ManitobaThe Manitoba government says it has added 832 teaching positions across the province since October 2023 but couldn’t say how many of those positions are actually filled by teachers.NDP promised to cap class sizes, but education minister says ‘more work to do’ to get thereCBC News · Posted: Oct 29, 2025 3:48 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesManitoba Education Minister Tracy Schmidt, surrounded by students, speaks at Sage Creek School on Wednesday about funding for teacher positions. (Josh Crabb/CBC)The Manitoba government says it has added 832 teaching positions across the province since October 2023 — but it couldn’t say how many of those positions are actually filled by teachers.”I don’t have those numbers at my fingertips today,” Education Minister Tracy Schmidt said Wednesday at a news conference at Sage Creek School about funding for schools.”We certainly know, after years of a government that failed to invest in schools, we know that schools in the last two years that are finally seeing some significant increases to their operational budgets are very quickly wanting to fill those positions.”I would be surprised if there were many vacancies.”The total number of funded teachers for the current fiscal year is 13,903, up from 13,071 in 2023-24, Schmidt said.”More teachers means smaller class sizes. More teachers means you get more attention from your teachers, and that you have a better relationship with your teachers, you have more one-on-one time,” Schmidt said, speaking as students from Sage Creek School in Winnipeg stood around her podium.”More teachers means your children will have the opportunities to be seen and heard and supported in the classroom.”Asked whether there are enough teachers available to fill the positions, Schmidt said, “There’s certainly a teacher shortage here in Manitoba; there’s a teacher shortage right across the country.”She said she’s working “very closely” with Renée Cable, the provincial minister of advanced education and training, to make sure post-secondary institutions are doing their part to train new educators.”For many years now, the last seven to eight years in Manitoba, we’ve seen teachers leaving the profession,” she said, again criticizing the previous government under the Progressive Conservative Party.”One of the reasons being that there were not the adequate investments — the stable and predictable funding — that school divisions need to be able to grow their budgets, to be able to hire teachers.”For the current school year, Manitoba increased operating funding for kindergarten to Grade 12 public schools by $67 million (3.4 per cent). Total funding for public schools this year is $1.8 billion when staffing and programs like the universal school nutrition program are added in, a news release from the province said Wednesday. In addition to teacher positions, the province has also provided funding for 577 other educators, bringing that total to 8,204 from 7,627, Schmidt said.There are also 72 more clinician positions than in 2023-24, for a total of 580 this year.The province, when it was under a previous NDP government about a decade ago, implemented a plan to limit class sizes in kindergarten to Grade 3 at 20 students, saying the same things Schmidt said on Wednesday: that students learn better that way.When the PCs took power, they eliminated the class cap. Current NDP Premier Wab Kinew promised during an election campaign in 2019 to restore that cap.The party lost that election but won power in 2023. After two years in government, Kinew and his government haven’t revisited that promise.Asked about it, Schmidt repeated the government has “a lot of work to do. We have a lot of catching up to do,” but said it is making “great investments” to bring on more teachers.”That will, inevitably, shrink class sizes,” she said.”I think that we’re seeing, like I said, some great results here today. [But there’s] more work to do, for sure.”
Manitoba funded 832 more teachers but can’t say how many have been hired
