FEATURE
BRIDGING THE GAPS
Education priorities and the 2017-18 Ontario budget By Mark Tagliaferri
D
uring her re-election campaign in 2014, Premier Kathleen Wynne was clear: “Our plan is about supporting communities, and making the investments that are necessary in order for us to provide the services and protections that people in our communities need. That’s what governments exist to do, and that’s the plan we’re putting forward.” Nearly two years later, in its report on employment, income equality, and social spending, the Ontario Common Front came to a very different conclusion: “Decades of cutbacks on social programs have left… [Ontario] with the lowest levels of public service spending per capita in the entire country.” It is often said that you campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. However, placed side-by-side, these two statements lay bare the stark contrast between rhetoric and reality; between the Liberal Party’s campaign promise to invest heavily in public services, and a reality that has seen the government boast about balancing the budget, at the expense of social programs and services. The 2017-18 budget, scheduled for March, provides the government an opportunity to fulfil its mandate. In this, there are several areas that pertain directly to education, which must be addressed. Ontario’s system of public education is widely considered one of the most successful and high-performing in the world, and in 2015, five-year graduation rates reached the highest point in the province’s history. Ontario’s teachers and education workers are rightly proud of these achievements. But we must not be complacent, as there are several key areas that require attention, and investment. The government must continue to support and invest in Ontario’s four publicly funded school systems. In recent years, there have been renewed calls to dismantle the Catholic education system. Almost always, these are based on claims that amalgamation would save the province significant amounts of money (some say up to a billion dollars per year). We must remain clear: there is absolutely no evidence to support these claims. In fact, the opposite is true. With the majority of funding being per-pupil, and tied to enrolment, countless studies conclude that amalgamation produces almost no long-term savings. What’s worse, as we learned from the Harris government in 1998, the process can end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars in additional “transition costs.”
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Ultimately, the only way to save money would be to close hundreds of schools. Not only would this impact students and destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of education workers, but also it would directly contradict the government’s promise to fund social infrastructure. Catholic schools are fully integrated into the fabric of Ontario society, and reflect Ontario’s rich cultural diversity. We must all continue to voice our support for Catholic education, to ensure that all students have the opportunity to realize their full potential. In many ways, the well-being of the education system depends on the well-being of students. Recently, this concept has taken on a more all-encompassing definition, and now includes cognitive, emotional, and social needs, along with physical well-being. The government has taken some steps in recent years to address these issues, such as by instituting the Mental Health ASSIST program. Yet, young people remain the least likely to seek or access adequate care. In order for elementary and secondary schools to properly support students with emerging or existing mental health needs, the government must ensure that schools are adequately funded, prepared, and resourced. Funding increases should also be directed toward special education programs. Across Ontario schools, 22 per cent of students receive some form of assistance from special education departments. Unfortunately, these students are often forced to wait months, and in some cases even years to be assessed by the Identification, Placement, and Review Committee (IPRC). This is unacceptable, as is the persistent issue of the student-to-special education teacher ratio, which reached 37:1 in 2015. The government must adequately fund special education; it should also include transparency and accountability measures to ensure that money prescribed for various functions is allocated in the most effective and efficient manner. Taking these steps will help bridge the gaps in the current system. The concept of educational gaps is perhaps nowhere more evident than in discussions of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) students. FNMI students continue to lag behind their non-Indigenous counterparts in literacy and achievement, which translates into significantly lower employment rates among 2554 year olds. This problem is not isolated to on-reserve schools. In reality, 82 per cent of FNMI students attend a provincially funded school, with 92 per cent of elementary, and 96 per cent of secondary schools having Aboriginal students.