Alberta classroom complexity
Class sizes and classroom complexity for 1,549 Alberta schools in the 2025-26 school year, from Alberta Education. Search a school, a community or a board.
Find a school: class size and classroom complexity
Search 1,549 Alberta schools by name, community or board; each compares with its city and Alberta.
Separate names with commas to compare several schools.
Composition against occurrence, every Alberta school
Each school's share of classrooms high in composition (7+ need types) and in occurrence (11+ students needing support).
Search a school to mark it. Upper right: the most complex classrooms.
Average class size by school board
Average class size and share of classrooms over 30 students, Alberta and the four big-city boards, 2025-26.
| Board | Schools | Classrooms | Average class size | Classrooms over 30 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alberta, all schools | 1,549 | 85,209 | 25.3 | 20.4% |
| Calgary Board of Education (CBE) | 234 | 13,188 | 27.3 | 28.6% |
| Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) | 115 | 9,897 | 25.9 | 17.8% |
| Edmonton Public Schools (EPSB) | 210 | 16,732 | 27.2 | 30.3% |
| Edmonton Catholic Schools (ECSD) | 91 | 5,440 | 26.7 | 27.4% |
What classroom complexity means
Alberta Education's two complexity measures, composition and occurrence, and the thresholds it sets for each.
Alberta Education publishes classroom complexity through the Alberta Classroom Insights Portal (ACIP). This page organizes that public data so schools are easier to search and compare. Every definition and threshold below is Alberta Education's.
Composition
How many types of learning need coexist in one classroom. A student can count in several of the 9 categories:
EAL · mild or moderate · severe · IPP · First Nations, Métis and Inuit · gifted · refugee · waitlist for assessment · other
- Low: 0 to 3 categories
- Medium: 4 to 6 categories
- High: 7 or more categories
Occurrence
How many students in each classroom have needs that take direct instructional support. Only 3 of the 9 categories count:
EAL · mild or moderate · severe
- Low: 0 to 4 students
- Medium: 5 to 10 students
- High: 11 or more students
Methodology
How Alberta Education counts a classroom, which classrooms it leaves out, and how students are identified.
Per Alberta Education: a classroom is the portion of time a group of students is taught by one teacher. Each teacher with a unique student group counts as a separate classroom, so the same students may appear in several classrooms. It includes classrooms of 1 to 60 students, with a valid grade range, in subjects other than special education. Data is suppressed for classrooms under 10 students and for schools with fewer than 10 reportable classrooms.
Students need no formal special education code to be counted. School authorities may use Alberta's Special Education Coding Criteria or their own indicators, such as assessments, teacher observations or school-team reviews.
Datasets: composition, occurrence, class size (Open Government Licence, Alberta).