This past week, the announcement of this research by the Canadian Teachers Federation crossed my electronic desk.

Why is Teaching Time Being Lost to Classroom Management?

Canadian students have not become “more difficult to teach” — a lack of specialized support means teachers’ time is increasingly fragmented.

CTF/FCE
Jun 18, 2026

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Canadian students have not become “more difficult to teach” — a lack of dedicated support means teachers are fragmenting their time more and more to meet their students’ needs, while being systematically ignored by Ministers of Education.

Walk into a K–6 classroom, and you’ll see learning happening but, often in short bursts, interrupted by the need to redirect, reassure, de-escalate, repeat instructions, or manage conflict. The fall 2025 edition of Parachute quantifies a teacher’s day in a significant way: 25% of their teaching time is consumed by classroom management.

That’s one full minute out of every four.

To continue reading visit https://publiceducationjournal.substack.com/p/why-is-teaching-time-being-lost

As I reviewed the summary of this research, it got me thinking back to some recent conversations I have been having in one particular jurisdiction around why students choose online learning options. Those that seems to oppose online learning suggest the reason is because it is less work or because the course is easier, while those that favour online learning outline that there are a whole host of reasons why a student might choose to take a class online from avoiding a particular teacher, not having to sit in the same room as their bully, as a way to take a course overload or jump ahead in their studies during the summer, out of an interest in trying out what online learning is like, and many more.

Getting back to this study… If the findings are correct – and I have no reason to believe they aren’t – 15 minutes out of every one-hour class period are devoted solely to classroom management.

Doing a bit of math, if we assume a school has five one-hour sessions each day (the schools I taught at were structured like this with 5×8 or 5×14 timetables), and if we assume the average school year is scheduled for about 195 day (i.e., the range is often between 190 and 200), that would mean there are 48 hours and 45 minutes every school year that teachers do not teach – instead just focusing on trying to address disruptions in their classroom.

Maybe another reason to take an online class is to actually get the full 60 minutes of instruction?

I’m not suggesting that in an online context, there are not non-instructional items that take up a teachers time. But I am suggesting that the students don’t necessarily notice those disruptions.

If you have 32 students sitting in a physical classroom, and the teacher is spending 15 minutes dealing with the behavioural issues of one student, the other 31 students still only get 45 minutes of instruction during that class period. However, in an asynchronous online class (which is how the vast majority of online courses are taught), if the teacher needs to address the behavioural issues of one student, the other 31 students probably don’t even know it is happening. Their learning in the course and their individual interactions with their online teacher are not impacted. That means that for the other 31 students, they don’t lose that ~50 hours of instructional time over the course of the year if they are learning online.

As an aside, it might also explain why some students are able to finish their online courses in less time than it would have taken them in a face-to-face classroom.