but a reported rise in the past few years has some researchers pointing an accusatory finger at the COVID-19 pandemic as the point when things began to worsen.

Online learning and a rocky readjustment to classroom life took their toll. But experts say that issues like dwindling attention spans and underdeveloped maturity have roots that require more considered examination.

Natalia Rohatyn-Martin, chair of human services and early learning at MacEwan University, said some students are unable to communicate what they need. This could arise from not having the opportunity to express themselves or because they don’t possess the language or feel safe to express what they’re feeling, they said. “Sometimes it comes out in a way that others might label problematic.”

Shauna Pilipchuk is a sessional instructor in the special education department at MacEwan and teaches future educational assistants.

“Behaviour is a form of communication,” she said. “When we think about individuals who are using behaviours as a form of communication, we tend to think about it as something that is negative.”

“It’s not behavioural issues. It’s not behavioural problems with the child. It’s behaviours that we have a concern for or find challenging,” Pilipchuk continued. “We need to flip the language and perspective from ‘What do we need to do to stop this behaviour?’ to ‘How can we create an opportunity for that child to be successful?’”

The educators note mainstream knowledge around diagnosable conditions like mental health, neurodivergence and learning disabilities silos students and labels them as problematic. Even with a diagnosis, kids still require structure and support that are not present in the school system at the level they need.

And it’s not just a certain group of kids who can benefit from learning new communication skills, Pilipchuk said.

“Many students in the school system need those skills, and the younger that students are able to foster those skills, the easier it will be for their entire educational career to be able to communicate what their needs are,” she said.

The underlying problem

There was no hesitation when I asked education experts and professionals about what’s driving classroom problems: lack of resources.

What does funding provide? More time with students, smaller class sizes, mandatory education for EAs and more courses for teachers on positive behaviour support, said Pilipchuk.

When asked about problems arising in classrooms as a result of funding deficiencies, Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said the government has “heard loud and clear that Alberta’s classrooms have become increasingly complex.”

In an emailed statement, the minister listed the funding provided in the current fiscal year to improve schools and education support systems, which is part of the $9.9 billion allocated to the education system in the 2025-2026 provincial budget. As part of that education funding, there is $55 million to help school authorities respond to students’ diverse needs. That includes a 20 per cent increase to support hiring more educational assistants, expanding their hours and offering more training opportunities.

The minister noted that over the next three years, the Alberta government is investing nearly $1.1 billion of the $9.9 billion to manage enrollment growth and support the hiring of over 4,000 additional staff.

While the 2025-2026 provincial budget increase produces the highest education budget the province has ever seen, Alberta continues to be the province with the lowest education funding in Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

“Our investments and our dedication to education in Alberta is working,” Nicolaides said in the statement. “The latest international assessments show Alberta students are among the top performers globally in math, reading, science and more.”

But those who spend time in the schools every day aren’t seeing the minister’s claimed improvements.

Rohatyn-Martin said support, in the form of preparation time, manageable class sizes and proper classrooms for teachers and support staff like EAs, has gone down significantly, especially in recent years.

The support to provide the structure students need to be successful and thrive is not available.

“Once that level of support has been cut, then it’s a detriment to all students, because then we’re seeing — even in students that aren’t categorized with having behavioural disorders — a lot of different changes in how students are behaving and their understanding in the classroom because of this lack of support.”

The provincial government has allocated billions of dollars to hiring more teachers, education assistants and support staff. But even with these funding increases, education workers are still struggling.

And some are losing their jobs entirely.

In late June, CBC reported that about 450 full- and part-time education assistant positions in Alberta would be lost following changes in eligibility for Jordan’s Principle funding from Indigenous Services Canada.

Following this winter’s strike by EAs and support staff, members of Canadian Union of Public Employees locals accepted a deal of a three per cent raise in 2025, with additional increases (under two per cent) in subsequent years. Not all EAs and support staff in Alberta are unionized.

Despite the pay increase, EAs are not making a living wage. In 2012, Cole reached the top of her pay range.

But after taxes, Cole said, her take home pay for the year is still under $30,000. While EAs are paid for seven hours a day, Cole said, she and the other EAs at her school in Edmonton’s north end arrive early and stay late every day. Some, like Cole, also volunteer around the school, either as coaches for school sports teams or offering support to let behaviourally challenged students participate in extracurriculars.

Recognition of an EA’s role plays a huge part in the public — and political — perception of their impact.

“They’re not supported and recognized in their profession,” said Pilipchuk, adding that there isn’t a mandate in Alberta for education assistants to have a specific level of education.

There are education assistant certificate programs, like the one Pilipchuk teaches in. However, many EAs are drawn to the profession from personal experience or a background in caregiving.

“We are having them work with sometimes the most vulnerable of students in a classroom, and some of them have zero training. It’s not enough education for them to be able to be supported and to really understand how to best support these students.”

It takes a village

It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation when it comes to improving the classroom experience for everyone. Cole said she always starts the school year off with a conversation with teachers to discuss their individual approaches, expectations and needs from each other. Teachers are responsible for reaching out to parents so there needs to be open communication between EA and teacher about a student’s behaviour, what’s happening at school and what can be worked on at home.

Ideally, schools would also all have professionals like occupational and speech therapists working with students on their individual needs, said Alberta Teachers’ Association president Jason Schilling.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many such professionals left their professions and students are waiting up to 18 months to receive a psychoeducational assessment, he said, which means students are going up to another year and a half without the supports they need to be successful in school.

Not all of this is under the education umbrella, he added. Mental health services, child care and child services also need to be involved. Everyone needs to work together to provide students with the wraparound supports they need.

“Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions,” Schilling said. “Teachers’ plates are full and kids are slipping through the cracks.”

The education system needs wraparound supports, and it needs long-term, strategic planning that’s not politically motivated, said Pilipchuk.

Educators are overwhelmed. “It feels like they try things and try things and they turn around and something gets taken away. That’s why we only see pockets of success rather than generalized success,” she said.

‘Their actions are not meeting’ their words

The provincial government is responsible for funding public schools, and educators have been requesting more funding for years. The province has to play catch-up for years of inadequate education funding, and its recent budget increases and subsequent patchwork approach to funding special projects is not sufficient, experts say.

“It boils down to political will,” Schilling said. “We need a government that’s willing to make that investment. They say they’re listening, but their actions are not meeting [their words].”

At the classroom level, the belief is that the government doesn’t care or recognize what teachers, support staff and students are dealing with on a daily basis.

“They’d rather have the kids that don’t have any kind of disabilities,” said Cole. “They’d rather have all the AP [advanced placement] kids and all the kids that can contribute highly to society, or parents who are flourishing with money and intelligence. They don’t want the average kids or the kids struggling.”

What not everyone sees, and what Cole said is one of the greatest rewards of her job, is students years later leading happy and successful lives.

“I’m there to build trust and communication and I’m there to try and help guide them through their school years so that they can be successful wherever,” Cole said. “It’s a lot of work and we don’t get a lot of credit. I’m not here for the credit.”

Cole works a construction job in the summers to supplement her income and said she could keep this better-paying gig all year if she wanted to.

“I just feel that it’s so important for kids to have adults there that understand and that can be there, to be their voice, and to just listen, to take a step back and realize they’re humans too.”

*Story updated on July 3, 2025 at 11:30 a.m. to include more details about the Alberta provincial government’s education funding.