Manitoba is awash with problems. Many have been allowed to grow for decades. There is no quick fix. However, one part of a longer-term solution—and governments really must begin to think longer term—is an enhanced adult basic education system.
Luckily, adult educators in Manitoba have contributed to a detailed “roadmap,” or action plan, for building here in Manitoba the best adult basic education system in the country.
This would produce multiple benefits.
Education
Jim’s academic studies started at the University of Winnipeg, where he graduated with a B.A. (Honours) in Political Science in 1975.
Uneath This Buried Treasure found that Adult Learning Centres and Adult Liteacy Programs have been severly underfunded for years. Funding has remained flat; ALCs and ALPs have suffered in many important respects. The numbers of ALCs and especially ALPs have declined - there were 41 ALPs in 2009/10; in 2019, the latest year for which data are available there were 30 ALPs. The amount spent per adult learner is less than the amount spent per inmate in provincial and federal penal instituions, and less t
This summer issue of Our Schools/Our Selves focuses on how the privatization of our public schools has become normalized.
As several of the authors in this issue illustrate, the market-based, neoliberal approach to public education, to civic engagement, to progress is pervasive. But it’s also fundamentally flawed because it’s about lowering expectations and reducing the limitless palette of our collective potential to an individualized and standardized multiple choice test taken in isolation.
TORONTO—Ministry of Education funding for Ontario’s 72 school boards fell by an average of $800 per student from 2017-18 to 2021-22, new analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) shows.
“In today’s dollars, school boards received an average of $13,500 per student in 2017-18,” says Ricardo Tranjan, political economist and senior researcher with the CCPA Ontario office. “In 2021-22, they received $12,700 per student. That’s a significant drop of nearly six per cent.”
Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press April 13, 2022
For decades, education in Manitoba has been funded by a mix of general provincial revenues and property taxes set by local school boards. In April 2020, Manitoba’s government introduced Bill 71, which was intended to initiate the elimination of education property taxes as had been promised during the 2019 election. However, this Bill is regressive in nature and fails to achieve its intended purpose of lowering taxes to Manitobans in need.
In April 2021, Scott Fielding, Minister of Finance for the Manitoba government, introduced Bill 71. This bill was entitled The Education Property Tax Reduction Act (Property Tax and Insulation Assistance Act and Income Tax Act Amended) and was intended to initiate the elimination of the education portion of property taxes, which had been a campaign promise from fall 2019. Most of the government’s legislative agenda for the third session of the forty-second legislature was introduced in the fall of 2020, but the government did not introduce Bill 71 until April 19, 2021.
Historically in Canada[1], education was seen as a private good. Parents paid most of the fees and school for most kids ended by about grade 6, if not earlier. This worked because most jobs did not require much education. A tiny proportion of mostly wealthy offspring went to the few private schools and universities to become professional people, doctors, lawyers, clergy.
Two years of the pandemic have disrupted the learning and development of Ontario's elementary and secondary school students. In particular, households with lower incomes and fewer resources have been hit hard.
Bouncing back will require strong government resolve, new policies and the funding to back it up.