Education ‘mess’ starts with politicians

Premier Stephen McNeil and Education Zach Churchill are telling the public that school boards and the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union (NSTU) are responsible for the mess in which this province’s education system finds itself in.

The school boards across the province have been used by government to do the dirty work of closing schools and cutting programs to help foster the premier’s agenda of a balanced budget - no matter what the cost.

Teachers in Nova Scotia have been raising concerns about serious discipline problems, watered down programs, problems implementing inclusion, large class sizes and reductions of support staff for 20 years.

Minister Churchill recently stated: “As we have experienced this past year, we have front-line staff who feel they have lost the empowerment that they once had in our school system and who do want to see that returned.”

Teachers lost empowerment a long time ago when they stopped being listened to by central office staff and the department of education. The NSTU leadership were unable to succeed in convincing education ministers that the system was not working successfully.

Classroom teachers have no meaningful say in what is taught in their classrooms. They teach what they are told to teach, using programs by school boards that were dictated to by Department of Education.

The Department of Education and the seven central offices have been running the Nova Scotia school system the way former education minister Karen Casey and Premier Stephen McNeil wanted it run for past five years. They control the purse strings and they decide the policy. So if anyone is to blame for the situation the school system finds itself in now, it is the politicians presently in power.

Why then are teachers, principals and school boards being blamed for all the problems in the school system? Are they just the scapegoats?

We all know politicians do not make mistakes. Just look at the decision to go to one health board for whole province. How is that working out anyway, Mr. Premier?

Greg Mac Innis Sydney