Hansard -- Thursday, March 13, 2003 a.m. -- Vol. 12, No. 13 (HTML)

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY



CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page

Committee of Supply		5489
	Estimates: Ministry of Education (continued) J. MacPhail Hon. C. Clark

J. MacPhail: For the benefit of the minister and her staff, I'll outline how I see things proceeding, and I know others will want to join in. I want to discuss very briefly…. I'm not going to redo any of the work that the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant conducted, but for one point that some parents have asked me to bring up. It's SOS. That will be very brief.

Then I want to discuss the Rozanski report from the Ontario government in context of the changes that are occurring here as well, then a little bit on the loss of targeted funding and then some discussion on the effects of changes. I'm mainly going to be using my school district as an example of the effects of the budget on particular issues that school districts now have to grapple with, just because I know it best — but some from Victoria as well. Then I have a series of questions that are pretty standard from the service plan.

J. MacPhail: Okay. I want to begin with some feedback from parents in Vancouver. I'll just read this. Last week during estimates the minister read a letter onto the record from an individual with Save Our Schools in Vancouver. The letter was read to validate the actions of the minister. I read Hansard. I wasn't actually watching it, but I read it. I think the minister used the letter in an attempt to show that the parents in Vancouver were happy with the funding and the budget. Well, shortly after, the opposition received word from Save Our Schools that the author of the letter was very upset that the minister had used it.

We then contacted the author through the Save Our Schools organization. She has agreed to let us read her letter into the record. It certainly does contradict what the minister said last time. This is important because it's the premise of the government that parents should have a say in education and that many of the changes that this government are making are to "give the parents a greater say." Again, we know that the Save Our Schools organization is a broadly based, non-partisan organization.

This is a letter from the same person who was quoted by the minister last week. By the way, I have permission to read this.

Hon. C. Clark: I've received a different letter from the individual that she wrote directly to me — some of the same comments in it but much shorter. When I quoted the letter in the House, I made a point of not naming the person who'd written it. I paraphrased the letter as well.

Nonetheless, it was a letter written to government. I'm sorry if she didn't want her views at that time to be publicly known. I wasn't aware of that. The letter wasn't marked confidential or anything like that. Certainly, if the author of the letter didn't want those views to be publicly known and I mistakenly did make them publicly known, I apologize to her.

J. MacPhail: Well, I think that isn't the premise of the letter writer. It's interesting that the minister

chooses to somehow suggest that, again, the parent wasn't clear enough in making her letter confidential. That's not the issue here. The issue is that the letter was used as support for the government's actions, and indeed, that wasn't the case at all from the letter writer whatsoever.

I guess the members from SOS, Save Our Schools, will decide whether they're happy with the minister's response or not. The point from both the video and this second correspondence that the letter writer makes is that there is still great concern out there about this government's changes in funding and what this letter writer says are cuts to education. It would be preferable for the minister to actually respond to those concerns rather than dodging them by an out-of-date letter.

In no way did the letter writer at any time suggest that she didn't write the letter. She just said that given new information, it wasn't current and it wasn't accurate. She would have appreciated the minister doing one of two things: either checking with her before she used the letter — which, of course, the opposition has done in this particular case — or responding to the issues that were raised around the Save Our Schools video.

I actually watched the Save Our Schools video. It's 32 minutes long. For any busy person it's a commitment of 32 minutes to watch the video, but I found it very useful in its commentary. I had an opportunity to watch the video after the budget had been introduced and after the details of the changes in education funding had been announced, and I thought everything in the video was still relevant and deserved to be discussed. I'm wondering whether the minister has actually had an opportunity to meet with Save Our Schools to discuss the contents of the video, given that that wasn't done in estimates.

Hon. C. Clark: I don't think it's fair to suggest that I ever suggested that the video wasn't relevant. I made reference to it in the comments I made. Again, if the author of the letter is upset that I stated views which she's changed her mind about, which are now inaccurate, I apologize for that. The letter I read into the record was her views as she'd stated them, and it was read accurately. I didn't receive any news that she'd changed her mind. The member has pointed out that she has changed her mind and that her views are different from the ones she expressed in the letter. I wasn't meaning to try and mislead the House or anything like that when I read the letter into the record.

The concerns. I have met with representatives from groups that are affiliated with Save Our Schools in my own community. I talked to them specifically about their concerns and spent some fair amount of time with them. I am well aware of the concerns that Save Our Schools is championing. Obviously, as the member has pointed out, it is a diverse group. Members in the group have different views, like in any large, loosely knit group. I'm happy to discuss any of those issues if the member would like to raise them.

J. MacPhail: Well, we will carry on and raise them, because this is why I'm bringing up the Rozanski report, the Ontario education assessment report. Part of the concerns of parents around the province and others as well…. I am not going to get into a situation with the minister to somehow suggest that the questions I raise here today represent only one part of the education family. The Rozanski report is of great concern to Save Our Schools as well as teachers — principals as well. In fact, that can lead nicely into the discussion around the Rozanski report, because that encapsulates a lot of the concerns of Save Our Schools as well. I'll just start, Mr. Chair.

The Rozanski report on Ontario education assessment was delivered to the Ontario government on December 10 of last year. On that day Ontario's education task force, headed by Dr. Mordechai Rozanski, released a report regarding the state of the education system in Ontario. Of course, we will see as we go through that report that this government is guided by and in fact is following the same path as the Ontario government — Harris and now Eves — followed in that province. Therefore, what I propose is that we could actually learn from the Rozanski report as it relates to the changes that are occurring here in British Columbia. That's the relevance of it.

The Rozanski report contains several recommendations, as I've just said, that are relevant to the current state of the British Columbia education system given that cuts and funding freezes between the two education ministries are quite similar. Overall, the report contained 33 recommendations that were, in the words of Dr. Rozanski, "aimed at improving equity, fairness, certainty and stability in the funding of Ontario students and schools." I'm going to just summarize some points that I think are exactly relevant to what's happening here.

The reason why the report refers to 1997 costs is because the funding was frozen at 1997 levels in Ontario. Of course, funding here has been frozen at '01-02 levels with a bit of toing and froing and will carry forward to the year '05.

Dr. Rozanski eventually recommended that the Ontario government spend a minimum of $1.08 billion phased in over three years on its deteriorating education system. That was an additional $1.08 billion over three years, and of course, that is in the Ontario education system, where the student population is substantially larger. He also advocated "reciprocal accountability," which means that if the government wants to impose improved performance standards and hold schools accountable, governments themselves must be accountable for providing schools with adequate funding to ensure that targets and accountability measures are met.

So that's the overall summary. I know the minister is well aware of it, and her staff, so I just want to go through those issue by issue. I have the report here. My summary notes are actually straight out of the report. Those are the seven issues that I'll be discussing.

The first one is — I can just tell the minister — at page 18 of that report. It's the principles of adequacy and affordability. The principles of adequacy and affordability are discussed at page 18. They are two of the six principles that Rozanski suggests to guide the Ontario education system. One is that financial support must be adequate to the objectives that schools are being asked to achieve. He also states: "We cannot afford not to provide adequate funding to meet our goals for public education."

Now, the situation there was that the funding was frozen at levels that didn't keep current with the changing circumstances. I might just also add that Ontario, to the best of my knowledge, had exactly the same issues around population changes, English language training issues and also inner-city issues. What I'm trying to do here is discuss what we can learn from the Ontario report as it relates to current and future concerns or opportunities that may arise in the education system.

Hon. C. Clark: I don't have the report in front of me at the moment. I've read it in the past, and I'm asking staff to go get it for me so I can follow along with the member as she goes along.

In the absence of that, just…. She talked about vision. The report talked about vision — couldn't agree more. We have a very clear vision of education, focused on student achievement. We've messaged that to the field; we are incredibly consistent about that. We've reorganized the ministry around making sure we are focused on student achievement.

Governance. The report talked about giving discretion to districts to allow them to be able to set their own direction more flexibly and then allowing the ministry to set standards and monitor them across the province. That's exactly what we're doing in British Columbia.

Coherence: making sure policies are aligned. Again, student achievement is our overarching system goal, and we are requiring that school districts be equally focused on that in all the things they do.

It talked about evidence-based decision-making, using research to drive the decisions we make. That's exactly what we're doing. We're beefing up our data-mining capacity in the ministry. We are collecting more information, and we're making sure we use it, telegraphing it to the field and asking them to set their plans for improvement based on the evidence they've seen over the last year of how well they've done.

Support for teachers. We're making sure that teachers and principals are part of the changes. The grad review process has been a perfect example of that. We've been talking for a year with the system — in particular, with people who are working in the front lines of the system — about how we might change grad requirements.

Also, teachers and principals are an intimate part of school planning councils, with one at every school. Teachers and principals are involved in all the committees of government that we are using as tools to try and go out and make sure we're holding the system accountable and monitoring progress.

Feedback and implementation. Again, Dr. Rozanski talked about monitoring progress. We have external reviews being done in a third of all the districts every year and deputy visits in another third every year. We talk to them about where you have been, what your results are and what you are doing to improve them, and that's being done for a third of the districts every year by an external group of experts — teachers, principals, school trustees, parents — who bring an outside view to every district.

The last issue was flexible funding. We have brought in a flexible funding formula. We've given school districts a lot of autonomy in how they want to allocate their budgets. That's brand-new and very welcome for school districts.

The difference in Ontario, I think, on the funding front has also been that they froze funding at 1997 levels, as I understand it, and didn't move from there. We added $42 million last year and $50 million this year, and are adding another $100 million next year in the context of declining enrolment. We are doing our best to keep up with costs and doing better in the Education ministry at making sure we provide as much money as we possibly can while other ministries are seeing reductions in their budgets in order to make sure we can accommodate the needs of kids in classrooms.

J. MacPhail: I would be happy to wait for the minister to get this report, if she wishes, because I am going to spend some time on it.

The way the funding occurred in Ontario is exactly the same as the funding is occurring here. There were little amounts of money for adjustment issues as the funding was frozen in Ontario. In fact, as I said already, I'm not going to go through the same issues as the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, but there is no new money this year in 2003-04 for the school system. There is the lift in the base budgeting of $50 million. There's a maximum of $50 million in the base budgeting that will go in, in '04-05 that gets counted over two years, making it $100 million. Regardless, that same sort of tweaking did happen in Ontario as well, and even then, this Rozanski report was based on that.

The school planning council and the outside measurements were also implemented in Ontario, and in fact, as far as I can tell, the changes this government is introducing are identical to the areas I'm going to discuss that were introduced in Ontario. It's on that basis that we wish to learn.

I'll just read from the Rozanski report, for the minister's benefit. On adequacy:

My questions around that are, first of all…. Honestly, this is not a set-up question. I actually don't know the answer to it, so the minister may be able to give me good news here. What's the per-pupil funding, Ontario versus B.C., as we stand now?

I know they just introduced a budget. Did they introduce a budget…? Today, was it? There's some controversy that the Ontario government decided to introduce a budget without the Legislature being on. Let's not worry about it. It's an election budget, and we all know about election budgets. Let's just look at their last year's budget.

Hon. C. Clark: Sorry. I don't have the numbers for Ontario for their per-pupil amount. We could dig around and try to get that, based on their latest…. It's a bit of a mug's game comparing per-pupil to per-pupil across the country. We try to do that as well as we can, but because different ministries and different governments are broken up differently…. For example, here we have three ministries that provide what one ministry does in Alberta, so it's difficult to do, but it's possible. We just don't have the information here, but the per-pupil in B.C. this year is $6,455.

J. MacPhail: For '02-03. Okay. The ministry has changed, then, because we used to have those comparisons, but I'll wait for the minister's staff to get that comparison.

What Dr. Rozanski says, as I interpret it — but the minister is free to put her own interpretation, and this discussion I find very useful — is that the discussion around adequacy and affordability comes first, and then there's a continuous dialogue on assessing need and determining the appropriate level of funding to meet that need. Then you continually reassess the need and the appropriate level of funding.

Where does the discussion occur in the system about appropriate level of funding in our system?

Hon. C. Clark: There's a whole number of venues for that. We talk about it at the Education Advisory Council, which includes all the partner groups involved in education. We talk about it when we do our accountability contracts with individual districts. We talk about it at big conferences that we have, where we're invited to speak as opposed to us inviting them in. I meet regularly with the interested groups around. Of course, obviously, that discussion happens in our government caucus. It happens in the Legislature as well, and, you know, it's a pretty broad public debate.

One of the things, though, that is important, which I think Dr. Rozanski pointed out, is that while funding is an important discussion to have, often it's the only discussion we have. We do need to talk about some other things in the education system in addition to just how much money there is. The health system is a great example of where you could pump another $1 billion in, and nobody seems to notice that there's been a whole lot more money coming into the system. It depends on how you spend the money and making sure you maximize value for every dollar you spend.

We should be talking about teacher quality. We should be talking about system accountability. We should be talking about school district autonomy to be able to meet local needs. We should be talking about parental involvement. We should be talking about the quality of education in the classroom. Sometimes that boils down to money, but sometimes it doesn't. We need to have a broader discussion than just about

J. MacPhail: Yes. All of those issues are acknowledged in the report as well, and we'll be getting to those recommendations — that it's not just about money. But, indeed, maybe the minister misunderstood. The recommendation from Dr. Rozanski is to have a discussion that is about appropriate level of funding. It's my understanding that this government has made it very clear what the level of funding is going to be until '05-06, regardless of circumstances. Is the minister suggesting somehow that these discussions actually are about appropriate levels of funding?

Hon. C. Clark: Well, the discussions we've had are about whether the government is appropriately funding certain areas. In the technical review committee we did for the funding formula, school districts came together with the ministry and talked about how much their costs were versus how much the funding was. We're certainly going to tweak that and change the way we distribute some of those funds based on those needs. Ultimately, government makes these decisions, as the member will well remember, in the context of its larger budget. The Education budget doesn't stand alone and get funded independently of the rest of government's requirements and government's ability to raise revenue.

J. MacPhail: When is the minister giving out the individual budgets for school districts?

J. MacPhail: This week. Oh, okay. Sorry, thanks. Today is March 13. That would be tomorrow then.

J. MacPhail: Thank you very much. I'm surprised we weren't elected to government.

Then in the context of adequate funding, will there be discussions with individual districts or all the districts about their budgets after those budgets are released tomorrow?

Hon. C. Clark: Yes, those discussions do happen. My understanding is that they happen every year, pretty much. Keith Miller, who is sitting behind me and is our director of finance, goes and meets the secretary treasurers regularly — as does my deputy, meeting with superintendents. I meet with school boards, and we continue to have this discussion.

Our funding formula, though — it's important to note — is one that is fair and one that is unbiased in favour of any district. What we do is allocate money principally on a per-pupil basis. It's driven by enrolment and driven by the composition of the enrolment in a given school district, with some consideration for their geographical circumstances. We're not planning to fiddle with the formula and say that if one district has a specific complaint, we're going to try and put a band-aid on that by pumping a little extra money into that district. We want to make sure we maintain the principle of fairness in the funding formula, and we don't want to monkey with it to fix specific circumstances as they arise.

J. MacPhail: Yes, okay. When the ministry staff searches out the per-pupil funding figures, the way we can do that is the basic grant, the school grant, the per-pupil funding based on the basic grant. I think the figure the minister gave, about $6,400, was actually if you take the total ministry budget and divide it by the number of….

J. MacPhail: Well, whatever. In our briefing from the ministry we were told that the per-pupil basic grant was $5,308 last year and that it's the same this year.

J. MacPhail: Yes, the minister will have an opportunity to talk about the operating grant, but it's the basic grant. The minister has suggested that it's somehow hard to compare jurisdiction to jurisdiction. As I recall, it was on the per-pupil basic grant, because that's actually the money per pupil on average going into the public school system. We were told in our briefing that it was $5,308 both last year and this year, but if there's some comparison measure the minister is using that's different than that, perhaps we should know about it so we can use the same comparison measures to Ontario.

Hon. C. Clark: The two figures the member is talking about are this. Actually, it's $6,506 for '03-04. The $6,455 is a measure of all of the operating funding given to school districts — not the entire ministry budget, but all of the operating funding that goes out to school districts, divided by the number of students. That's generally the fairest way to try and compare per-pupil funding in British Columbia with other jurisdictions.

The $5,308 refers to the per-pupil base funding that we used last year in the formula. That's going to go up, obviously, this year. That's the base number we use, times the number of pupils. Then we add on $15,000, for example, for every special needs child that's claimed a category 2; $1,100 for every ESL child that's claimed; $950 for every aboriginal student that's claimed.

A lot more money than $5,308 goes into each school district for operating funding. All of that money is uncapped, so no matter what the number of ESL students is, we just times it by $1,100, and they get that money. It's also untargeted, so school districts can, if a child is a high-needs ESL student, spend a little bit more on

them. If the child is in their fifth year of an English-as-a-second-language program and getting fairly bilingual, they'll spend less money on them. Or they may decide to ship that money to another program for special needs or whatever.

The per-pupil that I'm talking about — the $6,506 for '03-04 — is an expression of total operating grant, not total ministry budget, divided by the number of children.

J. MacPhail: Yes, and we will get to the discussion about the changes in targeted funding. I'd appreciate both the figures for Ontario: the basic pupil grant and their operating grant per pupil, as the minister's described — two separate figures.

Okay. In terms of the Rozanski report, his suggestion is certainly not that it's just about the money, but he is saying that if there's not discussion about adequate funding and affordability, the system then deteriorates very quickly after that.

The next discussion is on page 20 of the Rozanski report. It's about the section that covers accountability. I'll just read into the record what Dr. Rozanski says about accountability:

I'll give my view of where that came about, if I may, and the minister is free to challenge that or add to it. In Ontario accountability measures were put in place through school planning councils, almost the identical model of what exists here now. School boards were given accountability measures that they had to deliver on year after year. The challenge, according to the evidence that was considered by Dr. Rozanski — my interpretation of it, anyway — was that there wasn't the reciprocal accountability from the provincial government, that decisions were made, that multi-year plans were put in place that had no flexibility on the side of the government and that that led to a breakdown in trust and reciprocal accountability.

Hon. C. Clark: In fact, our accountability structure is based on Dr. Elmore's research, which the member touched on. We ask the system to set goals, which we do for ourselves as well, at this level. We ask them to find evidence and make their goals based on the evidence that's out there, and then we ask them to come up with strategies to try and meet their goals based on the evidence they found. That is Dr. Elmore's research, and we've certainly been following that quite faithfully.

I do want to just raise this issue of school planning councils. No, they're not exactly the same in B.C. as they are in Ontario. In Ontario they're advisory bodies. They're more like parent advisory councils used to be quite a few years ago in B.C. Our school planning councils do a mini-accountability contract for every school. They set goals for improvement based on the evidence of what they've seen over the last year. Then they put together a strategy to meet those goals. The accountability contract for the district is basically a rollup of all of the work the school planning councils have done. They're quite a bit more influential. The work they do is a lot more meaningful than the ones they've set up in Ontario, which I think in the past has had quite a weak parents' movement compared to the strength of parents in British Columbia.

The other issue the member touched on was the issue of transparency. I couldn't agree more. We have to be absolutely transparent. We've set up our funding formula so that it is much easier to understand. We're continuing to work on ways we can make sure that everybody knows — you know, from school district secretary-treasurers, who are highly skilled, to citizens who have had nothing to do with the public school system — how we are spending the money and why it is being allocated where it is. That is an absolutely critical principle.

I think it's important to note, though, too, that there are accountabilities one can work into the system without adding new costs. Getting parents involved in the education system isn't necessarily an expensive exercise. In fact, it may save districts money, because they're able to unleash a huge resource that's waiting to be involved in schools. It might take a little bit of effort to get there and involve parents, but it's not tremendously costly to do so. It does improve your accountability, and I think it improves the quality of education.

J. MacPhail: Is it in the service plan, then, that the research on accountability is incorporated from Dr. Elmore? Should we discuss that under the service plan? Where…?

Hon. C. Clark: I was trying to get an answer to a previous question, as well, so I'll try and do both.

Dr. Elmore and Elizabeth Resnick from New York have done a fair amount of research. There are ten statements they make about accountability that we use in all our district reviews and that we use in setting up our accountability contracts. I would be happy to get that over to her today so that she can have a look at the research we're basing that on.

I do have a chart, an interprovincial comparison of funding for public schools in operating expenditures

per student, and in this chart we have got…. Just hold on a second here. Sorry. It's total public school expenditures for student. B.C. is at $6,864 and Ontario is at $6,290. Again, this is an imperfect science, because it's hard to know what people include in their various budgets. Those numbers are 2000-01, I should say, which are the most recent we have here, and they are adjusted for inflation.

J. MacPhail: Yes, and that actually wasn't the figure I asked for. It was the per-pupil…. Thank you for that information. Then there are the other pieces of information I've asked for as well, the per-pupil basic grant.

Hon. C. Clark: In Ontario that number is $6,666, and in B.C. it's $6,809. The reason the $6,809 is different from the $6,506, which is what we use as our per-pupil amount for '03-04, is because when we calculate this $6,809, we are trying to capture all the costs that Ontario captures when it calculates its $6,666. If we want to compare apples to apples, we're above Ontario for operating expenditures. This one is the one that is not adjusted for inflation, and the numbers are 2000-01, which are the most recent ones we have.

J. MacPhail: Okay. Well, we can have that discussion when…. Actually, the Ontario budget that is being tabled today will have that reflection with provincial comparisons.

Just further to the issue of school planning councils, the minister may know that I was raised in Ontario and my family lives in Ontario. Therefore, I have just some personal insight into the school planning councils in Ontario. Frankly, when the concept of school planning councils was introduced by this government a little while ago and they became an issue of discussion, I actually talked not only to my family but to people of my age who have children in the education system out there.

I thought it was very appropriate for us to actually look at the Rozanski report — because it was my understanding, after discussing it with friends and family who are actively involved as parents in the education system in Ontario, that it was a dead repeat of the model of the school planning councils that are being set up here — for this reason. In Ontario…. Again, it's only anecdotal, but it's anecdotal from active parents. I must confess that these are active parents in middle-class and upper-middle-class schools, not inner-city schools. I do admit it's at that level. The school planning councils basically had to actually do the work of the implementation of the budget of the provincial government, and in fact, the school planning councils became a forum at which the challenges had to be resolved school by school. School planning councils actually ended up bearing the brunt of the provincial government's changes in funding formula.

For instance, of the maybe five different school planning councils that I had an assessment of through friends and family, it even went as far as that changes in sports programs were determined by school planning councils because of budget situations, so they weren't…. It wasn't my understanding at all that they were advisory. They actually made the real decisions, down to that level, about funding of…. I shouldn't say "down to that level." They made decisions not only on classroom funding but on funding at that level as well. Is it the minister's understanding that it's different?

Hon. C. Clark: Yes, it is my understanding that it's different. My understanding is that school planning councils have more teeth in British Columbia and also that their work is more meaningful. Also, they are much more focused on student achievement in B.C., which has been our overarching concern.

The purpose of school planning councils is to get parents, teachers and principals at the school level to start focusing on how they can improve student achievement. One of the complaints we heard over the last year and a half, or previously, was that parent advisory councils often find themselves talking about how they're going to work to paint the school or fix up the garden — which are important things, I'm sure, at many schools but are not nearly as important as improving literacy or numeracy in grade 3. What we want them to do is focus on the results they've had over the last year, talk about whether they want to improve those results and how much they want to improve them, and then figure out a way of getting there.

There are good examples of best practices across B.C., where some schools have, for example, reduced what used to be huge discipline problems to almost zero because they focused on it. It didn't mean a whole bunch more money, but what it meant was importing practices from other districts or other places and programs. They got the whole school focused around improving discipline at the school. There are lots of examples of that, and school planning councils, when they work well, should do that with a majority of parent input. That's really their purpose.

J. MacPhail: Yes. We're in the early months of school planning councils in this province; I would say in the first weeks of them. We'll see that.

That's interesting — the minister's view on the difference between Ontario and British Columbia. Of course, parents themselves have looked toward the Ontario model — certainly Save Our Schools has — to learn from Ontario. From my own anecdotal experience, I certainly understand them to be a duplicate model. We'll see as it unfolds here in British Columbia.

I might just say that the minister's point — that it's not just about money — is reflected in the Rozanski report. In fact, he says here: "The answer is not just to throw money at education; it is to make strategic investments in the goal of continuous improvement." Of course, I fully agree with that, and the minister has just articulated that point.

He then goes on to say: "I believe that, within the limits of the province's fiscal resources, the education

allocation must keep up with both enrolment changes and recognized cost pressures." Just as an aside, in Ontario they faced reduced enrolment, as well, in certain areas. "My recommendations, therefore, focus to a large extent on ensuring that funding is maintained at a level that will allow boards to meet the province's education objectives and on conducting regular reviews to update the benchmark costs in the formula."

The minister referred earlier to ongoing assessments of funding. How would she respond to his recommendation to conduct regular reviews to update the benchmark costs in the formula?

Hon. C. Clark: We don't have the same kind of funding formula at all as Ontario. They have a cost-resource-driven model where they look at a cost, and they say: "We're going to fund that cost. How much is your heating? We're going to fund your heating. How much are your textbooks? We're going to fund your textbooks."

We had that model in B.C. at one time. We don't have it anymore. We have moved to a per-pupil arrangement where we fund based on the number of pupils. We try and maximize the amount of money that's in that line, as well as in the lines that fund the different composition of a school. About 82 percent of the money that we deliver to school districts is delivered on that basis. The reason we did that is because funding costs really drive the decision-making for school districts — right? If you say, "We'll fund you if you provide a Japanese program," school districts are motivated to provide Japanese programs. That might not be what they want to provide. What if they want to provide a Spanish program, and that's not funded? We wanted to give school districts more autonomy in their decision-making about their budgets, so we moved away from a resource-cost-based model.

It's impossible to make comparisons between the way we fund and the way Ontario funds. They fund based on costs. They peg those costs at 1997 levels and never change them. We fund based on enrolment of kids. We try to maximize the amount of money that we're providing in that line. We've increased that, and we're going to be continuing to increase that by $100 million. I don't have the latest figures for enrolment in Ontario, but the trend I see is that until 2001 enrolment was continuing to increase overall across the province. We've seen a steadily declining enrolment in B.C. for the last couple of years.

J. MacPhail: Sorry. No, we didn't. In '01 enrolment went up by about 1 percent, as I recall, here in British Columbia. I don't want to fight about these things, because the aspect of fighting is irrelevant here. It's about suggesting that the circumstances are very similar between Ontario and here. It's not me saying this. It's the parents saying this and the educators saying this — that we can learn from this. As I recall, in '01 it went up about 0.9 percent.

J. MacPhail: No? Okay. Gee, that's not my recollection of it at all. Fair enough. Well….

The Chair: Members, if we could…. You'll be recognized at the appropriate time and address it through the Chair….

The last time enrolment went up across B.C. was '97-98; it went up by 1.6 percent. In '98-99 it went down by 0.2 percent. In 1999-2000 it went down by 0.1 percent, in '00-01 down 0.6 percent, in '01-02 down 0.5 percent and in '02-03 down 1.3 percent.

J. MacPhail: Okay. Thank you for that. Certainly, I've been advised that the trend is exactly the same in Ontario as well. If the government is saying no, fair enough. It's interesting to note that even as enrolment was declining, funding went up for education in the 1990s, that terrible decade of decline. Isn't that awful? Even as enrolment decreased, that government of the day — that big, bad government — increased funding. Gosh, that was terrible of us.

All right. My point here that I'm trying to make is that even in the context of declining enrolment and cost pressures, Dr. Rozanski is saying that there should be a regular review to update the benchmark costs in the formula. His recommendation doesn't have anything to do with the nature of the formula but with how the formula is determined or the effects of the formula — that there should be a period of review of the formula. So that's where my question is going.

Hon. C. Clark: Yeah, we do that every year. We have a technical review committee representative of the school districts and the ministry that gets together and talks about where the formula needs to be updated, where it needs to be changed, where it's not working, where it's not recognizing costs that are embedded and those kinds of things. We do have that discussion regularly. It's an ongoing thing. We update it every year.

The difference, though, is that when Dr. Rozanski made his reference, he was talking very specifically, I think, about the Ontario system of pegging the amount of money that they provide to a specific cost. In Ontario, although they continued to peg the amount of money they provide to a specific cost, they stuck those costs at 1997 levels. We don't peg resources at specific costs. We peg resources based on enrolment. So when enrolment grows, funding for districts grows. Again, within the formula there are different factors we need to consider. We have a technical review committee that does look at that every year.

J. MacPhail: Yes. I know it will be helpful when the minister actually gets the report in front of her — or

maybe she does. But he actually goes on to say he's not talking about the details of the formula, the actual specifics of it. It's the concept of it. He said he couldn't possibly address all of the concerns, some of which had to do with the funding formula and some of which didn't.

In terms of the technical committee, does it operate within the concept…? I remember the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant discussing issues around the increased costs of gas. The minister said: "No, there was not going to be any compensation for that, etc. That's because of increased costs for gas prices, etc." I understand that this government doesn't take that into account. So, what does the technical committee adjust for?

Hon. C. Clark: Well, they look at whether the money is being distributed fairly, based on the way the formula is structured. For example, they might look at the factors that we use in calculating the money that we provide to districts for unique geographic features.

Some districts have argued that we take into account heating days but not cooling days, because what we do in the formula is say, "If you have this many days under this temperature, you'll qualify for a little extra money," rather than saying, "How much does it cost to heat your school? Tell us whether you have electrical or some other kind of heating, and then we'll give you the money for it" — which is what we used to do. What we're saying is: "If you have this many cold days, you get this much money, and you figure out if you can spend that more efficiently. If you can find a better heating system that's cheaper, terrific. We're not going to penalize you for that because we don't have a cost-resource-based model." Some districts have argued we should recognize hot days, too, because it costs to air-condition as well. Those kinds of technical changes are the sorts of things we're looking at to make sure the formula is fair.

J. MacPhail: I'll ask this; I hope this will be the last time. Where is it that adequacy is discussed?

Hon. C. Clark: It's discussed at the Education Advisory Council, which includes all the partners. It's discussed in our discussion with accountability contracts with school districts. I'm sure the member will remember, when she was in government, and every previous Minister of Education will remember that school districts will always ask for more money. That's their job; that's what they do. Government is in a position of trying to balance the resources that are demanded by school districts versus the requirements of the rest of government and trying to find a balance for fiscal responsibility and prudent management. That's our job.

We make sure we have those discussions. We've certainly had them internally in our caucus. We added more money to the education system in this latest budget, and I'm sure districts will find a way to use it well.

J. MacPhail: I guess discussion around adequacy requires that the discussion be held outside of an imposition of a frozen level of funding.

In the discussion Dr. Rozanski had, here's what he said about school board trustees and administrators, the group the minister just referred to. I'm at page 23.

Then he goes on. His first recommendation is, on that same page, that the government spend $1.08 billion more over the next three years to fund what were previously inadequate levels. The difference here is that perhaps in Ontario, it was the school boards themselves that negotiated the contracts. Here it was the government that imposed the teacher contract on it.

In that context, is it at the Education Advisory Committee that the minister and her officials discuss adequacy of funding in terms of costs that have been imposed on them?

Hon. C. Clark: Sometimes. EAC has a broad range of issues it likes to cover, but certainly they talk about some of those issues. We talk about it with school districts quite specifically in their accountability contracts. Those issues certainly come up regularly, and we have lots of opportunity to discuss them.

It's important, though, to remember that ours is an entirely different situation from Ontario. We have a completely different funding model. While they pegged all of their costs for their funding for school districts based on costs in 1997, we have increased education funding. We've announced that we're increasing it in '04-05 and '05-06. Plus, we gave school districts $43 million and then $50 million in one-time grants over the last two years, so we've loosened up the purse strings in a way that Ontario hasn't. In addition to that, we don't have a cost-driven funding formula; we have an enrolment-driven funding formula. It's a very, very different situation between the two provinces. But we do have a lot of those discussions with districts; there's no question about it.

J. MacPhail: Yes, but I think maybe the point would be…. I know the minister wanted to distinguish the fact that the system has declining enrolment here, but when you have a per-pupil funding formula in declining enrolment, that means the school board absorbs fixed costs. It's not necessarily one that one would hold up as a better model compared to the Ontario system.

In fact, I think maybe the point would be that with declining enrolment, with the way this government

funds, all of the negative effects of fixed costs are on the school boards rather than on the Ministry of Education, the way they are picked up in Ontario.

I think the point here in the Rozanski report is that the imposition of costs has an effect on school boards. I advised the minister that I would be looking at the details of the Vancouver school board and then the Victoria school board on their fixed costs, the funding formula and what it means for education. I'm happy to actually use those as examples of how the funding formula works in this particular situation, and details of adequacy.

Let me just turn, then, to — I just want to refer to the minister — page 24. The second recommendation actually goes on to talk about adequacy. But let me move on here to the next point that I would like to discuss, which I raised with the minister in my opening remarks, at page 33. It's a recommendation that says….

I'll just read it into the record: "…the government establish a cabinet-level advisory council on integrated services for children and families, composed of representatives from" — and these are Ontario ministries, clearly — "the ministries of community, family and children's services, education, health and long term care, public safety and security, and tourism and recreation to meet on a regular basis to align the work and the funding mechanisms of the ministries that serve families, children and youth."

Hon. C. Clark: In British Columbia we obviously have ongoing discussions between ministries. We work pretty closely with the Ministry of Children and Family Development and some other ministries. In addition to that, the Premier has created the system of government caucus committees, which have an opportunity to integrate a lot of the thinking between ministries. That is really their purpose: to make sure that the ministries are working well together and aren't conflicting with one another, undermining one another or working at cross-purposes.

Just to finish off, I would argue that having a fixed budget with declining enrolment frees up money for education. What it means, and what we've done, is that every time enrolments have declined, we've pumped that extra money back into the per-pupil grant. The per-pupil grant has actually increased, partly as a result of declining enrolment across the province. Rather than taking that money out and putting it somewhere else, we've pumped it back into the system.

J. MacPhail: That only works if a school board reduces its fixed costs that aren't funded. That means school closures. That's the result. I guess we'll have a debate on whether school closures are a better thing or not.

This committee. What is the name of the government caucus committee that would replicate this situation?

Hon. C. Clark: Members of the public are invited to make presentations. As I think the member knows, it's part of the cabinet process, leading up to cabinet. It doesn't hold all its committee meetings in public, but I know that members of the public are invited from time to time to make presentations.

J. MacPhail: Sorry. I'm not aware of the process that's used in government decision-making.

The government caucus committee then holds forth, sometimes with the public. How does that relate to…? What's the cabinet decision-making or coordination around that?

Hon. C. Clark: Government caucus committees will make consideration of issues and forward a recommendation to cabinet.

The Chair: Members, if you'd like, by agreement between the government and the opposition, we'll take our five-minute recess at this time.

J. MacPhail: Just to conclude on the advisory committee, I think it's an excellent committee. I recall that in previous governments there actually was such a coordinated committee.

I'm just wondering: is there a public document that shows the cabinet committees?

J. MacPhail: The next discussion is on small schools, on page 35. Dr. Rozanski advocates that any small school that decides to stay open should be fully funded and supported by the government. He covers ideas of minimum core supports required by such schools and advocates that schools that provide special services or programs be given special consideration.

Now, I know we just touched on this a little bit, but I think school boards are still on track in this province to close down in excess of three dozen schools. Let me just read into the record what Dr. Rozanski says about small schools, again, in Ontario. I'm quoting from his report:

I'm going to stop there for a second. A two-part question: does the minister or her staff know how many schools were closed in Ontario or threatened to be closed? And if not, can the minister tell how many schools are up for closure in this province where they're the only school in the community?

Hon. C. Clark: I can't give her an answer to that yet. We will have a better picture of that when districts start getting a little bit further through their budget process. We'll have a sense of how many of them are talking about school closures and how many are on their list. It's important to note, though, that whenever districts have gone through this exercise in the past, last year or years previous, there are always far more schools on the list that they discuss for closure than actually end up closing. Often it's because of declining enrolment that they see in communities.

I do very much share Dr. Rozanski's concern, though, about small rural schools where they are the only school in the community. That's why we convened the rural task force to go out there and talk to communities, bang some heads together and figure out some solutions to try and allow us to help keep rural schools open. It's a real problem when you've got declining enrolment. Sometimes you're talking about 20 kids left in a community, but if the bus ride is an hour and a half away, the school district has to make some decisions about that.

They're very, very tough decisions for school districts to make. I have a great deal of sympathy for those communities that could be faced with school closure. We are looking for ways as a government that we can give local communities more power and more control to be able to try and keep their small rural schools open.

The last thing I want to say in response to this question is that Dr. Rozanski did recommend in his report that a small schools allocation include an allocation for geographic circumstances. That's precisely what we've done in our funding formula: recognized that there are unique geographical circumstances. We provide special funding for that. Some of those funding factors are the size of the school, the sparseness of the community, the distance from the school board office as a measure, days of heat, days of cold — or days of cold at least so far. We do make those considerations in the funding formula, recognizing that it is more expensive to provide education for a child in a district like Stikine than it is in a district like Surrey.

J. MacPhail: Yes, and here's what Dr. Rozanski said about that. I quote from the report at page 35:

Well, they use grade 8 because their high school starts at grade 9. That would be applicable to grade 7 students here.

Could the minister examine his criteria in the context of the rural task force? Maybe the minister could also give us an update on what the status is of the rural task force.

Hon. C. Clark: I have received the report. We are preparing our response to the report, and we are expecting to release it shortly — not tomorrow but shortly. We want to get on with it, and the time frame for the report committee was pretty short, because we recognized the urgency of the issue. We want to get it out there and start moving on some of the recommendations as quickly as we can.

We have done a lot more in British Columbia to recognize rural circumstances than apparently Dr. Rozanski thinks they've done in Ontario. I don't agree with his opinion that we should, as a central government, decide what each school should have as core support. I think that's a decision of the school board. We've been pretty clear about that — that school boards decide what the staffing levels will be at the various schools they want to have. That's their decision, not the decision of central government.

We don't intend to, on the one hand, say they should have autonomy and then, on the other hand, take all the decisions away from them. One clearly has to choose which path one's going to take. Dr. Rozanski's report is contradictory in that respect, although I think it's a terrific report in many ways — calling for more autonomy, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, being quite prescriptive about what he thinks the central government should impose on local school districts in terms of staffing levels and those kinds of things.

We do provide $100,000 for small schools as part of the recognition for unique geographic features. Small schools kept open by districts are worth an extra $100,000 to that district, and that's precisely the reason we've done it. We want to make sure that core funding is there if they choose to keep that school open, because we recognize it's expensive to run those little schools.

J. MacPhail: I actually read the Rozanski report a little differently. It's not just to the provincial government that its recommendations are directed; it's to parents and school boards as well. I assume this recommendation

about what his criteria are for keeping a school open…. First of all, he says there has to be a transparent discussion on keeping them open. I assume that was targeted at the school board and what the school board has to consider in terms of the criteria. I didn't think it was targeted at the provincial government.

In terms of the smaller schools, then — this is just general — I know school closures are being contemplated in cities like Victoria and in the suburbs, the Tri-Cities area, but I assume that the majority of school closures are being contemplated in rural communities. Is the rural task force — the minister can refresh my memory — tasked with examining the effects of school closures in rural communities?

Hon. C. Clark: The rural task force heard a lot about and reported back on the role that local schools play in small communities, and they also looked at the quality of education provided in rural communities — not just small rural communities but rural communities across B.C. We are most interested in student achievement across the board, and we want to make sure that heartland students are getting exactly the same kind of quality education in their communities that people outside the heartlands are getting as well. That was their focus. There's certainly some discussion about the roles of these schools and the importance of these small schools in local communities.

Dr. Rozanski recommends that the Ministry of Education provide districts with additional funding through the geographic circumstances grant to enable districts or schools to achieve the core support staffing that will make their small schools viable enough. We have done precisely that. We've provided money through the unique geographic features portion of the funding formula, and we leave it up to school districts to decide how they want to use that money to support the schools in their districts.

J. MacPhail: And in formulating the response to the report, who is the minister working with on that?

Hon. C. Clark: I'm working with the ministry and with, of course, my cabinet and government colleagues.

J. MacPhail: Recommendation 11 of Dr. Rozanski is significant only to this extent. It's my view that British Columbia has already met this recommendation. It deals with aboriginal education. I'll read it into the record. This is Dr. Rozanski's recommendation to the Ontario government:

That system was put in place in the 1990s for aboriginal students, and this government has continued on with targeted funding for aboriginal students, as I understand it. Perhaps the minister could just update us. What is the targeted funding for aboriginal students, and how much of that targeted funding was spent by school boards in '02-03?

Hon. C. Clark: The money is targeted for cultural programs, language programs — programs to make sure that the curriculum is reaching aboriginal students and working for them as much as possible — and districts are required to spend it on that. Districts are required to spend that budget. It's the only portion of the budget that continues to be targeted, and districts have to seek permission in order not to spend the money. Some districts have sought permission to not spend part of the money. I don't have that number with me at the moment, although I'd be happy to provide it to the member.

My view is that districts should be spending all of the money that is provided to them for aboriginal education on the programs they're required to spend it on, and I don't think there's really any good excuse not to do that. We are starting to really push districts to encourage them to spend that money and make sure that all of the money gets spent and doesn't get rolled over into a future year for them.

We are also the only province that disaggregates the data for aboriginal students, so we're the only province where we can actually track how well aboriginal students are doing versus non-aboriginal students. We've received a fair amount of kudos nationally for our approach both to targeting funding and disaggregating data, and now specifically working on enhancement agreements and setting out specific goals for improvements for aboriginal kids.

J. MacPhail: Yes, and all that was put in place in the 1990s, so I'm well aware of all of this. The issue, though, as I understand it…. Well, perhaps the minister could clarify. Do school boards now have to seek permission not to spend the aboriginal funding so that they can spend it elsewhere?

J. MacPhail: Okay, good. So that hasn't changed. Why is it that the minister doesn't know how much money has been spent?

Hon. C. Clark: We allocated over $44 million last year. Almost all of that was spent. There were a few requests to roll over some portion of each of those budgets in some districts. We're working with those districts to make sure it doesn't happen again, but I understand that historically it has happened quite a bit over the years. That's one of the things we've got to wrestle with and make sure doesn't happen anymore. I don't have the very specific number. As I recall, though, it is a small number.

J. MacPhail: I'd be interested in that, because the minister is quite right. I recall one year where almost $36 million of the funding wasn't spent during our administration. So if there's an improvement in that area, that should be good news. I would have thought those figures would have been easily obtainable.

What I would be interested in knowing is how the improvement has occurred, because that is good news as well. Part of the struggle that occurred throughout the 1990s, even after the targeted funding was put in place, was the — and I assign no blame for this — inability of school boards to reach agreement with local first nations organizations and bands on what would be a proper program.

There were some great models. I remember Kamloops school district as being an excellent model for reaching agreement on those matters. I'd be interested to know, if indeed the money is being spent now, how the government has moved to reach agreement with local first nations — the success.

Hon. C. Clark: We've made a major push in the last year and a half to get school districts engaged in enhancement agreements with first nations in their districts. The difference between an enhancement agreement and a local education agreement, which the member might be familiar with from her time in government, is that an enhancement agreement involves an agreement with every aboriginal group in the district. Every group, from the Inuit to the Métis to every local band — to the urban nations, if that's relevant — has to come to an agreement about how the district is going to manage education for aboriginal students.

Our goal is to have all 60 districts sign on to enhancement agreements by 2005. I was honoured to be part of the signing of an enhancement agreement in Langley three weeks ago, where they've got just a tremendous program. They've been working on that enhancement agreement for ten years.

We are, as a ministry, putting a real, renewed effort into making sure we speed these processes up, that districts focus on them and that we assist where we can, because we want to get them signed. We want districts and first nations to come to some agreement about how they're going to spend this targeted money. It's not good enough for a district to just say, "Well, we're spending the money on something," if the first nations people in that district don't think it's benefiting their kids.

Perhaps the minister could give me what happened in '02-03 in other areas as well.

Hon. C. Clark: In the first year of this renewed effort, we signed five. That means we've got eight done in total. A lot of activity's going on out there right now, though, so we expect we'll be able to make sure that 60 are signed by the end of 2005.

J. MacPhail: So am I correct in understanding that an enhanced agreement has to be in place before the money can be spent?

J. MacPhail: Okay. I actually hadn't heard of this; this is new news to me. This is good news about the concept of enhanced agreements. If they are being signed, obviously, it must be a cooperative effort, mutually agreed upon, so that's good news.

I'm offering this as an opportunity to brag, because if indeed the money is now being spent, that's excellent news. It was a huge area of concern when I was the Minister of Education that the money wasn't being spent. So of the eight districts that have enhanced agreements, the money is flowing. How is the rest of the money being spent? Does it involve local education agreements or…?

Hon. C. Clark: Well, the rest of the money is being spent by districts — appropriately, I'm sure — on language and cultural programs. The argument, though, in districts that don't have enhancement agreements is sometimes that the band and the district don't agree that the services that are being…. Even though the money is being spent and is being spent on aboriginal programming, they haven't agreed on the kinds of programs the money is going to.

We haven't said to districts, "Look, if you don't sign an enhancement agreement, you're not going to get the money," because our philosophy as a ministry is that we don't want to make kids the pawns in what's an important but nonetheless political discussion. Even if all parties can't agree that the money is being spent as well as it could be, the money is being spent, in many cases, very well nonetheless. Even though we may be able to maximize the use of those dollars, we don't want to just take them away because people haven't agreed.

The money is still flowing. It still flows to all the districts. But in the districts where there's an enhancement agreement in place, we have certainty that all of the parties, all the aboriginal communities in that dis-

trict, agree with the way the money is being spent and have obviously had some input. That doesn't mean that districts that don't have enhancement agreements don't also have a level of agreement. It just means that they haven't signed on to it yet. But there may be a level of consensus in some districts where it will be pretty easy for them to move on to an enhancement agreement.

J. MacPhail: Does the minister now have the figures about how much money was spent in '02-03 or maybe even '01-02?

Hon. C. Clark: In '01-02 the districts spent $43,051,889, and in '02-03 they spent $44 million, so it's not just what we allocated. It's actually what they spent: $44,118,950. I'm advised that the reason I still get letters from some districts saying that they can't spend it…. The reason that that happens while we also are spending our amount is because some districts actually overspend what we give them. When you balance it out, they're ending up spending the full amount that's allocated.

Hon. C. Clark: The FSA results are out for last year, and maybe I can anticipate the member's question by giving her the numbers for aboriginal, first nations students. This is for the 2001 foundation skills assessment results. First nations in grade 4 in writing are improved; in grade 7 are improved, as I recall. My recollection is — and I'm going to have to actually get the exact numbers from the advisers that are here — that first nations students…. The only area that they didn't improve was in grade 10 reading results, and that was a problem actually across the FSA — everybody we tested in FSA. But first nations children are certainly doing better on FSA results this year than they did last year, so that's very, very good news.

J. MacPhail: For the public who aren't as involved in this, FSA stands for foundation skills assessment. That was my fault for just using the jargon.

Now, in terms of the enhancement agreements, have the political leadership of first nations been involved in agreeing to the concept of the enhancement agreements?

J. MacPhail: Well, I think that's very good progress, to be the minister…. The government is to be commended in that area. In fact, I'm actually very pleased. It was an area of concern that I had as a minister, and to see that that progress is made is excellent.

I'm just wondering whether this will be the final. I've got two more questions on this particular report, and then in the afternoon we'll be moving on to something else, as I said.

The concept of the effects of funding. As I recall, Dr. Elmore discussed the relationship of accountability funding and long-term effects. I could be wrong. Is the government, in terms of its assessing and holding itself accountable…? What's the period of educational outcomes that the government is looking at in terms of determining proper allocation of funding?

Hon. C. Clark: We've set out our goals for improvement in our service plan. We're pretty clear about wanting to improve in all of the areas we've touched on. It's a trend that we watch and we continue to watch over the years.

I argue that it's not just a matter of funding, though. It's a matter of how well we spend the money that's in the system, making sure that we squeeze maximum value in terms of quality out of every dollar we spend and ensuring that any money we spend goes toward projects and improvements that are evidence-based.

We're spending money not on things that we just imagine might make a difference but on things that we know will make a difference, based on the research that's there. We're constantly doing that; we're constantly monitoring our progress. I'm pleased to say that we're continuing to improve in our system. Students are continuing to do better.

J. MacPhail: Also, the Progress Board set up by this government is monitoring that as well. In fact, they're doing — what was it called at the provincial congress? — a special report on education, investment, etc., and they had recommendations on investing in education as well. I agree that it's more than just funding. It's investing in education, and investing can be determined in terms of allocation of resources as well.

The absolute, final question that actually isn't related to the Rozanski report was that the Fraser Institute report came out over the weekend allocating rankings to schools. I will go on record once again to say that there are many other better ways of monitoring education success than what the Fraser Institute monitored, but I only read the media reports on it.

Is the minister aware whether the Fraser Institute has finally started to take into account the makeup of student populations in terms of the socioeconomic makeup of the schools?

Hon. C. Clark: That question would be better directed at the Fraser Institute. My understanding is that they have started to include one measure that reflects the educational attainment of students' parents in a given catchment area as a measure of the socioeconomic status of the children. In fact, most of the research does suggest that it's educational attainment of

the parents more than income of the parents that affects the educational attainment of students, which is an interesting piece of information.

I agree that the Fraser Institute's analysis is based on a limited snapshot of how well students are doing. I think it's important that what we need to do as a system is provide parents with information about how far schools are bringing children, not just where those children end up. Where they end up doesn't tell us very much, if we don't know where they came from.

We need to be able to measure how far a teacher, a school, parents and that child's own initiative have brought a child in the course of the year. They may end up with only 60 percent at the end of the year on an exam, but that could be one heck of an achievement that we should be celebrating. We need, as a system, I think, to look at assessment measures that will give us a more accurate picture of how far the school system is actually bringing kids, rather than just telling us where they end up. Although, the foundation skills assessment is a valuable tool. It's an important comparative measure across the system, but we just need to recognize that it's only one of many tools we should be using.

J. MacPhail: Noting the hour, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Committee of Supply B, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

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