A provincial initiative to keep class sizes down has entered its fifth year. Ian Wishart, Minister of Education and Training, says while the target is still basically to get classes down to under twenty students, the government has been working with a number of different school divisions to show some flexibility on how they might achieve that goal. Wishart notes they've hired a total of three hundred and eighty-two more teachers province-wide, with fifty more just in this last year, so space must be found to accommodate everyone.

He says Manitoba has seen a four or five year lag in building schools, which does create some problems with finding classroom space. Wishart notes the number of portable classrooms in use in the province has been up every year for the last eight years, adding these units are of good quality and can certainly be a help with the whole process of showing more flexibility.

He says the provincial government has been listening very carefully to what the different school divisions have to say and is prepared to work with them on a case by case basis. Wishart notes twenty is not necessarily a magic number, so they'll work with the divisions to keep as close to that as possible while showing a little flexibility rather than taking a hard line approach.