When The Dust Settles?

For those of us in the Ontario Education System whether it be students, parents, teachers, staff, administration, trustees, consultants or whatever capacity, our heads have been in a continual spin this last little while. Be it in trying to understand the rationale behind the current changes and/or the consequences of them, we are being put to the test.

These next few statements maybe unpopular but are being stated to make you think. Do I believe in them by the end of this post that will be your determination? Has Education be too easy funded this past decade? Has there been direction and purpose in past Education Policy decisions?

Here is the funding memo for 2012, GSN 2012 Funding $21B. From this memo "Between December 2003 and the 2011-12 school year, the government has increased funding through the GSN by $6.5B, or 45 percent, while also making significant investments outside the GSN in school capital and FDK." (FDK became fully implemented and the funding moved to the GSNs in 2014.) This is the Technical Paper released with the 2014 GSNs GSN 2014 Funding of $22.53B Here is 2018's memo 2018 GSN Funding of $23.9B. Per pupil funding of $12,300.This is the Memo for the 2019 GSN GSN 2019  Funding of  $24.66B Per student funding of $12,246. We are still waiting for the 2019 Technical papers.

Can one compare beyond the total numbers the increases in Education Funding from year to year? With great difficulty, yes. Don't forget about the special funding, formerly known as Education Programming Other and now referred to as Priorities and Partnership Funds. They come and go from year to year so they can never be counted on. Capital Funding always comes into play. Don't forget Early Years and Childcare now fall under the Ministry of Education.

Here is the link to the April 2019 Budget. In March the Ministry released their New Vision for Education entitled Education That Works For You. Within it, Modernizing Classrooms, Modernizing Learning and Modernizing Health and Physical Education. Again the 2019 GSN and the accompanying Priorities and Partnership Funds. Now the 2019 Board Estimates. A lot of information to go through and analyze to determine things. Yet we still wait for the Technical Papers that break down how much, where, and how (requirements &/or restriction) these Funds can be used. The Grants fall under certain areas: Pupil Foundation, School Foundation, Special Education, Language, Indigenous Education, Geographic Circumstance, Learning Opportunities, Safe & Accepting Schools, Continuing Education, Teacher Qualification, Student Transportation, Declining Enrolment, School Board Administration & Governance, School Operations, School Renewal,  Interest.

On top of this the Government's Consultation of Classroom Size if not over until May 31st. Will things change again?

I think you are probably tired of number crunching.

But it is this $ numbers that determine what Education looks like, be it priorities, initiatives, staffing, course offerings, etc, etc. Go back to Education That Works For You. There has been a refocus on certain areas; math & literacy, and emphasis on others; SHSM & trades, and some new; e-learning. Secondary schools face the biggest challenge with the purposed changes in classroom size funding and the staff reductions and consequential loss of courses and student supports. This is what it looks like in the TDSB. Waiting on what it will look like within the AMDSB. We do know we are seeing a budget reduction of $2.6m +/-. Elementary and Secondary Teachers have received layoff notices. Here is the Guide to 2018/2019 GSN related to the finding areas mentioned previously. As you can see funding is allotted to certain areas with certain requirements, therefore, moving money around is not that simple. An example is classroom size funding, the recently announced change of funding from 22:1 to 28:1 has a direct connection to teacher staffing levels. To compensate for that loss where can the money be found to move around without making cuts in other areas? Many boards already struggle to cover overspending in Transportation and Special Education. One always has to remember there are differences between effectiveness and efficiencies within each of these areas.

For some reason, I keep coming back to the Liberal's Drummond Report 2012 and Hudak's 2013 Path to Prosperity to get a glimpse of what still may be coming.

The dust hasn't settled yet but I will say it will not be pretty when or if it does.

PS: I apologize for all the links.

A Brief History of Ontario Education

The Education sector in Ontario, to be honest ever sector in Ontario, is going under radical change these days. To me, these changes are not for the better. I cannot see the rationale behind these changes because none has been given and no actual plan or vision has been put forward.

To move forward it is helpful to know where you came from. My formal involvement in Education began in 2010 being elected a Trustee in the AMDSB. Informally it began in 2005 when my youngest began school followed by involvement in ARCs, SAC and PIC. So let us look back at Education but not too far back.

I lied. “In 1907, the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association declared, “The competition of the world has become so strong that we cannot afford to fall behind in the race for efficiency. . . . Technical education must come . . . we must educate our people towards efficiency” (p. 844)”. (Global Change and Educational Reform in Ontario and Canada, Brian O’Sullivan)

Much reform/change to Education is Ontario took place under the Government of Premier Jason Robarts and Minister of Education William Davis (future Premier) in the 1960s.

The Hall-Dennis Report: Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario of 1968. ‘We stand today in the dawn of our second century and assess the field of future education . . . we must not lose sight of the human needs that the new dawn brings . . . we have in our hands the means of change for human betterment . . . for the people of Ontario . . . for all Canadians, and hopefully... [for] all mankind. (p. 9)’ I can find lots of references to the Report but not a good link. The Hall Dennis Report: Living and Learning

I will pick up here in 1993/95.

The Ontario Royal Commission on Learning was initiated by the NDP Government of Premier Bob Rae. This Government was replaced by the PC Government of Premier Mike Harris in June 1995. Royal Commission on Learning: For the Love of Learning

“In May 1993, the Province of Ontario established the Royal Commission on Learning "to ensure that Ontario's youth are well-prepared for the challenges of the twenty-first century."

After exhaustive public consultation, the Commission released its report, entitled For the Love of Learning, in January 1995. The report was to suggest a vision and action plan to guide the reform of elementary and secondary education. This would include values, goals and programs of schools, as well as systems of accountability and educational governance.” (Ministry of Education Ontario website)

In its Introduction the Committee made the following:

“A climate of uncertainty

-Like all organizations, our Commission operated within a particular time, and our deliberations were inevitably influenced by the context of unsettling truths around us.

-Our society is characterized by turbulence, creating widespread uncertainty and anxiety. Canadians fear a future of diminished opportunity, and expect public institutions to deal with this acute concern.

-Our economic system is changing, while technology is advancing at a geometrically accelerating pace.

-The fallout from those related phenomena includes the prospect of a large core of permanently unemployed and underemployed men and women, of younger people in particular, and of considerable confusion about the future of work.

-In the current political climate, and for the foreseeable future, projects requiring vast new public funding will be seen as impractical. The operative cliche is that it is possible to work smarter, doing even more with even less.

-The composition of Canada's population is changing dramatically, not least in Ontario and, above all, in southern Ontario. Each year, we become an increasingly diverse nation, but our institutions often fail to reflect that diversity.

-There is a sense that traditional social institutions have been breaking down, and that the family, as well as community and religious organizations, are no longer able to instil personal and ethical values in successive generations of Canadians.

-Despite uncertainty about common values, large segments of the population are not content to live in a society that has no identifiable values.

-At the same time, and for a variety of reasons, Canadians have been losing faith in their public institutions. As a result, they have been demanding that these operate more openly, involve more citizen participation, and become more explicitly accountable to the public at large.

-Schools necessarily reflect - at least to some extent - the societies in which they operate. Therefore, it is not surprising that today's education system feels shaky, unsure, lacking in self-confidence, and struggling with a mandate that is increasingly uncertain and whose purposes are no longer self-evident. Not only is that the background against which the Commission operated, it was the reason the Commission was established.”

In its Conclusions and Implementation were:

“In the course of our own extensive work - and learning - certain lessons about the process of education reform became clear. If we fail to take these lessons to heart, we fear that the process of change may well be doomed from the outset.

1. There are no instant solutions to the problems of today's schools, no short cuts. But there are solutions.
2. The process of learning is highly complex, but there are ways to get our children to learn better.
3. The education system is enormously complicated, but there are ways to transform it.
4. No serious change can happen without the willing co-operation of teachers.
5. Parents who create an atmosphere that values learning, and who support their children's school efforts, are giving their children a major advantage. Parents are a largely untapped resource.
6. The best way to ensure that kids do well at school is to provide all of them with affluent, literate, professional parents. Clearly, this is impossible; however, schools can compensate for the disadvantages many students bring with them from home. So even though a student's background remains the chief determinant of educational success in Ontario, schools have the capacity - if they have the will to overcome the handicaps of a child's background.
7. When all is said and done, we place our confidence in the knowledge and dedication of the professional educators of Ontario. While every parent and every member of the community has significant contributions to make, it is our teachers, principals, and other educators who must provide the inspirational, active, hands-on leadership role that is needed.
8. There are important and powerful players in the education system. The influence of some of these players, like the teachers' federations, is obvious, while that of others, equally powerful, for instance, universities, is less well known. But all players must be committed to the process of radical change if it has any hope of success.” (Ministry of Education Ontario Website)

Do any of these still apply today?

Noted above the PC government of Premier Mike Harris was elected in June 1995 before anything from the Commission could be implemented. The PC government was elected on the ‘Common Sense Revolution’ platform with ‘New Direction II: A Blueprint for Learning’ as there education vision. You can research yourself if you don't recall, the changes to the Education system under the PC government. The PCs remained in power until 2002 when the Liberal government of ‘Education Premier’ Dalton McGuinty was elected. I will leave it to your own curiosity to discover the impact of the Liberal Government under McGuinty and Wynne until 2018. ‘Ontario a Leader in Learning (2005) looked at post-secondary education. K-12 reform continued with  ’Energizing Ontario Education (2008). The Fullan Report (2013) ‘Great to Excellence’ laid the groundwork for the Liberal vision ‘Achieving Excellence’ (2014) Many of these reports have been removed from the Ministry's website.

I will note the Drummond Report 2012 that was commissioned by the Liberal Government. The Drummond report examined every aspect of Government in Ontario. The Drummond Report: Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services In Education, it made 27 Recommendations. I will highlight three of them here:

“The Drummond Report 2012

Recommendation 6-3: The elementary and secondary education sector should stay the course with its current agenda, which consists of three key goals: improving student achievement, closing gaps in student outcomes and increasing confidence in the publicly funded school system. The province and the sector must sustain the current alignment between provincial, school board and school-level efforts, and sustain the “pressure and support” approach adopted in recent years.

Recommendation 6-4: Reforms in the elementary and secondary sector should be introduced so that all stakeholders have their role to play in ensuring the system’s long-term sustainability and so that unnecessary sources of distraction are avoided.

Recommendation 6-5: To ensure transparency and effectiveness, the province should confirm multi-year allocations to school boards for the 2012–13 to 2017–18 period so that they can plan accordingly, have enough time to find the required efficiencies and enter negotiations for renewal of the sector’s collective agreements that will expire on Aug. 31, 2012, with clear knowledge of their budgetary position.” (Ministry of Finance Ontario Website)

I think someone needs to read these!

As I wrote this I came upon this report: Policy Trends in Ontario Education 1990-2003, Anderson & Jaafar (2003). Policy Trends in Ontario Education 1990-2003 Would like to see if there is an updated version.

In 2018 the Liberals were replaced by the election of the PCs under Premier Doug Ford and their ‘Plan for the People’ Platform. If you don’t know what is going on in the Education Sector within the vision of ‘Education that Works for You’ these days you must be living under a rock.

Did this post ever grow beyond what I had envisioned but yet there is much missing. You can see there are policy trends between parties. Only partial implementation of others or even worst the wrong implementation of recommendations. Putting your own spin on things.

A problem with Education is Ontario, it is always at the whim of the government in power. Therefore it will always be at times stagnant, going forward and unfortunately backwards.

The Want To Learn

This is somewhat a two perspective reflection.

I am maybe my hardest critic. This quote always resonates in my head. “one rises to their level of incompetence.”
Does that mean one can only obtain so much? Picture a student with the same thought. It goes against everything we try to say and encourage in them, “chase your dream”, “you have the potential”, “you have the ability”. At times I feel as though I have reached my plateau and then someone says “you are doing a good job.” or “Have you considered taking on this?” Most of us strive to do more, reach higher, expand our horizons. As trustees we are charged with student achievement and Well Being within the guise of preserving, advocating for and advancing public education. At times you may feel that you have gotten in over your head or think whoa that person knows their stuff and your self esteem and confidence sinks. Imagine how a student feels when they ‘get it’ versus when they ‘don’t get it’. Why is that person so knowledgeable or how did that person become so informed? Was it just work related knowledge, experience, research or PD? Or is it personal desire to grow to make that plateau higher and higher? How often have you heard  “there is no stupid question?” and then get laughed at for asking that question. How does that make you feel? How do you think it would make a student feel asking that question that everyone pretends to know the answer to? Worth is not measured by intelligence. It is your desire to improve, grow, learn that are key elements of success. Many students have not developed a desire/passion to learn or that passion that drives themself to learn or have lost it or had it destroyed. We are beginning to realize that more often than not that passion for discovery is extinguished by school. Which theory do you want to pick? As adults most of us have realized the benefits of lifelong learning. We must put in place the conditions that encourage our students to be the same. It may only be tiny steps but one has to begin somewhere. It goes beyond extrinsic or intrinsic motivation or applying cognitive principles or metacognition. Who knows what the ripple effect may be.
From our Board Plan: “At AMDSB, our goal is to foster successful graduates. We define successful graduates as students who leave AMDSB prepared for their next steps and understand themselves as learners and advocates for their own needs, are literate and are numerate. They are also prepared for a changing world and are confident and curious thinkers, resilient and flexible thinkers who demonstrate global competencies (communication, critical thinking,  creativity, collaboration and problem solving) and positive and principled engagement in society.”
Engage Inspire Innovate… Always Learning: needs to be more than just words for us as trustees and administration and for our students.