Thank you, Mr. Chair. The main estimates do not actually currently reflect the situation with inclusive schooling. We had planned, and we had worked with the education authorities, to redistribute funds to establish a centralized team of supports for the education authorities for inclusive schooling purposes. Through the course of discussions on the implementation of junior kindergarten, the education authorities asked us to change that plan. Therefore, there is a million dollars that we won't be allocating to that support team, and instead will be available for the education authorities to use for inclusive schooling purposes. We will continue to talk with the authorities over the coming year and into the future about how we move towards creating that team of supports for them, because they do recognize that there is a need for greater equity throughout the system for access to things like speech therapy, occupational therapy, and those kinds of services, which that specialized team was going to help with.
The other thing that we are continuing to roll out, and this work continues, is to increase the number of program support teachers in schools. These are individuals who actually work with teachers in schools to help them create specialized plans for students in the classroom. We continue to work with them on rolling that resource out as well.
The other thing that I just want to flag is that the ratio for student teachers for junior kindergarten that we are funding is 12:1. That is higher than in other classrooms. With a ratio like that, we expect that there are more resources available in the school for those younger children. Thank you, Mr. Chair.