A union representing Ontario teachers is accusing the provincial government of muddling their finances, saying they are investing significantly less money into education than they claim.

The province has said it will spend an additional $698 million in Grants for Student Needs (GSN), the process in which school board funding per student is determined, for the 2023-2024 school year.

This, the government said, is 2.7 per cent more funding than school boards received a year prior.

But that number isn’t entirely accurate, the President of the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation (OSSTF) claimed Thursday.

“This is false,” Karen Littlewood told reporters at a news conference.

“They've artificially reduced the subtotal of the funding for the past school year in order to make the amount for the 2023-2024 school years seem artificially high by comparison.”

This was done by removing the more than $300 million in one-time COVID-19 learning recovery funding from last year’s subtotal, the OSSTF said.

If that money is taken into account, the increase is closer to 1.4 per cent, they say.

Data published by the provincial government shows that one-time funding, as well as debt service costs, is not included in the base GSN funding totals being touted by the ministry.

It appears, with those numbers included, that the province is spending an additional $382.5 million for 2022-2023.

However the Ministry of Education says that base GSN funding is more representative of the funding school boards are receiving, and that based on their methodology the funding increase is 2.7 per cent.

“We are investing more than we expected,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce told CTV News Toronto.

“This is even still while we do not have an increase of enrollment. As you know, funding and education is based on the amount of students in the system, with flat enrollment but increasing investment.”

According to an analysis the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Doug Ford government has cut per student funding by more than $1,200 since they were first elected in 2018 if inflation is taken into account.

About half of that will take place in the upcoming year’s grants, Littlewood told reporters.

When asked what the trickle-down effect of this funding increase would be, Littlewood said it was primarily in staffing and overall supports for students.

“The long term impact of not investing in education is that the system falls apart,” she said.

“Right now we have 40,000 qualified teachers in Ontario who are choosing to not work in education and I would say that's directly related to the working conditions and the changes that have been made by the Ford government over the years.”

Speaking in the legislature, Education Minister Stephen Lecce noted that Ontario has provided a 10 per cent increase in funding to school boards over the last four years—or about 9.6 per cent with COVID funding and debt service costs taken into account, according to the data.

“We are investing more and we are expecting more for Ontario's publicly funded school system,” Lecce said. “We also brought forth legislation to prove better schools and better outcomes … The first overhaul of the Education Act in a generation”

The overhaul deals primarily with modernizing the education system, giving the Ford government the power to assign school boards “provincial education priorities on student achievement.”