Source
r/halifax•
jimkang_

Basic questions about elementary school

Hello!

My family is looking at places to move, among them Halifax. We're particularly interested in how the school experience is. I've gotta say, the HRCE web site is a lot better than most school district web sites, but I'm still not able to figure some things out:

  1. What is the student-teacher ratio in Halifax elementary schools? If I visit individual school sites are they listed there? (I looked at one and didn't see it.)
  2. Is the multi-teacher model common in elementary schools there, meaning that classrooms each have a lead teacher and an assistant teacher or paraprofessional that also helps out?
  3. Are there commonly specialists to help out with things like reading, speech, etc.?

I was hoping someone here could help out with these questions, and I'd love to hear any other thoughts you have about the schools!

Posted Mar 15, 2022, 2:57 AM UTC

05
emdurn•

1: class sizes. There is flexibility to these numbers. P-2 20 students, 3-6 25 students, 7-9 28 students and 10-12 30 students.

Here is a list of schools and how many classes are within the guidelines. Soft cap is with the above numbers. Hard cap is +2 students. https://www.hrce.ca/sites/default/files/hrsb/hrce_class_caps_report_2021-22.pdf

2: it’s mostly one teacher per class. Some do job share. Like my sons grade 2 class has his main teacher and then a different teacher every Wednesday. Some classes have a teacher for the morning and a different one in the afternoon.

3: there are specialists but they are few and far between. It my experience it’s been difficult to access them as they have high case loads.

9
jimkang_OP•

Thanks so much! This is really helpful.

It sounds like you've had some difficulty with specialists. Any thoughts on how the overall school experience has been?

1
KatLT20•

To answer question #3: The schools to have access to specialists such as speech language pathologists, psychologists, autism specialists: https://www.hrce.ca/about-hrce/program/student-services These professionals are employed directly by HRCE as funding for these positions comes from the Department of Education rather than the Department of Heath. There are some community based services that can also be accessed (psychology, occupational therapy, etc) through the IWK for school-aged children as well as providers working in private practice (speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists).

6
grahamr31Hubley-Tantallon•

Yes yes and yes to these.

We have support from the in school SLP, as well as private.

We have support from the IWK OTPT teams, and they do in school work with the learning centre team, and we have a dedicated EPA for our son.

4
Harusai•

I don’t have a kid in the school system but have friends that do, and obv went through it myself at one point although things change.

  1. About 30-35 kids per class I believe

  2. I have had both, a single teacher and a teacher with “student teacher”. Experience for me was about the same.

3.some school have this (some call it resource) or an extra. They also use a buddy system assuming that’s still a thing (reading buddies) where older let’s say grade 6 kids help younger kids read etc.

Hope this helps some until more folks chime in

-3†