Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to welcome the department here today. This is a very complex department and leaving it to the end of business plans usually is probably for a good reason. It allows committee to have a more thorough time with other departments to prepare for this very large department. In fact, it almost begs the question that with this department’s size and stature, it should almost be looked at as two departments in some respects, given the complexities that we have.
That being said, I appreciate the opportunity to talk with respect to some of the opening comments we heard from the Minister. I want to dive into a topic that didn’t get a lot of attention in the opening comments which I think is fundamentally a driving force for the department over the next little while.
First and foremost, I want to raise attention to a comment in the opening comments of the Minister when he said, “I also note that we have sheltered education authorities and the Aurora College from passive restraint.” As much as I appreciate that comment, I have to chuckle somewhat. Because although that might be true in one sense, we know that education authorities have not been immune to some of the clawbacks for some of the surpluses that they have achieved through good management skills in the last year to pay for things like junior kindergarten. When I do see comments like that, I take some of those comments with a grain of salt and I just wanted to put that on the record.
In as much as I appreciate the efforts – and again it’s true the department is not standing still, I will
give kudos to the department for that – what was basically silent in the opening comments and relatively silent in his budget per se is the issue of the Educational Renewal Initiative. ERI has been touted as literally the panacea of change. This is the guiding principle of what this department is going to be embarking on to put a lot of corrective actions in place for the next generation to come. I find it very concerning that, like I say, it was just mentioned extremely briefly in the opening comments. I just wanted to take a minute to air my concerns that I have as a Member. This is also echoed, and has been echoed by some of the Members of the committee, as well, as we embark on what I consider is year two on the ERI Action Plan.
While scouring through the myriad of information that we have at our disposal through Hansard, we know that ERI planned, over that three-year period, just over $6 million. So, in essence, we are in year two where we were led to believe it requires about $2 million for the implementation of this action plan. This is over and above the $150 million that is allocated annually to education authorities under the School Funding Framework. Although it is a smaller amount from an investment point of view, it is still significant. The reason why I want to draw the attention to it is I find there are a lot of complexities. This is a very complex matrix to understand. I would assume it’s even more of a complex matrix to deliver from the department’s perspective, and with over nine commitments and over 18 action areas, it’s clear that the department has its work cut out for it.
I’ll give the credit where credit is due. The plan itself is fairly impressive by design. It’s definitely a collaborative piece that’s taken a very coalescing and maturing approach and it has a lot of deliverables with some very, I would call it a very aggressive yearly target. So for those criteria I give the department kudos for bringing such a fairly complex target or innovation plan to the House. But I do have concerns, and concerns that are not oozing off of the opening comments and concerns that are not really oozing in the budget that we have before us.
Of course, first and foremost, I’ve got the concern about the resources and the constraint around the resources for this plan to actually come to fruition – as we heard, passive restraint from the Minister today. We’ve heard from the Minister of Finance that we’re dealing with a financial situation that’s very challenging. We’ve heard terms like we’re making best use of existing resources. All these broad swaths of comments really put credence to the comments, “how are we funding this monstrosity,” which really, as I said earlier, will become the guiding principles for our education system.
So with that, again, the Minister may want to comment to how is it that we’re finding the funds to do so. It sounds like we’re doing it internally. But given the magnitude and the importance of such an innovation, you would think that we would be putting significant dollars, significant investment dollars annually in the budget to address that in a way that I think the department has touted this as being literally the change that’s before us.
More importantly, the concern I have around ERI is how the department is deciding its priorities within it. As I said, nine commitments, 18 action areas. There are tons of project charters imbedded in there and it isn’t clear if the commitments within the ERI are actually placed in any type of sequential priority. It’s really hard for Members, and if it is hard for Members to understand, I can only imagine how difficult it is for the general public or even people within the education system to understand what the order of importance is to the department. What’s happening first, what’s happening second, or are they all happening at the same time? I think that’s an area to which a lot of us are struggling around.
Again, there’s no denying. I’ve spoken and many people have spoken around the complexities, around our Aboriginal language culture-based education, many layers of governance there that are competing, some redundancy built in there. We’re talking about inclusive schooling, the directives around that. Which ones get more priorities and, again, that clarity is a bit lacking and one in which I do challenge the department. If there’s one thing you can make better it’s to provide better communication on those priorities. What are we working on next? What’s the next big hurdle? There is the appearance that we’re kind of just all scattered doing all our different initiatives and yet somehow at the end we’re going to coalesce to a common point of fruition where we’re going to say, “We’re done now.” Many Members don’t see it. If we don’t see it as Members, I can’t see how the public can see it as being doable, as well, within the life of what we’re trying to achieve.
Again, when we talk about priorities, lots of discussion about the area of self-regulation, and I’ll be the first to say I appreciate the concept of self-regulation in terms of where it fits in terms of working on attaining graduation standards. But really, is this something, does it have higher importance over other things? As we talked about the other day, we’ve got various initiatives. There’s one big initiative I read there. It says, “new NWT high school system to complete various pathways and recognize school completion milestones.” These are the type of statements that I’m reading in the ERI. When I read that I go, what does that mean? If I can’t figure it out as an MLA, what does that mean? The general public isn’t going to figure it out either. So, very broad. Are these broad statements? I don’t want to use motherly because
it’s not. I’m sure there are guiding principles in mind, but they are very difficult.
Again, as indicated in the House the other day, I spoke to the phasing out of the Alberta Achievement Test, AATs, and looking at any type of continuity during this overlap as to when these new assessment instruments would be in place. My concern is baseline. The parents’ concerns are baseline; the kids’ concerns are baseline. We live in a world where we want to know how we fit in the world of competitiveness. So when we hear that AATs are being phased out, many of us are going, well, what are we going to use? Whatever we do use, are we masking potential issues that are still going to be lurking in the shadows of our education system as to whether we’re meeting basic standards at a national level? These questions are still not readily available for people, including MLAs.
Finally, the challenge, I know – and it would be a huge challenge to write a document of that magnitude – is how the readability of that document really is in its basic format. What I mean by that is there are so many synonyms imbedded within this ERI where it talks about commitments, initiatives, areas of action, draft plans, project charters. Again, so many moving parts, so many different synonyms that the plain language component sometimes is missed.
So, I did spend a lot of my time on the ERI component, which I think was definitely missing within the opening comments, but I’m sure I’ll have more as we get into detail. Those are my opening comments. Thank you very much.