LEARNING NEW WAYS: EDUCATION REFORM IN B.C.
Release Date: 14 February 1996
Vancouver, B.C. > > > Education funding per student has
increased by over 19 percent in B.C. over the past decade, but taxpayers have little to
show for such a lavish education system, according to a Fraser Institute study on
education reform in B.C.
Surveys of employers suggest that students are graduating woefully unprepared for
employment; post-secondary instructors state that even the top 25 percent of B.C. students
possess dreadful reading, writing and critical thinking abilities; and parents have given
B.C.'s education system the lowest ranking in the country.
This failing assessment, according to Dr. Owen Lippert, Senior Policy Analyst at The
Fraser Institute, is the Ministry of Education's own doing. "As the sole provider of
public education," says Dr. Lippert, "this education monopoly smothers
innovation and breeds a conformist mediocrity." To really change B.C.'s education
system, he says, the education monopoly must end. "Any other approach is just new
paint on a stalled car."
One approach to ending the education monopoly is offered in Education Reform, part of The
Fraser Institute's series on governance in B.C. (Change and Choice: A Policy Vision for
British Columbia). The central thesis of Education Reform is that education authority must
be decentralized. Among the study's recommendations:
• The ministry of education should supervise and fund education, but not direct it;
• Most of the powers of the ministry and school boards should be devolved to
individual school "councils," made up of teachers, principals, and parents;
• These councils should control curriculum, budgets, staffing, etc.; and
• All local public schools should have the autonomy to chart their own education
directions, to use different methods, and to set different goals.
To encourage the growth of new education ideas, the study also recommends that charter
schools be allowed to operate. These schools should be locally autonomous and open to any
student.
"Choice is the element that will spark this system to life," says Lippert.
"Parents have the right to place their children in any school they prefer, regardless
of their place of residence." As schools begin to take different education
directions, he adds, parents will be able to choose the educational methods and
philosophies they think are best for their children.
School officials will also be forced to demonstrate that their methods are in the best
interests of students -or risk losing their funding. "If a child changes schools,
public education funding goes with the child to the new school. Parents will thus have
genuine and direct accountability."
Instead of a few bureaucrats directing education largely in response to political
pressures, tens of thousands of educators will control education directions in response to
the demands and needs of parents. With innovation and accountability, education in B.C.
will be renewed.
For a copy of Education Reform, please contact David Hanley at (604) 688-0221, ext. 582.
Contact: Owen Lippert, Senior Policy Analyst, The Fraser Institute, 604 688-0221, ext. 564.
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