To the Citizens of British Columbia, Canada,
How important is a good, free, public education system to you and to our society? How much should a collective ‘WE’ spend on creating the best possible public education for ALL of our children?
Here are some graphs from Statistics Canada:
Summary Elementary and Secondary School Indicators for Canada,
the Provinces and Territories,
2006/2007 to 2010/2011
(Catalogue-no-81-595-M-No-099-Statistics-Canada)
I encourage you to look at the whole document, and to understand that “Care should be taken with cross jurisdictional comparison”. Here are a Table and 10 Charts from the report, and then a link to the operating budget for BC education for the next 3 years…
It might also be of interest to you, citizens of British Columbia, Canada, to know that although overall costs have grown significantly the 2014/15 Operating Grants Manual (BC Education – March 2014) from the Ministry of Education shows no increase in operating costs for 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2016-17.
So I ask you again:
How important is a good, free, public education system to you and to our society? How much should a collective ‘WE’ spend on creating the best possible public education for ALL of our children?
And I leave you with another question too:
If you are a community leader, then what can you do to show that public education matters to you?
You seem to get to the heart of things every time, David. Thank you for putting this together.
How important is quality public education? Democracy depends on it. And I am fond of democracy.
Cheers,
Jan
I am fond of democracy too! But I fear that too many people see civic duty as just going to the polls every few years and that’s all. I would hope that more people outside of education would voice their concerns, (beyond a few honks of the horn in support of striking teachers).
Well, at least BC leads in child poverty!!
Thanks for the synopsis David! The numbers show what we are fighting for. $ for the students. I enjoy your blog
Thanks for putting this information out there.
Hi Dave,
Thank you for your clear thinking and great research into the issues. I’ve taken the liberty to share this web page with all the school personnel, and school trustees, in Golden. It’s nice to read facts from an objective source, rather than biased reports from the folks who SHOULD be sitting at a bargaining table over the summer.
If enough INFORMED voices demand change it just might happen. I wonder if there’s a way to get this information to the media so they can inform the public and keep the conversation moving towards a positive conclusion. It’s sad to read what people are writing in the reader response forums under the various online news stories. Factual information about our school system and about educators is sorely missing from the media’s coverage of “we said, they said”.
Thanks again,
Todd
Thanks for sharing Todd. It was frustrating to end the school year like we did. You are correct about the lack of factual information that is being shared.
Thanks Dave;
School Administrators need to speak up about the funding of public education. Administrators are educators, not C.E.O.s.
As educators, they and their associations ( local and provincial) should be defending public education from continuous funding cuts.
Great blog.
Thanks Jim,
I am biased in my opinion of what a ‘fair deal’ should be for teachers, but the above facts are actually about public education funding and would (and should) be a concern regardless of the current teacher contract dispute. I don’t think it should fall only on the shoulders of teachers to share their concern for the future of education in BC.
I believe we have a good system with potential to be great… But I’ve seen a recent loss in services which looks like it will only get worse next year, and that isn’t how you move from good to great.