Committee proposes series of reforms
The Saskatchewan public education system is in desperate need of a reset, says a report from the Re-imagine Education Reference Committee which included 12 recommendations and was released Monday.
“The system’s old. I think it served a purpose in the past. It met a lot of needs 50, 60 years ago, but we’re not there any more and our times are changing much more quickly than we’re able to adapt,” said Monica Kreuger, first vice chair of the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber was one of 20 community-based organizations that made up the committee, which also included groups like the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission and the Regina Anti-poverty Ministry.
The “12 Actions for Education” fall into four focus areas: the learning environment, decision-making in education, legislation and policy in education, and funding education.
The recommendations are based on consultations held in 204 schools in 69 different communities — where students, teachers, parents, Indigenous communities and leaders, the business community and other interested groups got to share their vision for the future of public education in Saskatchewan.
In addition, 6,000 people completed a public survey.
“I think the biggest surprise was the feeling by many parents and public members that they aren’t engaged,” said Randy Schmaltz, chair of the committee and executive director of the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF). “The system doesn’t include their input and their voice, and so one of the big take-aways for the reference committee was the desire to shine a light on the need for community voice and public input into decision making.”
Recommendations range from creating safe and effective learning environments that include human resources to provide support, including Indigenous elders and speech pathologists, to continually updating the curriculum and developing school policies in collaboration with staff, parents and students.
Recommendation No. 11 calls for a comprehensive study to determine the “real costs of a quality education system that fits for the 21st century and commit to a long-term funding mechanism to ensure students receive a quality education.”
“I think that’s where we have to start,” Kreuger said. “We need to go back into the community and talk about what does that look like and get a few more parameters down and then we need to bring those back to government.”
The Ministry of Education currently is working on a framework for a new provincial education plan that will lay out direction for the next 10 years, according to Minister of Education Gord Wyant.
“This framework, as well as the findings in Re-imagine Education, will help us build the provincial education plan which we hope to implement by the fall of 2020,” Wyant said from the release event Monday, adding the ministry will read through the report in detail “over the next short period of time.”
But the recommendations, none of which are particularly new ideas, need action to make a difference, the report says.
To read the full report and its recommendations, visit www.reimagineeducation.ca.