Great expectations on the education file
NDP’s challenge is juggling public’s priorities, writes Charles Ungerleider.
All governments face the challenge of managing the public’s expectations. Balancing expectations is particularly challenging for governments with slim majorities and minority governments. There are three challenges facing the new B.C. NDP government around education: improving student achievement, promoting equity and restoring confidence in the province’s public schools.
Improving student achievement in a system such as B.C.’s, which is already high achieving, is particularly challenging. It means that improvement efforts must correctly identify the barriers to achievement, develop plans to address the barriers, monitor the success of the plans and adjust them where necessary. This effort requires more focused and nuanced planning and implementation than broad-based changes such as implementing a new curriculum. It is not particularly flashy and is, frankly, hard and thoughtful work, involving the co-operation of teachers, administrators, school trustees and focused resources. The challenge for the new government is that such co-operation has often been difficult to achieve in British Columbia.
Promoting equity is related to, but not the same as, improving student achievement. There are groups of students for whom the system is not as responsive as it should be: Aboriginal learners, students with special needs and some students from language groups that need additional attention.
Restoring confidence will in part depend on improving achievement and promoting equity. But it will also depend on the guidance and support the Ministry of Education can provide to school boards that are struggling to staff schools and implement a revised curriculum. The restoration of the positions eliminated by the Liberal government in 2001 should eventually have a beneficial impact on improving achievement and promoting equity by creating better learning conditions for students and increased support for students facing challenges. The impact will not be immediate. But British Columbians should see gradual improvement in graduation rates, better academic performance, improved mental health, fewer early school leavers, fewer expulsions and suspensions and fewer struggling students with special needs.
A second challenge facing the government’s effort to restore confidence will be the review of the funding system. The challenge will be managing the public’s conflicting expectations. We all want more for our children and grandchildren that any government is able to provide. Priorities will need to be set. But the government can and must ensure that it adequately funds the basic education program and the services that students require to succeed in school. The review will help clarify what might be required to fulfil that commitment.
Some of the government’s other platform commitments, if implemented, will help it to meet the challenges it faces in education. A successful public education system depends on a suite of complementary public policies. The development and implementation of a poverty reduction strategy, the increase in the minimum wage and strengthening supports for children and youth in the care of the province will each contribute to improving achievement and promoting equity. Facing the first two challenges and meeting them well will, in turn, help restore confidence in the province’s public schools.
The main challenge for this or any other government is the management of expectations. Because of the precarious position in which the new government finds itself, managing public expectations will dominate all other challenges.