FPinfomart.ca

Province hints at education hikes while skeptic
counts fewer pupils
Cape Breton Post
Mon
31 Jan 2005
Page: A8
Section: Comment
Byline:
Source:

Yvan Guillemette likely isn't among the 800 guests
invited to the big education forum later this month in Truro. The policy
analyst at the conservative C.D. Howe think tank
posted an "e- brief" last week on the institute's Web site which succinctly
states the case for provincial governments to rein in spending on primary and
secondary education.

That's not what the Truro confab is about. Premier John Hamm has labelled
education his government's next spending priority. The province is already
committed to a phased plan for reduction of class sizes and will introduce a
pre-school program in the fall on a pilot basis.

The education department is being rather mysterious about the Feb. 18 and
19 conference, to which parents, teachers, principals, students, school board
members and other "education partners" have been invited. We're told the
department will introduce some "ideas for discussion" that may find their way
into a new plan for education to be delivered in the spring. The public will
be invited to participate through the department Web site.

With that guest list there won't be many voices urging the government not
to join the several other provinces where per- student public school funding
has been rapidly ramping up. According to figures cited in the Howe paper, in
the eight years ending with the current school term, Nova Scotia's funding for
schools in constant-dollar terms increased by a modest 4.9 per cent, but with
an enrolment decline of 11.4 per cent the per-student funding shot up by 18.4
per cent.

That left Nova Scotia a mere seventh among provinces in the percentage
increase in per-student funding in the period. In the current year, according
to Howe, Nova Scotia is spending $7,136 per pupil, but that leaves the
province dead last. Leading the pack is Alberta at $9,702, and the national
average is $8,165.

These last numbers go some way to explain why the Nova Scotia government
now feels so pressured to jack up public school funding. The Nova Scotia
School Boards Association is asking for $30 million per year for five years
for special education, alternate programming and other priorities.

Guillemette chooses to skim over the actual dollars per student to focus
instead on the trends in per-student funding, which are a combination of
increased spending and falling enrolments. If a province hikes total school
spending at the same time student numbers are dropping, the effect on
per-student funding doubles up. That's generally what's happening to one
degree or another. The effect can be dramatic: in P.E.I., a whopping 46.4 per
cent increase in funding per student over eight years.

For Guillemette, a close watch on per-student funding is the key to reining
in education spending. "To prevent demographic change from blindly increasing
per-student spending even further," he recommends, "education ministries and
school boards should enhance the role of per-pupil funding formulas in their
budgetary framework so as to tie total spending closely to enrolment." This,
of course, would be a particularly deadly potion for Cape Breton, where the
education fraternity is already on pins and needles awaiting the province's
new funding formula for school boards.

Guillemette's thesis is obviously simplistic in some respects, and he
practices a familiar sleight of hand by suggesting that Alberta students do
well on comparative tests because the province follows conservative education
principles such as rigorous testing and freedom to choose schools - as though
having the best-funded system in the country had nothing to do with it. Still,
Guillemette's challenge to the public school system to explain why it needs
more money when student numbers are falling needs to be answered directly.
Specifically, educators have to do a more convincing job of showing what
better results more money will buy.

Edition:
Length: 620 words