‘New and promising’ developments in education
Changes profoundly altered the provincial school system
The Nova Scotia government’s decision to make fundamental changes to the provincial education system was met with bitter opposition from all areas of the province.
Concerned by low student achievement, the government decided that the status quo wasn’t working. Schools would have more local control with the input of local citizen committees. A provincial council and divisional inspectors would oversee the education system. These initiatives sound very familiar, but this wasn’t recent news. They were actually legislated in 1864, ushered in by Premier Charles Tupper. He would eventually become one of the fathers of Confederation and prime minister of Canada.
The 1864 Free Schools Act finds its roots in the startling illiteracy rate that came to light after the 1861 census. It was most apparent that radical changes had to be made to the provincial education system. A council of public instruction would set policy, and the Superintendent of Schools was secretary for this council.
The act stated that there would be local control of schools, overseen by inspectors. There were 1,400 independent sections and the school in each section would be run by a committee of three trustees and a secretary. They could set a budget and levy taxation on their local community to pay for school expenses. This system endured for the next 85 years.
Back in 2000, I served on a committee that published a history of Gowrie School in Port Morien. We came across some minute books and reports of the trustee meetings from the 1930s and 1940s. The 1946 annual report offers a snapshot of how a school was run under this system. By then municipal units paid teachers’ salaries, but there were many other expenditures.
Secretary Robert Orr reported that the total amount spent was $1,533.26, and included such items as $45 for electric lighting and wiring, and an annual salary of $342.50 for the janitor. Coal for the year was $87.50. There was also a Royal Bank promissory note of $1,024, a considerable debt for the time. They had a bank balance of $30.20.
This system was not sustainable. There were concerns over inefficiencies, the difficulty in offering some courses in rural districts, and rural students performing poorly on provincial examinations, among other factors. As a result, the Nova Scotia government passed the Education Act of 1949.
Municipal units would have their own consolidated school boards. This lasted until 1982, when school boards were amalgamated across the province. Locally, all of the schools south of Sydney harbour were under the jurisdiction of the Cape Breton District School Board. In 1996, with more amalgamation, the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Board was created to encompass all of the schools in Victoria and Cape Breton Counties. School Board elections are relatively recent. The first across the province was in 1979, and it wasn’t until 1991 that all board members were elected. In March, the latest evolution occurred when the Nova Scotia government passed the Education Reform Act. School boards were to be abolished and replaced by a provincial advisory council of education. More local control was delegated to school advisory councils. These, with other changes, will profoundly alter the provincial education system.
Imagine the dedication of those thousands of volunteer school trustees who struggled to provide an education for children in their communities. They would have to ensure that there was a properly maintained and heated school to attend. They were obligated to tax fellow citizens and collect the tax at a time when money was scarce. They expended great effort to hire and house teachers. Some trustees weren’t able to pay them until all taxes were collected at the end of the year.
Despite the challenges, they were instrumental in producing a generation who successfully coped with the many challenges of life, in particular during periods of war and depression. Many today can trace their success in life to the skills and knowledge they gained in their small community schools.
What’s next? It remains to be seen if today’s students will benefit from the recent changes in education legislation. Who knows — maybe in a few years, there will be a “new and promising” direction put forth by government, something like the creation of local school boards.