Fixing Education In B.C.

Change and Choice: A Policy Vision for British Columbia - 101 Ways to Save the Province (Parts II & III)

Contact:

Owen Lippert, Director, Law & Markets
The Fraser Institute, (613) 565-0468, Email owenl@fraserinstitute.ca

Release Date: 12 April 1996

VANCOUVER, BC>>> The release of The Fraser Institute's Introduction and Social Policy chapters of Change and Choice: A Policy Vision for British Columbia - 101 Ways to Save the Province (9 April 1996) is followed today by the release of its Education and Advanced Education recommendations.

"It is time to put the interests of students ahead of the interests of unions and administrators," said Owen Lippert, Senior Policy Analyst at The Fraser Institute and coordinator of the B.C. Project report. "Recent announcements on post-secondary and K-12 financing just buy time, putting off the necessity to re-think education policy for another year. The only vision from the current government seems to be: what is good for public sector employees is good for education."

To place the interests of students first means giving parents real choices as to how and where to spend both their own dollars and the public subsidy provided to them, continued Dr. Lippert.

Over the next two weeks The Fraser Institute will release the results of its 18-month study, which include 101 recommendations that would lead, among other things, to a savings of $3 billion, and a balanced budget by 1999/2000, not a "cooked" one.

Part II: Education

The Ministry of Education should focus on three key tasks:

1. Administering funds to local providers of education;
2. Conducting comprehensive, standardized testing to ensure that any school receiving public funds gives its students basic literacy and numeracy, as well as core citizenship knowledge; and
3. Producing individual school reports which summarize standardized testing results and compile all information about a school: teacher/student ratio, education levels of teachers, frequency and outcomes of teacher evaluations.

The Fraser Institute also recommends that the provincial government:

• Reduce the number of school districts in order to reduce public school board spending on administration to 5%. It is currently at 7.8% of school board spending, some $287.6 million. Meeting the 5% target yields savings of $80 million.
• Allow parents to form Charter Schools. It is critical to give parents greater choices in how their tax dollars are spent on education. Start-up funding for facilities should not be provided.
• Create a working School Council in each school, to be composed of the school principal and vice-principal, heads of subject departments in the school and at least an equal number of elected parents of children attending the school. It is to these local Councils that most Ministry of Education and school district responsibilities will devolve.
• Allow School Councils to control budgets to the greatest extent practicable.
• Devolve curriculum development to School Councils, (always provided that schools can meet the Ministry's minimum outcomes). It should lead to a 50% reduction in ministry spending on curriculum development.
• Allow School Councils to hire the teaching staff according to criteria set by themselves, restricted only by provincial employment law. Responsibility for teacher evaluation policies should also be given to School Councils with appropriate assistance from Victoria.
• Place responsibility for janitorial and maintenance services with the School Councils. They will be required to contract out that work in public bids. The goal is to reduce these expenditures from 13.5% to 10% of the budget.
• Give School Councils the option to assume responsibility for transportation spending. If the option is not exercised, the responsibility for transportation will remain at the district level.

Total Savings for Education

Part III: Advanced Education

• Deregulate tuition fees and allow them to rise from 22% to 30% of the actual cost of the education provided. This is a matter of equity. Approximately 70% of all post-secondary students come from homes with incomes in the top 30% of all family incomes. The value of a post-secondary degree in terms of life-time income is now twice that of a high school degree.

If tuition rose to even 30% of operating expenditures, it would just about equal the planned 10% reduction in provincial support. Tuition fee revenues in excess of the planned reductions in provincial support should be kept by the universities and colleges.

• Institute an Income Contingency Loan Program (ICLP), by which graduates would make payments on their loans at a rate that would depend on how much they are earning. The details of the repayment schedule would be laid out in a contract established at the time of the loan and payment would be collected through the income tax system. This also could increase the amount of money available for student loans because of a greater ability to leverage private loans.
• This would also help reduce loan default because it embraces long and flexible repayment schedules. The province should work with the federal government on using the tax system for collection.
• Freeze current funding levels.
• At the same time, allow these institutions to achieve real savings by removing the restrictive practices of the University Act which prevent increased specialization and excellence in specific fields. Post-secondary institutions were expecting cuts of up to 10% of provincial funding in 1996/97.
• Remove the restrictions on the creation of private degree granting institutions. The result would be self-supporting universities, offering alternative choices to students at no additional cost to taxpayers.
• Allow the professional schools within the current university system to privatize.

Total Savings for Advanced Education

Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy organization based in Vancouver.

For further information contact:

Suzanne Walters, Director of Communications,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4582,
Email suzannew@fraserinstitute.ca

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.