Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to wonder what former Ministers have been up to then over the past six to eight years. Some of these guys have really dropped the ball somewhere along the way.
-- Laughter
I will not continue to beat a dead dog, as my colleague Mr. Nitah would say, so I am going to move on.
I would like to discuss student support and pupil-teacher ratio. I think one of the biggest achievements we have seen in this Assembly is finding more money for the PTR and for special needs.
It surprised us a little bit to see in the department's business plans, very little focus on special needs and PTR this time around. They did focus a lot on it earlier in the spring and since Christmas. We felt that it was almost as if they had said, "There, we threw some money at that, we wash our hands of this problem. Let us move onto something else, we have taken care of that."
It is going to take us some time to move from the 18:1 pupil-teacher ratio to a 16:1 ratio. One of the real concerns our committee has is that the department is going to throw some money at this and hope the problem solves itself. I do not think we are convinced. I think we want to see the department work very closely with the boards of education to ensure this money is being spent on what we had hoped it would be spent on.
I think the intent of the money was to put more teachers on the frontline and reduce class size, and focus on special needs so that students receive a better quality of education. And so teachers are not overwhelmed and frustrated and just throwing their hands up in defeat with large class sizes.
We do not want to see layers of administration and more vice-principals. We want to see more teachers. I think we would like to see the department work closely with the boards to ensure this. Thank you.