Alberta Teachers Association speaks out against incoming curriculum changes
Posted August 17, 2026 10:39 am.
Many grade school teachers are preparing to teach newly revised curricula in the upcoming school year, which is causing concern among the Alberta Teachers’ Association.
Come September, a revised grades four to six social studies curriculum will become mandatory. Grades seven to nine math, social studies, phys ed, and career education teachers can start piloting the new curricula, which will become mandatory in the 2027-28 school year.
But the head of the ATA says many of the new concepts being taught are too complicated for the students’ ages and abilities.
“We saw, for instance, in elementary school math, some junior high concepts that were dropped down into Grade 5 or to Grade 6,” Jason Schilling told CityNews. “Students aren’t developmentally ready to tackle those concepts.”
Schilling also says the curricula are dramatically different, and ATA members aren’t just concerned about the difficulty of the content.
“There’s a lot of memorization,” he said. “There’s a lack of creativity and critical thinking. One teacher even said to me she’s really sad about the social studies eight curriculum because it was really exciting to teach, but now she finds it’s boring.”
Schilling also says teachers have been left scrambling to prepare for the changes and believes the rollout has been rushed by the province.
But the Alberta government is defending the changes.
“Alberta’s government is taking a deliberate, sequential approach to the implementation that gives teachers and school authorities time to prepare,” the Ministry of Education and Childcare said in a statement to CityNews. “Curriculum development is informed by scholarly research and extensive input from education partners, including teachers, and in winter 2026, more than one 100 teachers from 43 school boards participated in field testing for draft grades seven to nine curriculums prior to the pilot in schools this fall.”
The province also says over $31 million has been allocated for professional learning supports and curriculum resources for teachers.
