HANSARD

NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

COMMITTEE

ON

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER

Department of Education

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE

Mr. Graham Steele (Chairman)

Mr. James DeWolfe (Vice-Chairman)

Mr. John Chataway

Mr. Gary Hines

Mr. Howard Epstein

Ms. Marilyn More

Mr. Daniel Graham

Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)

Ms. Diana Whalen

[Mr. Daniel Graham was replaced by Mr. Leo Glavine.]

[Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay) was replaced by Mr. Russell MacKinnon.]

In Attendance:

Ms. Mora Stevens

Legislative Committee Coordinator

Mr. Roy Salmon

Auditor General

Ms. Elaine Morash

Assistant Auditor General

WITNESSES

Department of Education

Mr. Dennis Cochrane

Deputy Minister of Education

Mr. Darrell Youden

Senior Executive Director - Corporate Services

Mr. Mike Sweeney

Senior Executive Director - Public Schools

Ms. Ann Blackwood

Director - English Programs

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HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2004

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Graham Steele

VICE-CHAIRMAN

Mr. James DeWolfe

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to call to order this meeting of the Public Accounts Committee. I would like to welcome our guests from the Department of Education, but before they introduce themselves I am going to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting with the member for Halifax Chebucto.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would now like to call on the Deputy Minister of Education, Mr. Dennis Cochrane, to introduce his colleagues who are with him here this morning.

MR. DENNIS COCHRANE: Mr. Chairman, on my left is Darrell Youden, the Senior Executive Director of Corporate Services for the department. On my immediate right is Mike Sweeney, the Senior Executive Director of Public Schools, and making her first appearance at the Public Accounts Committee is the Director of English Program Services, Ann Blackwood.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome to our guests. I would also like to note the presence today of the Auditor General of Nova Scotia, Mr. Roy Salmon, and his colleague, Ms. Elaine Morash.

I would now like to call on the deputy minister to take up to 15 minutes with an opening statement.

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MR. COCHRANE: Mr. Chairman, we have a copy for everyone and I will go relatively quickly because I think you would like to get to questions as quickly as possible, so I will go as fast as I can on the opening remarks.

We do appreciate the opportunity to be here once again to discuss public education and public education funding in the Province of Nova Scotia. We don't like to miss an opportunity to discuss what is near and dear to all of our hearts, which is public education and the funding processes that we go through in this province to find money on its way into the classroom to serve our students' needs. Providing Nova Scotia's children and youth with a quality education continues to be a priority for the Government of the Province of Nova Scotia, and we are working hard along with school boards, schools, teachers and parents to give students the quality education that they deserve.

Through Learning for Life, we are investing more money in education every year in the areas where it counts and where it is needed. By assessing our students and the system, we are able to identify areas of need and make strategic investments that have the greatest impact on student learning. We believe that the success of Nova Scotia's education system depends on much more than the amount of money available for education. Where and how we spend available funding is just as important.

One of the things we would like to do is we would like to address some of the misconceptions that exist about Nova Scotia's education system in our comments this morning. One of those series of misconceptions deals with how our system compares with other provinces, how our funding stacks up against other jurisdictions and the relationship between spending and student performance. It's very easy to do a superficial comparison of the costs associated with education from province to province, but it is important to point out that these comparisons only allow us to draw conclusions about what education costs in each province. They don't speak to the extent of educational programming, they don't speak to the results of the students in the system, and they don't speak to the quality of the education being provided.

The differences seen in the cost of education from province to province are actually a result of differences in price, which are largely due to wage rates; and differences in the underlying circumstances of the educational setting, which are largely due to population density. As an example, if the Northwest Territories has the highest per pupil expenditures in Canada, as was pointed out in the Statistics Canada report, does this mean that it offers the best education in the country? No. It means that its educational costs reflect the impact of population density and the cost of wages.

The wage rate in Alberta is another example that helps demonstrate this point. The per student cost of education in Alberta reflects higher teachers' salaries. On average, teachers' salaries in Alberta are $11,000 higher than in Nova Scotia. If we paid the same wage rates, the cost of education in Nova Scotia would increase by $102 million, or 11 per

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cent. That is approximately an additional $700 per student for each and every student in the Province of Nova Scotia. Now, the question is, we would definitely be spending more per pupil, but would that mean we would be providing more quality? We hear and see every year Alberta coming to Nova Scotia to get our teachers. So I think the answer to that, obviously, is we would be paying more in wages, paying more per pupil, but it would not have a significant impact on the quality of education.

An example within our province itself is transportation. There are higher costs associated with the transportation of students in less densely populated areas as opposed to metropolitan areas. The Halifax Regional School Board transports approximately 38 per cent of its student population to school each day, on the bus, with an average run of 22 kilometres, and the expenditures per student in Halifax are $206. Conversely, the Strait Regional School Board transports 97 per cent of its student population an average bus run of 55 kilometres, and the expenditures per pupil are $637. That has nothing to do with the quality of education - it has everything to do with the density and the cost of transportation.

These examples demonstrate that cost does not dictate quality, and the success of Nova Scotia's education system depends on much more than the amount of money available - it also depends or where and how we spend available funding.

One of the measures that more accurately reflects the commitment toward our system is spending per student versus gross domestic product per capita. The StatsCan report, which was called Summary public school indicators for the provinces and territories, 1996-1997 to 2002-2003, pointed to spending per student versus GDP per capita as a useful way to look at the cost of education to society. The quote they use "This measure can be interpreted as the resources spent on youth education relative to a jurisdiction's wealth." According to that report, Nova Scotia is spending above the national average, 21.4 per cent versus 21.1 per cent on education relative to the total funds we have available, or GDP per capita; in fact our average is higher than Ontario and Alberta.

The student/teacher ratio is also another very important factor. Nova Scotia is also one of the handful of provinces steadily improving the student/teacher ratio. If you refer to Graph No. 2 - which is in the package - Nova Scotia's ratio improved by 7.5 per cent during the period of the StatsCan study from 1996-97 to 2002-03; in addition Nova Scotia's ratio is the seventh best of the 13 provinces and territories in the country.

Student performance - and we hear a lot about this and a lot of discussion - Nova Scotia's students participate in international and national assessments like PISA and SAIP. Results from these assessments help us determine how our students are doing relative to students in the rest of the country and, in those reports, our students outperformed those students in other Atlantic Provinces in literacy, math, and science.

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In Graph 3 through Graph 6, the performance of our students speaks for itself. In the 2000 PISA reading international comparison, our students actually outperformed those in 23 other countries, including the United States and the other Atlantic Provinces.

As you can see from the variety of examples I've just outlined, it is problematic to use cost alone as a tool to reach the conclusion that the amount of money spent on education dictates the quality of the system. We're concerned that you, in your role as political leaders, and the public continue to believe that the quality of education in Nova Scotia can be evaluated based on per student cost comparisons with other provinces.

I would like, again, to refer to the 2000 PISA reading international comparison as an example to demonstrate this point. In Graph 7 - which is attached - it shows the results of Canada's provinces and territories in relation to their expenditures per student, and it is difficult to see a correlation. New Brunswick, for example, expenditures per student were higher than Nova Scotia's, yet our students achieved better results. These examples demonstrate that our education system would be better served if we all focused on results as opposed to trying to link expenditures with quality. If we identify what results are and are not being achieved, and the reasons why, we can use this information to improve our education system.

Now, could our system use more money? Of course, and no one has ever said that that wasn't the case, but it's not just about the money we're spending on education; where and how we spend it is just as important. By assessing the students' performance, we identify areas of need and make strategic investments in the areas where students need it the most. A very good example of what has been done in Nova Scotia, which I think reflects what I've just said, our Grade 6 literacy assessment, which was conducted for the first time and made available to the public, with individual scores from the students, in 2003-04, is a good example of how we used, and how we use, evidence-based decision-making.

The Grade 6 literacy assessment was part of our Learning for Life commitment to improve students' reading and writing skills, and to provide parents with meaningful information about their children's learning. It was designed specifically to help teachers identify Grade 6 students who were struggling with reading and writing, so we could give them more support. The results showed that the vast majority of students are succeeding in reading, 89 per cent, and writing, 81 per cent. They also gave us the information we needed to help the other students catch up.

As a result of what we learned, the department made an additional investment of $1 million this year to help schools provide targeted support for students who did not meet the expectations on that Grade 6 literacy assessment. That worked out to $370 for every student who did not meet the expectations. This will ensure that they catch up as they enter junior high, where the support will continue for as long as it's needed.

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What had happened in that case, we recognized that a number of students were not successful, we allocated a certain amount of money - in this case, $1 million - and that money actually followed the students into junior high. They left Grade 6, and they arrived in Grade 7 with the money. The staff at the school, then, were to design a program of all the menu of programs that we have, in order to deal with those students and how they were not successful on the reading and writing component of that test. That money is spent in Grade 7. When they move next year to Grade 8, and a new group of Grade 6s become 7s, another amount of money will follow them as well.

This is a good example of evidence-based decision-making. We assessed our students, identified the problem, provided resources to the professional staff in an effort to deal with those problems, and they will rewrite that test in Grade 9. Now, if someone says, what's the per pupil expenditure? Well, it works out to about $370, but if a particular school doesn't have any students that weren't successful, the money won't follow them. So you'll look across the province and you'll not see an equal distribution of that money based on the student population in the Province of Nova Scotia, it's money that will follow the students who need it.

The very same thing applies to our African Nova Scotian support workers. If a board doesn't have African Nova Scotian students, they don't get the money. Yet, someone will add up the total, and it won't be equal across the province, nor should it be. They don't have the same client to serve, they don't have the same difficulties that they're trying to offset by providing staff and resources.

The department also holds itself very accountable. Accountability was one of the key components of our Learning for Life plan. We put many accountability measures in place. One example is the minister's report to parents where we make all of our test results public. We've now produced three versions of the minister's report to parents. So those three were the first indications to the public of how our students were doing on national, international and local tests. Nobody is trying to hold back results. Nobody is trying to sugar-coat what our students are doing as far as achievement is concerned. We're making that available to parents. We're talking about it. We're finding resources to deal with those problems, providing professional development for our teachers, providing additional materials, particularly in literacy and numeracy, all across this province.

As demonstrated by the Grade 6 literacy assessment, we hold ourselves accountable to students, parents, teachers, boards and others by using evidence-based decision-making. Now, the results of student performance and system assessment drive improvements in our programs and services. We're investing more money year after year in the areas where it's needed the most. While funding per student has increased by $1,400 per student since 1999, we agree that more money is necessary, but money isn't the only factor. How and where we spend this available funding is very important.

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We've made a number of significant improvements in the Learning for Life presentation. We've invested an additional $12.4 million since 2003-04. To reduce that class size - and this is the year, of course, that Grade 1 is now capped at 25 - has cost $6 million. Extra support for special education was an additional $4 million. Providing support for struggling students that I just talked about was $1 million. We also provided money for reading recovery for every Grade 1 student who needs it and we've implemented a number of pilot projects in assistive technologies that worked out to another $4.4 million.

[9:15 a.m.]

In addition, we've targeted existing funds to priorities like literacy and math. This year alone, we've targeted more than $2 million for math and more than $3 million for literacy. This will see the expansion of programs like Active Young Readers, which is a reading program that helped 100,000 students in Grades Primary to 8 with their reading. With additional funding, we could even make more improvements, but again, how and where you spend this funding is just as important as how much we actually have to spend.

I don't think there's any question that everyone involved in the education system cares greatly about our students and the quality of education of the system in this province. Everyone continues to work hard, in partnership with boards, teachers, parents and other education partners to continue to make the system better. Nova Scotia's fortunate to have more than 10,000 teachers who, through their expertise, skills and dedication are able to make the most of available funding and provide students with quality education.

More than 148,000 children and youth attend schools in the public school system and they are performing well and they can and will perform better. In fact, our international and national assessments of our students show that they out-perform those in other Atlantic Provinces. When students aren't performing well, we are giving them the support we can to catch up. By making strategic investments in areas that will help students the most, we will help them achieve better results and continue to challenge them to do better and better.

Public education is a shared responsibility and we all have a role to play. If we continue to view our system and the performance of our students negatively, we are doing everyone who is working so hard - the departments, boards, teachers, parents and students - a disservice.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We do have copies of those graphs available and I think they've been circulated along with a copy of the text. We're certainly pleased to answer any questions that any members of the House may have.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Cochrane. For the next 20 minutes, we'll turn things over to the NDP caucus.

[Page 7]

The honourable member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley.

MS. MARILYN MORE: Thank you, Mr. Cochrane, for that very interesting overview. I hope you'll forgive me some personal indulgence here, but I'm not actually going to ask you questions on that particular presentation. I've had some questions of my own running around my head for the last 25 years concerning another stream of revenue for the schools. I've had some concerns ever since I was a member of local home and schools and a chair of a city school board. Now I find myself in a place in time where I can actually ask those questions and hopefully get some answers, so I'm going to pursue that line of inquiry.

I contend there's probably $50 million being raised by individual schools across this province. I base that figure on the fact that within the Halifax Regional District School Board, a report was presented to their board last Spring identifying close to $20 million in that board alone. I'm just guessing that perhaps across the province, it's approximately $50 million and we'll just use that for the sake of discussion. I'm really concerned these funds are not being accounted for properly, that there are very few controls over how and why the money is raised. I'm concerned about the impact of this fundraising on the children, the staff, the community itself.

I want to go back to the beginning and talk a little bit about what I think might be part of the initial reason that there's not many controls on this and that's the delay in finalizing and implementing the new district school board financial handbook. I'm just wondering if someone could briefly tell me the status of that?

MR. COCHRANE: The handbook has been updated and it is available and it will be implemented this year throughout the system.

MS. MORE: Will that require the district school boards to be compliant with GAAP, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes. The Auditor General had made some references to that in his report in 2003. We found that in most cases there was compliance, but this will dictate that in all cases there is compliance with GAAP.

MS. MORE: It's my understanding that if the school boards are compliant with GAAP, they would then be required to indicate the school-raised money in their financial audited reports. Is that true?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. MORE: Do you have any idea how much money is being raised now? How many of the boards are actually reporting that this to this point?

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MR. COCHRANE: Not reporting it to us, that will be something that will come forward in the future. I don't disagree with the number that you used. I wouldn't be surprised if that's a conservative estimate. We always have to look at what kind of fundraising is going on and whether the money is used for co-curricular or extracurricular activities. Co-curricular would cause us more concern, in that, if some student is not taking part in a program that's part of the curriculum because of limitations on funding and so on, we'd have more concern with that. Extracurricular, there are always activities that schools want to do from a social nature, sports aspect and so on, but certainly those are concerns that we have and the reporting will improve with regard to that. Some schools have done more than others with regard to the number of bank accounts, who has to sign off, those kind of things, but it's a big business and I certainly don't dispute the area of the number that you have used.

MS. MORE: In some provinces, apparently, the Education Act actually defines what are authorized school fees and it helps clarify for the general public, the difference between co-curricular and extracurricular fundraising. Do you know - I'm not all that familiar with the details of the Education Act in Nova Scotia - if that is covered in our Act?

MR. COCHRANE: No.

MS. MORE: Is there any intent to clarify that in the near future?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, it's certainly a concern and every year, at this time of year, of course, we go through more because the fees have just come out and a number of things are evident. We certainly are concerned if there is a student that's not taking part in a co-curricular activity as a result of their inability to pay, and we're led to believe that in most cases that's been taken of, if there is a situation that's not highlighted, it's merely looked after, but certainly that's worthy of some research and some more information, because we would be concerned if students were not taking part in a program because of some particular aspect of the fee that was raised from that.

MS. MORE: Has the department done anything to investigate that concern?

MR. COCHRANE: Not specifically. We, obviously, get the odd case that's brought to our attention and we would go back to the board and indicate that we had a concern or someone had expressed a concern about that. We generally rely upon the boards, of course, who are closest to the fundraising activities and closest to the actual schools and they're the ones that actually allocate their funds to the various boards and we would rely on them to make sure of that. But there's certainly a role that we would have to play with regard to making sure that they are paying attention to that particular aspect of the fundraising aspect and the fee part. Fundraising is another whole area, but the actual charging of a fee to take part in a co-curricular program would be of concern to us and I'm sure of concern to the boards as well. We've intervened in a number of cases where someone will say, well you can't enroll until you pay your fee, then we don't accept that. If there are situations where a

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lab fee is charged because of consumables in the lab, then that should not be something that's a deterrent to a student taking part in that particular lab project.

We get the odd one. I can remember one specific one where the student fee included the year book. Well, someone had three students in high school and they had no need for three yearbooks, so that was, obviously, a policy that they had done in order to reduce the cost of the yearbook for most of the kids, but it wasn't fair and we asked for someone at the board to deal with that and they did. So, we do get those, from time to time, that are brought to our attention. I suspect there are many more cases where these are brought to the board's attention and they take action.

MS. MORE: It's my understanding that Newfoundland and Labrador is actually taking its concern a little further and they've done some study on this matter and they've come up with some startling results. They have found that there have been a lot of negative impacts from fundraising and school fees on children in that province, to the point where some children actually avoid coming to school on days when there's going to be special events with extra fees charged, going on a class trip, that kind of thing. That there actually does create some exclusion from school activities and the school experience for certain low-income children, a number of teasing and negative comments from peers that really affect their emotional well-being, that some junior and senior high school students are actually getting part-time jobs to help cover the school expenses and so on. So the relevant department in that province has recognized that there is a role for the provincial department in getting a handle on this, clarifying the matter, and making sure there's consistent and clear policy across their province on the part of school boards so that children and youth are impacted as minimally as possible.

So I'm just wondering, is this an issue? We're talking $50 million, we're talking about schools and my experience is just based on the local school board and the difference in range might be quite different in other parts of the province, but in the Halifax Regional School Board the range of fundraising goes from perhaps $3,000 for a small elementary school up to $650,000 for one high school. Now, agreed that some of those would be for extra school trips and things that perhaps families could choose to walk into or out of, that would, in my mind, create quite a different educational experience for students and I think this is of considerable concern. A lot of our schools are in lower-income neighbourhoods and just don't have the potential to do as much community fundraising as others, and I'm just wondering why the department hasn't taken this more seriously in the past when I know, myself, this concern has been talked about for the last 25 years.

MR. COCHRANE: I can't speak of all the past years - I guess we felt that school boards were the closest to the parents and to the schools and the students and would have hoped that most of these things would have been dealt with at the board level. However, from what you have said and what we've heard, and obviously looking at the Newfoundland

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and Labrador report, there are concerns that are common in Nova Scotia that would be common in Newfoundland and Labrador, and there are some differences, obviously.

Textbooks, for example, are only funded 40 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador so there's some fundraising going on to raise money to cover the difference, whereas textbooks are provided 100 per cent in the Province of Nova Scotia. However, there are some similarities in the circumstances and situations and the minister has asked that we look at the recommendations in the Newfoundland and Labrador report as it relates to Nova Scotia, and we will be doing that - we just got the report obviously, along with everyone else - and looking at what they've commented upon and some of the remedies and recommendations that they're making.

We are, as I said, very concerned about the co-curricular side because we don't want students to feel excluded, we don't want students to feel that they can't take part, and we certainly don't want students not to show up at school because of a certain activity. You would like to think that everyone in the system is very sensitive to that, but occasionally we have to focus and make sure we draw attention to the fact that everyone isn't able to provide extra funds and there are certain things in the public school program of Nova Scotia that should be covered and are covered. We will be looking the recommendations over, discussing it with the school boards to make sure that we have some checks and balances in place, and if someone is a little overzealous in charging some of the fees that they feel are warranted for certain co-curricular programs particularly.

MS. MORE: Getting back to the financial handbook, I was just wondering if you or one of your staff could possibly give us some detail on how the school-based fundraising is going to be more properly accounted for - both within the school setting and within the school board setting?

MR. COCHRANE: We'll ask Darrell Youden, the Senior Executive Director of Corporate Services.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Youden.

MR. DARRELL YOUDEN: Currently there's a committee of the chief financial officers of the boards who are looking at that issue. Earlier you had made reference to the application of GAAP in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was probably comparable to a number of provinces in Canada last year which deferred implementation of GAAP. There are some practical issues which are being worked out before that's being brought in place - we anticipate that it will be brought in place this year - part of that is taking a very hard look at the fundraising activities and the school-based funds.

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What constitutes a school-based fund? As you know, there are many shades of gray there. Funds donated by a PTA, are those school-based funds? How much is within the board realm and how much is not? Those are the kinds of issues that are being looked at by the CFOs, the chief financial officers, and then, additionally, I think the natural extension of that will be to look at the controlled environment that exists at the school level, and that's going to be a substantial challenge because, as you know, there are so many schools and these activities are spread over such a wide area that we have a very big hill to climb to deal with that issue.

[9:30 a.m.]

MS. MORE: So, should we have this information in a year's time then, after the audit school board reports next Spring?

MR. YOUDEN: You're specifically requesting in terms of the amount of fundraising?

MS. MORE: Yes.

MR. YOUDEN: For the upcoming fiscal year, I anticipate within the school board financial statements, you will see a complete reflection of school-based fundraising activities included in the transactions of the school board.

MS. MORE: That is reassuring, because I really strongly believe that we have a lot of inequities across the province because of the capacity of local schools to raise money to both enhance their curriculum and to provide the extras for the regular program. I know that's not even going to cover the funds that are perhaps donated by teachers buying extra supplies and that kind of thing. We might have a better handle on just how much it is costing Nova Scotians to provide the current level of educational experience.

I think I will stop that particular line of inquiry. I'm not sure how much time is left, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Are you turning it over to your colleague?

MS. MORE: If there's enough time left.

MR. CHAIRMAN: With just a little over six minutes left, I recognize the member for Halifax Chebucto.

MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: Thank you. Mr. Cochrane, thank you very much for your presentation, it was very interesting. I have to tell you that I know in my constituency it will be welcome news that the department officially embraces high quality of education as its

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main goal. I took that to be your number one message, and I assure you it is a very welcome message, because this is what parents are interested in. It's not just that some level of education is delivered, but it's that the levels of education be of a very high quality. That's constantly what I hear from parents, and of course, I'm in touch with them on a regular basis.

What I'm wondering is whether we can just look at the interaction with the money question a bit more, because I think you made some very sensible observations about how money does interact with the delivery of quality, and I take your points. I think they're very good. Could we start with this? You said that although money is not the sole measure of quality by any means, and you illustrated that fairly well, you did say nonetheless, the department and the system would welcome additional funding. So, how much? (Laughter)

MR. COCHRANE: As much as we possibly can get. I think the thing that we like to assure people is that whatever we are given - and the decision is made in this House - we will spend it efficiently and effectively and make sure we put it in the areas where it is going to have the greatest impact on our students and the quality of education.

MR. EPSTEIN: The problem is, we need numbers. As people who are involved in a process that ultimately will lead to budgeting and allocation of funds to particular programs and departments and so on, we really have to have an idea. We don't see, I think, the education system the same way some people perhaps approach the health system, which is, as much as you can provide, the people who are involved will use it up. I don't think we quite see that as how we would characterize the education system.

I think what we need, realistically, is some idea of what kind of targets you might have in your head. If you had your druthers and you could see the department funded at a level that you would feel happy within terms of delivery of the services to the students, just what kind of level of an increase would you look at? If it were to be suddenly in one year the money was there, what kind of increase in your departmental budget would you be asking for?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, the first thing we have to do is outline our cost pressures. We do spend a lot of time working with the CFOs and school boards to identify exactly what the cost pressures are in the system. The teachers' contract has to be fulfilled, what's the raise, what's the increase with regard to medical, dental, all those things, heat, lights. We hear the Power Corporation saying what they want, we have to make sure that we cover for all of the needs in the system just to hold where we are.

Then we have a number of initiatives that we are working on that we have to continue, that have to be funded. For example, next year, in September 2005, we'll have a cap on the number of students in Grade 2, at 25. There were also commitments made by the government with regard to a combined class, a P/1, and when it got over 20, what you have to do. We have a number of significant commitments that we're doing with regard to literacy

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and numeracy, and there were two press releases just in the last couple of days. So we have to bring forward all the cost pressures and then all the pressures and the costs associated with new initiatives that we think are positive for the system. We have, obviously, a number of those things that we're working on and would like government to consider at budget time.

MR. EPSTEIN: I'm mindful of the fact that, unfortunately, I have a very limited amount of time. I can understand that, of course, salary negotiations are one thing, deferred maintenance on the physical plant would be another, those kinds of things, I think, are sort of readily ascertainable or negotiable and so on. What I'm wondering about are things, as you were saying by your analysis earlier, that would really deliver quality to the system. You began to touch on that when you talked about caps on numbers of students in the classroom and, in your illustration earlier, you talked about special targeted kinds of programs.

What kinds of dollars are we looking at there, if you had the kinds of caps on enrolments in the classroom that you would like to see, throughout the whole of the system, at all grade levels, if you had more money for targeted programs? Again, have you done projections as to what this would cost?

MR. COCHRANE: We've looked at - as you know, we've been dealing with our class size at the early years. We started with Primary, then Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, we have a projection of what that will cost when we introduce that, and we have one, also, with regard to Grade 4. Then, of course, there has to be a decision, are we going to continue that further and what the cap might be because, as you get children a little older, you can deal with a cap in a different way.

We've got estimates of many of those kinds of projects. We also have estimates with regard to some of the professional development activities we'd like our teachers to go through, particularly with regard to literacy and numeracy. Those are our priorities. We recognize that the curriculum has been changing over a period of time, and that we've got work to do in that regard, and we have a good idea of what it's going to cost, on the existing kind of model, in order to do the kind of professional development we'd like.

So we have numbers associated with all of those, and obviously the government has to put things in order of priority. We'll bring in our list of what we think the system needs, and then obviously government has to decide what they can put on their list of priorities.

MR. EPSTEIN: Is 25 students per class the kind of level that you would like to see throughout the system?

MR. COCHRANE: There is an issue that you have look at at the same time. This is a logistical issue. You could go to 25 across the system and have to spend $200 million in building new classrooms on in a declining enrolment area. So you have to be very careful that you don't put all your money into bricks and mortar, and not provide the money you

[Page 14]

need in the classroom for textbooks and curriculum guides and professional development and so on. So we have to be very careful that we don't get ourselves in a situation where we're creating a cap that's going to cause a huge expenditure on something that's not going to have the same kind of impact that we would have by . . .

MR. EPSTEIN: I understand. I think my time is up here. But you did say that student-teacher ratios were one of the measures of quality.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, 16.24 per cent in the period of study was the pupil-teacher ratio in Nova Scotia, 7^th best in the country.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're right, your time is up. I would like to turn the next 20 minutes over to the Liberal caucus.

The honourable member for Kings West.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Mr. Chairman, I would certainly like to thank the officials from the Department of Education for coming in today and having an opportunity to both question and perhaps challenge a few areas that they have presented on this morning. I guess, perhaps, the remarks of the minister earlier about the performance outcomes, quality of education, are perhaps are not necessarily related to levels of funding, produced as the document right here. It is a very contentious statement, to say the least, I would say second only to the minister's comments about the provincial exams, relating to math, last year, which were truly off the mark.

I would like to start off with the 1999 funding formula model, which came in with this government, with this deputy minister and, of course, right from the Department of Education it was clearly stated that it was never completed, never fully accepted, no board was to get less than before, $106 million was required to implement it, a work group would reconvene to complete the work on the model.

My contention here is that perhaps this was so designed to be as much political as pedagogical in its implementation. The 75 per cent baseline funding is easily accounted for, as we take a look at the budgets of each of the boards, but that 25 per cent always seemed to me to have flux and flow and allowed for some individual things and so on that seemed to be, as I said, as much political as it was about the educational direction and initiatives in the province. I'm wondering if, in fact, the formula was set up to some degree with that kind of thinking to have that expediency available through a formula that obviously hasn't worked well. Even when I heard Dr. Gunn, last year, from AVRSB, who has been very supportive of the department and its work, say he finally realized that for the past six years our system has been underfunded and he stated so very, very clearly.

[Page 15]

Where did the formula go off the tracks and not be corrected and now leaves all boards in a deficiency position?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, first of all, I don't know the discussions that went on with regard to creating the formula. It was before I arrived. The formula was worked out as a result of what they used to call the Education Funding Review Work Group, which was a large group that had a facilitator and it was kind of a relationship between the department and the boards by which they looked at the funding formula and there was an agreement they were going to change the formula. They came up with the combination and the categories and so on. So, to the best of my knowledge, this was totally a staff function, there were no elected people sitting on this particular committee.

The difficulty they got into was they got into the question of adequacy. Adequacy is determined by the government and the Legislative Assembly, as far as how much money we're going to get. The difficulty was, the caveat was that no one would receive less and there had to be $106 million more. No one was able to provide the $106 million increase, so as a result, the funding formula was never fully implemented. You've acknowledged that and we have as well. Each year we kind of work with the superintendents and CFOs and work the budget through, based upon the formula and now, thankfully, there is a review and we're looking forward to Bill Hogg's report sometime late this Fall with regard to the funding formula for the Province of Nova Scotia and how that works.

All the boards have been providing input. He's had a number of meetings with boards and CFOs and staff and so on, so we're hopeful this funding formula will be not only transparent, but also appear to everyone to be equitable. That's one of the things that we're anxious to see. By the way, no boards in the last two years - I shouldn't say no boards, but collectively, boards have been in surplus positions. That's to the credit of boards who are watching their money very carefully. Ideally, a board should have no surplus, no deficit. Every dollar given to them is going out there for the benefit of our students. Last year, collectively, we had about $2.5 million surplus from the boards; the year before it was $1.2 million. That's pretty close budgeting on an $850 million budget. I can't sit here and say that's not accurate. But, we're hopeful that the transparency that has to come with the new formula will be there.

For example, in the case of Annapolis, they have 11.34 per cent of the population of the school students in Nova Scotia. They receive 11.14 per cent of the budget, pretty close. The only two that don't get an amount greater than the percentage of the population are Halifax Regional School Board and Annapolis. There are a number of factors and we've talked about those in presentations both to Annapolis and to Halifax about some of the factors that enable them to be a little more efficient in the sense of the number of schools, the critical mass, the number of students per building. All those kinds of things have an impact.

[Page 16]

The question of transparency is always out there. If the formula is so convoluted and complex that many of our educators and people in the department have a difficult time with it, then obviously it's too complex and too convoluted and we have to make an effort to have that more transparent. That's what we're hoping is one of the things that will come out of Mr. Hogg's report and study being done in the province.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you very much for that response. That helps to some degree. Certainly, it has been raised this morning about sufficient funding for the system. I must say, I'm a bit dismayed when I look at the mandate of Mr. Hogg. This was pointed out by the Halifax Regional School Board, and also reading the document from Tri-County on their presentation to Mr. Hogg, and that is we may simply have some shifting and some movement of funds and, in fact, declining enrolment, small rural schools may be addressed to some degree, but adequacy of funding is not part of his mandate. So are these two developments really going to line up and are we going to be better off at the end of the day with Mr. Hogg's work?

[9:45 a.m.]

MR. COCHRANE: I certainly hope so. I can tell you that no one has more distress in dealing with this formula than I do, and our departmental people and the school boards, because it isn't transparent. People don't understand and don't always see exactly why it's funded that way and, you know, really, we're using some population figures that were back from 1996, and the population has shifted and changed considerably.

The question of adequacy was purposely left off. It's what killed the formula in 1999, and as a result of that they got into the fact that we have to have $106 million or it won't work. So we lost whatever benefit there might have been in trying to get a new formula, because it got caught up with a decision that they don't control. The adequacy question is determined by the government, first of all, and then they bring, obviously, the budget here to the House and all the members of the House have a vote with regard to the Education Department's budget. So it really would have given an exercise to a group of people who don't have control over that particular aspect of it.

The other thing that we're really hoping, and I think the greatest thing that we'll get from this is that people will have to look at the formula and say it's fair, it's consistent, and it's transparent. I think if we can get those things going as a result of this study, we'll be much better off. It really was based on history that, as a result of the history and how it was done last time, the formula was not adopted because of the question of adequacy. This time we felt, well, the Legislative Assembly, the government is the one that will have to determine - given the resources of the province, given the demands upon taxpayers' dollars and so on and the ability of people to pay - how much they're going to assign to education. What this will do is once we get that number, it will be a fair, consistent and transparent way of distributing it.

[Page 17]

One thing we also can't lose sight of is we've recognized there will be a transition, it just can't be cold turkey as a result of the change because we've got some areas that would be - if the theory is that money follows students, there would be some areas that would be drastically affected based upon the student populations in 2005 versus the student population in 1996. So there will be a transition, and that transition period may be two, three, four years. That's not a long period of time when we're trying to get a formula to deal with the money available to the students in the Province of Nova Scotia for years to come.

MR. GLAVINE: The question of testing and standardized testing, national testing, provincial exams and so on, are really a very, very big issue and certainly we can only explore a small part of that today. We're seeing that the APEF has really fallen apart now. New Brunswick is looking at phasing out its provincial exams. In light of where we could be directing dollars here in Nova Scotia, at this point in time, especially with a history of 25 to 30 years, where, in fact, in some areas, again measurable, our standards are lower than that 25 year period, when we had no provincial exams, and when I think of spending $0.5 million on just bringing people into the department to review exams - and basically that's what the five provincial exams cost us when we take a look at that portion, and that's not the contract work and so forth for putting the exam together and couriering it out across the province and so on. Mr. Deputy Minister, could this be money better directed at this point in time?

MR. COCHRANE: Absolutely and totally not. We cannot spend $850 million on a system as large as ours and as important as ours is to the future of this province without assessing what we're doing in the system and how our students are doing. There are several parts of the testing program. One, it's fifteen one-hundredths of 1 per cent of the Department of Education's budget. I suspect you wouldn't go to a heart surgeon without them doing some diagnostic work on you before they cut you open to fix your heart. One of the things that you have to recognize is that the teachers who take part - and I was up in your former school and actually met one of the teachers who was involved with the physics testing and crafting the test and marking it, and the professional development activity that was brought to that individual as a result of taking part in that, was very significant. So, there was not only the cost of having it done, but there was a side effect of the impact that had on the teacher. They then saw why the curriculum was the way it was. Why the test was crafted that way. How it was marked, the differences and so on across the province.

What comes back, and I must send you some information, some of the analyses that's done by our testing division on the streams and strands of questions and what goes back to a teacher, as a result of their children writing one of these tests, is very significant and extremely important as a guide to them in teaching the curriculum. So, there's a whole number of side effects of testing that are very positive from a professional development point of view. From the point of view of measuring how our students are doing, fifteen one-hundredths of 1 per cent of the Education Department budget isn't that significant, but the information we get, that we used for the very thing I talked about earlier with the Grade 6 literacy test, is significant. That we are able to recognize what these children needed. What

[Page 18]

kind of resources we've had to put in and certainly we could have used more, but with what we had, what we could do to try to improve those children's opportunity to do better.

[Page 19]

So, I'm a strong testing fan, I have to tell you. I don't believe that you can blindly spend $850 million without measuring the outcome. Any industry talks about inputs and outputs and certainly we're not an industry in that regard, but I think what we have to look at is, what do we get as a result of spending our money, or what could we do better, or what could we get more, as a result of spending it in a different way.

We're going to have a very comprehensive testing system, Grades 3, 6, 9, and 12 is what it's going to be, literacy, numeracy and probably one other high school subject on a rotational basis. Not a lot of money to get the kind of information that we think is extremely important.

Parents are asking how their children are doing. The Grade 6 results were extremely significant in the hands of parents and this is the first time, and I don't blame people if we were doing a system check and didn't share the results, I'm not in favour of that, but the Grade 6 one is a good example of testing, measuring and then revealing the results and then providing resources to follow that up and parents have a very solid knowledge of how their children are doing and what they could do as parents to assist the school system in making sure that their children reach those literacy and numeracy levels that we think are very important for our students.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you, very much.

MR. COCHRANE: I get excited about that because I . . .

MR. GLAVINE: I know, and if I conveyed a sentiment there of being against testing, no, as an educator I'm certainly not. However, I think there are certainly some flaws with the way we handle provincial exams. No question about that. I hear it from teachers. I hear it from administrators and I'd like to follow up because I was in a school that had 40 per cent of students, who came from across Canada, in a military community, and there's no question today, and our students are finding this out when they go to other universities as well, that the only real, I guess, standard, that needs to be measured is, how do we measure up against other Canadian students? That's, to me, what truly counts, because we can take test results, like for example, of the Grade 6 results which showed - if I get the figure here now, I wrote down the wrong page in which that was on.

MR. COCHRANE: It was 89 in reading and 81 in writing.

MR. GLAVINE: That's right, yes. Of course, when we measure only 11 of the 53 outcomes, then naturally we can skew the testing toward good results, and I would argue that testing is very often about that. The math exam results have to improve. It was poorly implemented, so now we're going to say, oh, we've done professional development, teachers are doing a better job and so forth. So, I would argue from that perspective, that perhaps, we just simply use testing sometimes as a bit of a comfort zone. A good teacher knows very

[Page 20]

quickly how to assess and to what degree a child is managing the course and the program. So I have a little bit of trouble with some of our work with provincial exams, and even testing at the Grade 6 level, which is a very narrow window of looking at what is going on in a child's educational development program. I will move off of that. I just have three minutes.

We're talking about the Learning for Life document, which does have some very strong positives in it, however, the total resourcing of our schools with adequate textbooks and learning materials is still finding itself very wanting. The allocation system that we currently have leaves schools, every year, probably 300 of our 450 schools, very inadequate.

I told the story last year when we were talking about testing, and I had calls coming from around the province. A teacher by the name of Doug Holland from Coldbrook Elementary School said, I have been three years trying to put the English program for Grade 6 in place in my school. I was able to get 15 textbooks one year, 15 textbooks the second year, and the teacher guides and documents in the third year. Here's a man who's a totally dedicated teacher, has been teaching in the education program and so forth at Acadia - great credibility there.

How are we going to move the system to adequately equipping children? Another child I spoke with on the weekend, in the Kingston area - I was asking him how school was going, and I asked him about an area that I am interested in, do you have a textbook this year? His answer, well, there's only 30 for 80-something students. I never get to take it home. This is Grade 9 science. There's something wrong with this picture. How are we going to address it?

MR. COCHRANE: The textbook budget is about $8.6 million, $1 million was added to the base about four years ago, actually it's $8,012,000. What we do is we make sure we have what we call directed purchase. A percentage of the textbook budget is kept to make sure that all new programs have a textbook and a curriculum guide and so on that comes with it. So that's directed. What you must also look at is that when the courses are designed, there is a ratio often, it's a one-class set or so many per student and that kind of thing. So we do make sure that the directed purchase is there to support the new curriculum that's coming in and the changes.

But, with the inflation in that particular sector and the cost of publishing, particularly as we get into French first language and second language textbooks, it's very expensive, we do recognize that we do need more resources. The minister recognizes that. Almost in answer to one of the questions of the member for Halifax Chebucto, we will be recommending an increase in the textbook allocation, because of the fact that inflation has been greater in that sector than others and that we do hear these same complaints and concerns. We will be looking at the amount of money we spend in textbooks, and making recommendations with regard to that.

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MR. CHAIRMAN: We'll turn the time over to the Progressive Conservative caucus, the next 20 minutes.

The honourable member for Chester-St. Margaret's.

MR. JOHN CHATAWAY: Mr. Chairman, certainly, we welcome all the people from the Department of Education. Basically, I am very thrilled that you were able to give the opening remarks, because I think you've pointed out, among other things, that there are 148,000 students in Nova Scotia in the public school education system, and that often in the testing, they come forward as the best in Atlantic Canada. Well, that's good.

I think you've also mentioned, in fact, at the end of your speech, "Public education is a shared responsibility and we all have a role to play." Of course, many people around here were school teachers. I was one of them. That's very positive. You accent the positive, not the negative. Basically, I think that's what everybody who's in teaching is working for. There's three important people in a school, number one are students, the administration thereof which includes the principal and the board, and also the teachers. Then, of course, there are the parents. If they all work together well, it's just amazing. Everybody is very positive. To do that, that's the real goal.

I think you pointed out too, that indeed it's not a straight, easy job all the time, but you must analyze some of the challenges that you have in education. These literacy tests, math tests, number tests are good tests, as far as I know. They wouldn't be wasting the students' time to give them, if they weren't going to be respected.

[10:00 a.m.]

They do that and they plan. Basically, every student is a different individual person, so they get enough money to solve those problems. So, keep up the good work. I think you may emphasize the point too, that you have to focus on the results, don't link expenditures with quality. That would just be quite simple. If we paid twice as much for this test, the students' results would have been twice as good. That's ridiculous, it goes very poorly against the system. At any rate, we could talk for a long time but we only have 20 minutes.

Over the past few years - maybe I'll change this question because I think it's a positive thing - the province is investing more than $3 million, I understand, to provide more support for teachers and students in reading, writing and grammar. How will this money be spent? Just re-emphasize what has happened. What impact will this new funding have on the literacy of our students? In the same line, has the province's Active Young Readers program been successful so far? If you could just reiterate what you have said, we would very much appreciate it.

[Page 22]

MR. COCHRANE: Thank you, very much. There will be an extra investment in literacy this particular year. As we have done in the last number of years, we've really focused on literacy and numeracy as being our prime function, to make sure that our students are literate and do have an understanding of mathematics and numeracy. We have put in a lot of resources - the Active Young Readers program has worked out extremely well. The books that are provided to our teachers to work in our classrooms are extremely positively received. In fact, I've heard a number of comments from teachers with regard to, not only the books, but the amount of professional development that they have received in order to work with those books in their particular classroom.

The $3 million this year will provide more textbooks and more classroom books again. More professional development for our teachers, and an expansion of that successful Active Young Readers program and the writing program also, Writers in Action, that we have in the Province of Nova Scotia. I know we're eventually going to see the impact of that. And you must remember that our testing has not yet reflected a generation of students that have had all of these resources available to them, and also have not been exposed to the teachers who have had the professional development working with those resources on the way through.

We're hopeful that some of that reinvestment in literacy and numeracy throughout the system will reap results and rewards for our students. It is true what we are anxious for is that our students have a chance to be competitive with every other student. As they get to university, they are able to compete, they are able to cope with the curriculum and the program and do very well. We have had a very positive response with regard to that. We think it will have an impact on the Grade 6 results, eventually.

The money will really be used to expand that program, and provide more PD and more books and so on, for our teachers in the system. Active Young Readers, for the first time in 2002, was introduced in Grade 7. We will continue to move that up as we go through. Some of the money will be used for a four-day workshop for our teachers to make sure that they are comfortable with Active Young Readers at junior high and what the materials will prove for them and so on. We think it's a good investment.

Could we spend more? Yes, there's no question about that. Are we spending this efficiently and effectively? I think we are. Certainly, our teachers are receiving, I think with open arms, the extra resources and the professional development enabling them to do a better job with their students.

MR. CHATAWAY: I certainly appreciate that answer and I think you pointed out, too, that, of course, you have a new program and that's very important. Those children grow up quickly and it's very important that if a child has a need when he or she is in Grade 2, you don't wait until Grade 6 in order to do that. Certainly keep up the good work, because I think it's great for everybody involved in the system.

[Page 23]

Changing the subject - is funding for capital construction properly reflected in studies which compare provincial per student and per capita funding across the country? Okay, basically the bias is Chester-St. Margaret's, I know there's a new school, there's certainly renovations done in the school where I used to teach and also, of course, Sir John A. is now just going to be a middle school very shortly, I'd like to know what you had - just reiterate, is provincial funding for capital construction properly reflected in studies, compare provincial per student, per capita per student?

MR. COCHRANE: We did take some umbrage with the StatsCan report; however they do base their report on information that they ask us for and they interpret what they get in a certain way. One of the things that is always difficult - and the report itself makes a caveat that there are issues with regard to some of the statistics and some of the figures - and I guess there's nothing really to be gained by us comparing what we spend on capital with other jurisdictions. What really is important is what we're spending here, and we have a very aggressive capital construction program, about $86 million this year. About $350 million was spent over a period of time on P3 schools, and I think by the year 2008 Nova Scotia, in the 14 years, will have opened 72 schools, or some number such as that - I'll have to go back and look at it. I do know in the very same period, in our sister province, between 1995-2003, they opened two new schools.

One of our problems is we probably didn't reinvest like we should have on the way through, but nonetheless I think the best thing that we can look at is not a comparison, but a total of what we're doing. I think we have a very aggressive program. We probably can't keep up to the demands and what people may want, but we've done a lot with regard to new schools, also a lot with regard to renovations, and a number of significant renovations to existing schools that have enabled us to extend the life of an investment that was made 30 or 40 years ago.

I think of Graham Creighton. If any of you saw that school before the construction, it was phenomenal. When you drove by you could see right through, all the walls were gone. We renovated that school for $6 million and as an end result, reinvested in an investment that had been made 35 years ago. We got a new school, virtually, that was bigger than what we would have built by the design specs, because we did renovate things that were there that we would not normally build, because it was a high school at one time. So we have a number of those projects around the province that I think everyone can look at with some pride. We pay a lot of attention to the new ones, but a lot of very good work has been done with regard to renovations and so on.

So we're continuing to spend a great deal of money in that regard and I think we're getting value for our money, and whether StatsCan recognizes that in exactly the way we might like is really of no consequence to me. I guess where I take some pleasure is in the fact that we're building better schools, new schools, renovating schools and serving our students better.

[Page 24]

MR. CHATAWAY: That's a very good answer. I'm sure that you have talked to the staff and the students in the various schools you're renovating - well finally they're here, they're finally doing what should have been done 20 years ago and that sort of attitude. Maybe my last question before I turn it over to my friend. Talk about inadequate federal funding, and I'd just like your opinions.

Nova Scotia is currently developing its own internal funding formula for school boards in response to requests for more transparent allocation of funds; Mr. Hogg is coming up with a new formula and things like this. Do you have any opinions? Why won't the federal government change its formula as well to start funding Nova Scotia's unusually high number of out-of-province students? Here we have all these universities, and I don't know what the formula - how many Nova Scotians are attending Nova Scotia universities?

MR. COCHRANE: Twenty-nine thousand.

MR. CHATAWAY: Percentage wise, I mean.

MR. COCHRANE: Oh, 83 per cent of our students are post-secondary, are at university, and the other 17 per cent are at the community college level.

MR. CHATAWAY: Whatever, I mean the federal government's sitting there, oh well, we have many great universities, et cetera, with a great formula. They've been there a long time. The only reason they're attended is because they're very good quality. Why is the federal government so slow and reluctant to help us out in this regard?

MR. COCHRANE: We have made the case and what the member is referring to is the interesting aspect of Nova Scotia, we have about 43,000 students in our post-secondary university structure. About 15,000 are from out-of-province; 12,000 are from other provinces in Canada, and about 3,100 are international students who pay a differential fee and they cover their expenses. The other 12,000 from outside of province are not supported in any way by the federal government transfer payments with regard to being in our province.

We're one of the two provinces in the country that have a net immigration of students. We receive more into our province than leave and, therefore, we do think that we deserve some special consideration. However, that has been talked about a number of times at the national level and there really hasn't been a change and I know the reason the federal government gives us, they don't want to open that whole box because there are a lot of complexities about that and I accept that, I guess.

However, the fact that they're not supporting us does make that difference and the big inequity and the difference is, as I mentioned, that we have the lowest expenditure per pupil at post-secondary, but we have the second highest per capita expenditure in the post-secondary sector and that's the reason. We have a huge number of people coming in who are

[Page 25]

divided into the amount, but if you looked at just Nova Scotia's per capita, it's the second highest in the country. So that causes that inequity with regard to us.

I guess what we have to look at is what those students provide and what they bring to us. They bring diversity. They bring differences. They bring a good debate in our classrooms at our post-secondary level because they come from different worlds, different societies, different provinces and towns, different experiences, and that's a good thing. They do make a significant impact in our economy and also, of course, they are paying their tuition and they're giving us that critical mass at university which enables us to do a number of things.

Yes, we would like to get an extra $25 million or $50 million from the federal government recognizing that, but at this point we don't and I presume that's being discussed at a level much higher than mine. I guess in the meantime, we appreciate them being here. We would appreciate it more perhaps if the federal government paid for it, but they do make a significant contribution, not only to the economic fabric of Nova Scotia, but also a significant contribution to those social opportunities that exist at post-secondary for which we're thankful.

MR. CHATAWAY: Thank you very much. I would like turn this over to my friend.

MR. CHAIRMAN: With six minutes remaining, I recognize the member for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank.

MR. GARY HINES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, guests. Nova Scotia has more than 10,000 hardworking teachers and I believe last week was World Teachers Day. So I just want to thank you and have it on the record as saying thank you for those teachers who have done such a tremendous job in the Province of Nova Scotia.

There are several terms that arise in discussion with education and it doesn't matter if it's in the local coffee shop, or if it's around the desks or the tables in the Province of Nova Scotia. Mandatory education is always a subject that comes up in discussion, especially if you're discussing it with the Halifax Regional Municipal Council. I wonder if you can explain the mandatory education and the tax rate and so on and how it applies to education?

MR. COCHRANE: We do spend some time on that. Basically 83 per cent of the Education budget of the public schools in Nova Scotia is paid for by the provincial government and its revenues and the coffers of the province and the taxpayers of the province. The other, approximately 17 per cent, is as a result of a rate that's struck called the mandatory education tax. It's a rate that's struck and applied to an assessment base that the municipalities collect tax on. So really they're out collecting taxes now and this enables us to use their system to collect money for which they're going to make a contribution to education.

[Page 26]

Different jurisdictions across the country do it in different ways - some it's 100 per cent paid out of provincial revenues. I think Saskatchewan is as low as 45 per cent and the rest of it comes from local rates and so on. Actually 41 per cent is the provincial share in Saskatchewan so it is a little different; 75 per cent in Manitoba. In our case it's 83 per cent. It's always controversial. The rate has stayed the same for the last three years. Now, the assessment base has gone up and more revenues have been generated. The understanding a number of years ago that was reached, and I don't know if it was ever accepted by the municipalities, was that all new initiatives would be at 90/10. So if there was a new initiative, for example our class size initiative for Primary, when that bill came in, 90 per cent was paid for by the province and the 10 per cent was assigned to the mandatory education tax. As a result of 90/10 on all new initiatives, eventually that 83/17 will get tighter. It works for us now, but really the municipalities are collecting it on their base, it really is a tax struck by the education system by which they're collecting across the province and distributing it to school boards. Say there are different models in different jurisdictions. Ours is levelled out at 83/17, with new initiatives being at 90/10. We always get a reaction from the municipalities, and that's understandable, but it really is the responsibility of the province to set the rate, they just collect it on their assessment base on behalf of the education system.

[10:15 a.m.]

MR. HINES: Yes, they certainly like to use it as a political football when you're in discussion, they like to blame the province for being the big, bad guy, when really they're a collection mechanism. That's what I wanted you to point out.

The education system is wrought with inequities, so in establishing a formula there are many things that need to be considered. One is supplementary education, which HRM, in itself, establishes a three-tier education system, with the county having a small portion based on an area rate and the former City of Dartmouth having a bigger amount and then the Halifax amount being even greater. In terms of establishing an equal system for funding education, something has to be done with that supplementary education factor.

I know, and I understand that there is not going to ever be a day when the former Halifax City or former Dartmouth are going to stand up and say, okay, we will share it with Bedford and the former county. They will insist that we raise our rate to compensate for that difference in funding. However, if you look at the tax base that we have, ours is a residential tax, they have a big commercial tax, and they're not willing to share that. So, in establishing that formula and that inequity in the situation that presently exists in HRM, is there a solution to this dilemma?

MR. COCHRANE: It exists because it was requested at one time by the boards in the Halifax area. The provincial legislation allows them to generate this taxation to give to the education system. Similarly, there is a provision by which the municipality can get out of collecting the supplementary fund, they can reduce it by 10 per cent a year, so I guess it

[Page 27]

would never disappear completely if you look at the math. That's their choice. They work it out with the board, they decide what's eligible for supplementary funding, they decide what the rate is going to be, how much they're going to collect and then the board has to be accountable to the municipalities through some process as to where they spent it.

We've kept ourselves somewhat out of that debate. We've offered information, we've indicated that we can provide as much information as we possibly can with regard to education and the needs and the demands and so on, but it's strictly, from the Department of Education's point of view, an issue between HRM and the Halifax Regional School Board. I guess we all have personal opinions as to taxation and equity and all those issues, but nonetheless, it exists there now.

They generate the money, the board spends it and there's a relationship that's somewhat tense at times between the board and the municipality. I guess everyone recognizes that the money that's generated does go to the benefit of students in the system and provides something extra that wouldn't necessarily be provided.

They have the option of expanding it or limiting it. They have to deal with their whole zones around the core. Nonetheless, there seems to be a kind of peaceful co-existence at this point, and the department certainly is willing to be supportive and helpful, but they have to resolve it. It's their tax, they asked for it, they have the right to get rid of it. They administer it and, obviously, they're accountable for it as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, very much. That concludes the time for the Progressive Conservative caucus. The next round will be 16 minutes and belongs to the NDP caucus. I'm going to exercise my prerogative and ask the first question.

This committee is always interested in the link between programs and outcomes. One of the government's major initiatives over the last couple of years has been the classroom-size initiative. My family has benefited from that. Last year, my oldest child started Grade Primary, benefited from the class cap. He's in Grade 1 this year and benefits from the Grade 1 class cap, but I am troubled by the fact that, according to the information I have, the best educational research from around the world says that there is no link between classroom size and educational outcomes, unless the classes are very large or very small, which is not the situation we're typically dealing with here in Nova Scotia.

What evidence does the Nova Scotia Department of Education have that there is in fact a link between classroom size and educational outcome? In other words, is this money we're spending money well spent?

MR. COCHRANE: I think if you asked the teachers and the parents of the children in those classrooms, it's money well spent. Classrooms are much more manageable and more controllable, obviously, with a limited number of students. You're correct, there is a study

[Page 28]

that said until you got below 17 students in a room, you didn't see a significant increase with regard to the outcomes. Now, that was a study done in Tennessee, where they did not necessarily have the kind of supports in the system that we do, with resource teachers and guidance counsellors and speech language pathologists and the other support specialists and so on, it was one teacher, one class and that was it. Actually, although our class size is not 17, our pupil/teacher ratio is 16.

We think it's a significant change in that I've been in classes with 33, before we put the cap on, in Grade 1, 33 children with three adults. I would venture to guess that would be a classroom where it would be very difficult to teach and very difficult to learn. Teachers did the best they could, and probably did a great job. Certainly it's more controllable with 25. It does help. But you're correct, and until we got down to a very low number, we would probably not see a significant difference in the scores. But our system is a little different than that particular study because of the fact that we do have a number of other supports in the system that do support the classroom teacher with regard to that, and so on.

It's incremental, we're moving forward, we're putting caps on now that were never there before, and we're supporting them financially. It would be one thing if the province said to the boards, put a cap at 25, then you know what would have to happen, the Grades 7, 8 and 9 would have to get bigger in order to do that, but we've actually funded it and supported it. We think it's a worthwhile investment, the early years are the formative years. The attention, the time the teacher has to spend with one in 25 students as opposed to one in 30 or 35 is significant. So we think it has a positive impact. The classroom environment, the learning environment, all of those things, we think are improved as a result of it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Over to the member for Halifax Chebucto.

MR. EPSTEIN: First, if I may say, apropos the comments of the member for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank with respect to supplementary education funding, the bureaucracy is welcome to continue to stay out of this fight. (Laughter)

MR. COCHRANE: We accept your invitation.

MR. EPSTEIN: It's something that those of us in metro will perhaps struggle with, and some day it may be sorted out by the elected members in this Legislature. We'll see.

I would like to go back to the topic you and I left off discussing a little while ago, and it had to do with performance and outcome measures. You directed our attention away from money and more towards a couple of other forms of measurement, and you talked about student performance on certain testing and you talked about student-teacher ratio. You didn't move entirely away from money, because you talked about spending per student versus GDP, but I would like to leave that aside. I really want to focus on the other kinds of performance

[Page 29]

measurements, again relating to quality, because it's quality of education that parents and families are very concerned about.

I wonder, first, if you could just let us know the kind of student performance measurement that goes on in the department right now. When you do your outcome measuring, can you tell us, beyond the Grade 6 literacy assessment, what is the range of testing that you do or the range of indicators that you're looking for right now?

MR. COCHRANE: There are a number that are going on currently, and some boards have others. Halifax, by the way, is doing some testing at Grades 2 and 3 that we're not doing provincially at this point.

MR. EPSTEIN: And why are there differences among the boards?

MR. COCHRANE: It was an interesting debate, as we went around the province and did the Learning for Life discussions, people questioned why we were testing, that was the first question. After we got around and talked about it, it was interesting to watch the shift. People said, why are you testing at Grade 6, should you be doing it at Grade 3? I thought, this is a good thing. We're now recognizing that we should be doing it, and now it's where we should do it most effectively.

So, we have been testing. Originally, we were testing a systems check in literacy. We are still testing in Grade 5 math and Grade 8 mathematics. They are systems checks as well. That Grade 5 math is going to move to Grade 6 and therefore you'll have literacy and numeracy, both at Grade 6, both results being reported to parents and hopefully both programs being supported as a result of recognizing what our children need. That Grade 8 math test will eventually move to Grade 9 and the new literacy test will be in Grade 9, and they we are going to go back and pick up Grade 3. So it will be three, six, nine and 12, as a result of focusing the testing program in the Province of Nova Scotia. But we do have a number of other things that we do. Obviously, we do PISA. We do the SAIP results and that's going to change to another system eventually, as well. They were focused on 13 and 16-year-old. SAIP did 16 year olds. PISA did 15 year olds. Our Nova Scotia exams are Grade 12. So, it's a system in movement, but our plan will eventually be three, six, nine and 12, plus we'll also take part in PISA, the OECD testing and the successor of SAIP.

MR. EPSTEIN: Is there a departmental document that lays out this program, this plan for testing?

MR. COCHRANE: We have an assessment document and we could circulate that to you that talks about what we're doing and where we do it.

MR. EPSTEIN: That would be a big help, I'd have to say. That would be great.

[Page 30]

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, we'd be glad to.

MR. EPSTEIN: In addition to - what you've just done though, is you've listed a number of assessments that you're going to be administering. Are there standards of results that you're looking for? How is it that you're judging? When you get the results, after you apply these tests, how do you assess them yourselves? What do you say?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, there are benchmarks that are with these various test, as a result of field testing them and so on. One thing I want to comment on, that I think it's extremely important and one of the members made reference to the results being skewed, and I didn't say it right then, and I don't mean to say it in his absence, our tests are crafted by teachers. These are not tests we buy off the shelf in Cleveland, Ohio. This is not a standardized test. It's a standardized test for Nova Scotia. It's Nova Scotia teachers who design the curriculum, with their partners, in what was APEF, which is now CAMET, and they craft the curriculum. The test is crafted by Nova Scotia teachers. Administered by Nova Scotia teachers and marked by Nova Scotia teachers, so I don't believe for a moment that anybody would purposely try to skew the results.

Someone talked about comfort. I got no comfort from the Grade 12 math exam, I can assure you. The minister got no comfort from the Grade 12 math exam, I can assure you, and most of our students didn't and our teachers didn't, but we didn't cover it up. We didn't sugar coat it. We knew there was a problem. We released the results and it wasn't good and we know we have to work harder and longer, and do better. That's the testing program, but we do have, when we field test them, we get a benchmark and we get back as a result, how many students, what percentage were successful in achieving the outcomes.

MR. EPSTEIN: Are these test results always made available to the public in generalized form?

MR. COCHRANE: We have been, in the last three years with the minister's report to parents, the one that's not and hasn't been, the math one, is not individualized in its score, so you as a parent of a Grade 5 students who wrote that math one would not necessarily get your results. The teacher would get back indications from the test as to how the students had done generally and what they should do with regard to teaching the various concepts of mathematics.

MR. EPSTEIN: Yes, it wasn't just the family's own child's results that I was wondering about, I was wondering if they could then see their own child's results and compare them in the school board, compare them province wide, compare them against any other information base.

[Page 31]

MR. COCHRANE: I'll tell you a really good example, the Grade 6 one comes with a complete foldout that shows, they get their child results, but it shows that school, the district average, the board's average and the provincial average. So they can very much compare and see how their children are doing. The goal in the minister's report to parents, is really to show how the individual schools, when we can, the district and the province have done and then parents can look at their own child results and make the comparisons.

MR. EPSTEIN: May I ask, you're focusing on these being provincial tests, what about national and international comparisons?

MR. COCHRANE: We are involved in all the national and international programs that Canada takes part in, through the Council of Ministers of Education. We have taken part in the PISA results on the tests and PISA was written by the 32 OECD countries and that's the one I made reference to in my opening comments were, Nova Scotia did better than 23 other countries, including the other three Atlantic Provinces.

[10:30 a.m.]

What we do, we take part in all of those, and PISA is now going to go to what we call the PCAP - it's just a change. We also have our own little Nova Scotia exams. The other thing we can do, and we're going to do probably more often in the future is buy a larger sample.

MR. EPSTEIN: Are there any other national or international tests you're considering bringing into the province for use here?

MR. COCHRANE: We take part, I think, in almost all of the national ones that are there. The SAIP ones, we've been involved in. The PISA ones, we've been involved in. There are a couple of others. The TIMS one, which is mathematics, is the third international mathematics - and I don't know why they call it the third because it's not. However, it's called TIMS, it deals with math. PEARLS is another test that we take part in as well.

We're not reticent to take part in national and international tests. We go in it knowing that it's going to show us what we are, but we use that information to make those evidence-based decisions.

MR. EPSTEIN: Okay. This is useful, and I look forward to seeing the document. Can I just ask about the student-teacher ratios? You gave what I assume are just rounded numbers, by saying that there are 148,000 students in the system and about 10,000 teachers. So I assume by all the zeros that these are rounded numbers. But this gives a prima facie ratio of 14.8 to 1, but at the same time it's clear to those of us who have kids in the school system that that isn't the classroom ratio, that generally it's at least twice this. I understand that at

[Page 32]

the lower levels you bring it to 25. Are you telling us that half the teachers are administrators? What are you telling us?

MR. COCHRANE: No. It's a good question. The student-teacher ratio is a national measure, and what it does is it takes all the educators in the system and divides it into all the students, and that's the pupil-teacher ratio. Ours in Nova Scotia, right now, is 16.0. For example, for every 16 students there is a teacher in the system, not necessarily in the classroom. The numbers that I gave you, in 2003, our statistics - the 2004 numbers are still being formulated, it's only October - we had 148,514 students, we had 9,576 teachers, and that gave us a pupil-teacher ratio of 16.0.

The other number that's also relevant, which is where I think you're headed, is what is the average class size, because that gives you how big classes are per teacher. Our average class size in 2003-04 in elementary was 23.1, in our junior high it was 25.8. I don't have the senior high one for 2003, but I have it for 2002, and it was 23.5.

I've often asked, with boards, would someone like to do a pilot project and just take a school and have everybody be a classroom teacher, no resource teacher, everyone have a limited number of students and deal with them? No one has taken me up on it yet. It would give us some statistics in relation to the member's question about the class size and the significance. However, we have what we think is a supportable system in that people feel that a resource teacher or a specialist in a certain subject area is going to give value-add to the structure and the system. It would be interesting, because it is 16.0, but the average class size is about 23.

MR. EPSTEIN: Okay, I'm going to have stop you, however interesting this is, my colleague does have some questions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: With very little time remaining, the member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley.

MS. MORE: I just want to put on the record that I'm a little concerned about the comment you made about the department feeling justified in sort of staying out of the supplementary funding issue, because I contend, quite frankly, that the need for supplementary funding is very much related to the underfunding by the province, especially in regard to the formula that's currently being used. I know, even from my day on the school board, there are two areas that are not recognized as sufficient, if at all, by the funding formula, and that's the English Second Language requirements that are mostly focused in the metro area, and also the very high percentage of special needs students in this province, who live in this area because of easier access to medical and other treatment programs. A lot of the supplementary funding goes to meet those particular needs, and they're mostly focused on this particular regional school board.

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MR. COCHRANE: The English Second Language is a topic that we've entertained discussion on recently. There's no question that the Halifax Regional School Board is using supplementary funding to deal with English Second Language. One of the mandates that was given to Mr. Hogg in the review was, how are we going to deal with English Second Language. When you look at the immigration strategy of the Province of Nova Scotia that we've been quite involved with, if we're successful - in fact, in being successful in attracting people and retaining people in the province, we're going to have to provide better English Second Language services for their children. We recognize that.

Right now, it's centralized, mainly, in metro, because most of the immigrants are remaining here and they are using supplementary funding, but we have asked Mr. Hogg to look at that question in the crafting of the new formula so that there will be some recognition of contribution by the province. In the documentation associated with immigration strategy, there's a recognition of a need for that particular contribution.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We'll move over to the Liberal caucus and I recognize the member for Halifax Clayton Park.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for being here today. I have a couple of quick questions - I'm going to share my time with my colleague from Cape Breton. What I'd like to do is begin with a question about P3 schools, and I know that's a highly charged area in the House, however, I think there's an obligation to see that the contracts in place are properly administered and that the things that were expected are done. The question I have is about technology refreshment in those schools.

In my area there is a P3 school - and it actually ties into the issue of fundraising as well - and I received a letter recently about a teacher in Grade 8 who is trying to do a science technology course which would involve filmmaking. They were going to do films on science and technology, and in order to do that they need better computers than are available in the P3 school in this area. That school opened in 2000, so it's in its fifth year, and the expectation was that those schools would be kept current at all times, and they found these computers that are in the school are unable to support that project. My question is, why are we not releasing the funds that are available for technology refreshment? This is with Scotia Learning, which built the P3 schools here in the metro area - I don't know if it goes beyond that, but can you give me an answer to that, please?

MR. COCHRANE: Let me be specific first. Park West is the school you're referring to - the minster shared with me the letter that you received from the Grade 8 teacher. I'm not sure that even if the tech refresh funds were released it would buy a computer of that sophistication. Remember, there's a standard of computers across the system and they put them in and I'm not sure even the money would go to do that one. We are looking at that particular request and seeing if there's anything we can do to be helpful.

[Page 34]

So, that's the specific; the general question is that it was designed that the tech refresh money would be doing that very thing, refreshing the technology in the schools and so on. There have been some disputes, obviously, and we went to arbitration and spent a fair amount of time in arbitration. There was some determination - we had reached an agreement there would be a percentage of those funds released, about 40 per cent, and I believe the boards were putting together lists of what kind of technology and so on that they needed.

We have entered into other discussion that will cause us, for a very short period of time, to delay that at this point, but the goal was to get at least 40 per cent out there in the system - it was never meant to be spent all at once, because it is refresh over a period of time. We have had some discussions with that particular company and we think we have a temporary lapse in the application of those funds, but it will be taken care of very quickly. We do share the concerns the schools have - the money was meant to do that and it's our goal to get it out there as quickly as possible.

MS. WHALEN: I think it is really a very important issue, because these schools are now falling behind and, again, many other schools are doing their fundraising simply to get computers in the school. When we look at that, a lot of the computers in our schools were purchased because parents felt that was important. In these particular schools, the obligation is with the department to see the initial expectations are met. That is in the contracts and should be done, so I would urge you, if you could, to release a portion of the money while you discuss what the other issues are that are outstanding.

MR. COCHRANE: That's a good point. We've been working on that, we have had a temporary delay in that, but we'll get to that.

MS. WHALEN: Okay, that's very good. A couple of other quick questions, if I could.

Number one. With teachers using their own money to purchase a lot of supplies in their classrooms - I think it's particularly acute in the elementary levels where there are so many things the teachers need to really make the program interesting - what I wanted to know is whether or not your department has looked at having a tax deduction for teachers, as is done in P.E.I. right now? I think they allow up to $155 a year as a tax deduction, a business expense, essentially, for teachers - that's in the context of teachers, according to the Teachers Union, spending roughly $500 each to buy equipment and supplies for their schools.

MR. MACKINNON: That's one tax rebate cheque.

MS. WHALEN: That's right. That's interesting.

MR. COCHRANE: Some other jurisdictions have done that and I was quite familiar with the teachers presenting receipts and getting recognition of it. The paperwork and the

[Page 35]

cumbersome process is part of the detraction of that. Revenue Canada has some rules about what's a contribution and what's not and whether you're using it in the execution of your duties to help you or your children. I know the CTF has looked at this across the country as well and they've had some discussions about it.

It would be very much an involvement with a discussion in the Department of Finance here in Nova Scotia as well. We haven't done it yet. I don't think that means that it's not something that shouldn't be considered. I know P.E.I. does something, New Brunswick also does it. The problem always was the receipts and the recognition of what you did, well, for example, if you as an individual give something to a school, a computer or a trampoline, no, don't give us a trampoline - if you gave us, you know, whatever, you can get a receipt for that and then you can file that with your income tax and get the deduction. I'm not opposed to looking at it. It's a cumbersome process. It may be very expensive to administer, but certainly we do recognize that teachers are making contributions as a result of being a teacher in a classroom.

MS. WHALEN: That's right, and it wouldn't be for individuals making those donations, I'm thinking of the teachers who dig into their own pockets to pay for expenses.

MR. COCHRANE: No, I realize that, but individuals can get recognition as it is now, photocopiers or whatever.

MS. WHALEN: Sometimes it's a charitable donation or something like that, that's right.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, there's a process.

MS. WHALEN: But I think that the model is in place. It's in use in P.E.I. and New Brunswick because they are our closest neighbours and the model is there.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: And it would be a recognition of the cost really to teachers to provide that level of excellence which the regular budgets don't cover and certainly my experience when I worked with the PTAs in our area, in Rockingham School and others, the money we raised, we actually distributed it to teachers. Some of it we gave directly to the teachers so they could supplement what they spent themselves. So I think it's really quite a crucial issue for teachers because it's a huge expense for them if the average is $500 per teacher. I raise that as something that I really think we should move on as well.

The last quick question I have is one that my colleague, the member for Kings West, has left for me and that is how much did it cost for the taxpayers to have the Grade 11

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textbook, Math Modelling II, reprinted? I understand it was filled with errors and had to be reprinted.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, there were errors that were recognized and I'm going to get the answer. In fact, what we'll do is we'll ask Ann Blackwood who is the Director of Program services, in her first appearance we should give her a chance to speak to that - Ann.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Blackwood.

MS. ANN BLACKWOOD: We did work with partners on revising the textbook and indeed the curriculum for the academic Grade 11 mathematics. Teachers also had identified some errors and this led eventually to the reprinting of a textbook to replace the previous one for the academic Grade 11 mathematics. We did negotiate a special price with the publisher, Thomson Nelson, and I think it was just under $10 rather than the considerably more expensive cost of the original one. In total, I think it was between $90,000 and $100,000. I can get that exact sum for you and I think I have informed your office of the exact sum. It was a little under $100,000 and that came from the English Program Services' budget. That did not come from the credit allocation.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would just like to remind the witnesses that any information that's provided should be provided to the Committees Office and that way it's given to all members of the committee.

MS. WHALEN: I would like to turn it over, if I could, to my colleague.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cape Breton West.

MR. RUSSELL MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, my first question is with regard to perhaps the most important stakeholders in the system and that is with regard to the children. How many children attend school each day without having breakfast, to the best of your knowledge?

MR. COCHRANE: I don't know the actual number, but there are children who are going to school, unfortunately, where their needs are not being met at home and some boards - the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board has been very aggressive, I've met the lady actually who runs the program, and have made some accommodations in a number of areas throughout the province. A number of schools, teachers and individuals deal with that, but there are children, obviously that are going to school, and that's a concern.

MR. MACKINNON: Let's be very brief, if I could, through you, Mr. Chairman, the answer is you don't know?

MR. COCHRANE: I don't know.

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MR. MACKINNON: Why not?

MR. COCHRANE: I guess there's always a question of why someone is hungry.

MR. MACKINNON: The why is a different thing. The fact of the matter is in the Halifax Regional School Board, I believe upwards of 9,000 or 10,000 students go to school each day without having breakfast. In the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board, 2,000 out of 16,000 go to school each day without breakfast and I'm sure the figures would be available for other school boards. I'm particularly concerned that you, as Deputy Minister of the Department of Education, don't seem to have a handle on this. Why not?

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. COCHRANE: We have done some estimations and some calculations as to what kind of a number it would be, and what kind of a program was needed. We estimated basically 20 per cent of our Primary to Grade 6 populations would be very much likely in that group.

MR. MACKINNON: How many students is that?

MR. COCHRANE: I think we worked it out that there were 14,000 - I'd have to look it up. I just did some work on it in fact, last week, an estimate as to what percentage would be a reasonable number that would be going to school in that regard.

MR. MACKINNON: Is that from Primary to Grade 6?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes. That was an estimate.

MR. MACKINNON: You don't know from Grades 7 to 12?

MR. COCHRANE: No.

MR. MACKINNON: Okay, so you have approximately 14,000 that you know of in that category. Is the province contemplating any policy to deal with that very serious problem? Because you know children who go to school without nutrition cannot learn in a lethargic state.

MR. COCHRANE: The answer is yes.

MR. MACKINNON: When?

[Page 38]

MR. COCHRANE: We are entering a budget process, very quickly, obviously November, December, January. We have been looking at the issue. We are attempting to formulate some aspects of policy, some recommendations with regard to that.

MR. MACKINNON: Do you expect a policy to be in place at the beginning of the next fiscal year?

MR. COCHRANE: Fiscal year?

MR. MACKINNON: Well, when the budget is approved - school year then.

MR. COCHRANE: It would be our hope, if we are successful in presenting a program that can find a place in the priority list. We're concerned about it; obviously, the minister is concerned, you're concerned, our people in the system. It is very difficult for children to learn when they are hungry. When I asked the question why, sometimes you can't get a teenager to eat in the morning on their way out the door. There are situations that we are really concerned with, which where children don't have the option of eating as they go out the door, and that is happening.

MR. MACKINNON: Shifting the focus just slightly, with regard to gymnasiums, I noticed in the Spring the Minister of Education, the government approved a particular piece of legislation regarding the community use of schools. I heard the minister in Question Period yesterday indicate that the province does not provide the funding for the construction of gymnasiums. Why is the Department of Education, i.e. the provincial government, legislating volunteers in this province to contribute more than they can afford to contribute?

MR. COCHRANE: The design specs in the Province of Nova Scotia dictate a gymnasium depending on the number of students in a population. The maximum size of a school gymnasium would be 8,400 square feet. Regardless of how big the school is after that, it's 8,400 square feet. We just raised the junior high school standard. I think what the minister is referring to is that we provide 8,400 square feet, and if a community wants a bigger facility, then that is where they would be called upon to provide some enhancements. We've seen that in a number of gyms around the province.

Basically we provide gymnasiums to deliver the public school program; 8,400 square feet will deliver the public school program. The other aspects of a gymnasium, which are important to all of us, and to our students and our communities, are the spectator aspects and the other things that go along with that. That's where often communities want bigger than 8,400 and we try to make the accommodations with the architects to enable them to provide a contribution to make it bigger, and of course the department continues to carry on the operating costs and the maintenance of that expansion forever.

[Page 39]

So there is a contribution. But basically our standard is 8,400 and enhancements after that are left with the municipalities or the communities.

MR. MACKINNON: So that's the situation with the new school that's proposed up in the Commons, to replace the two schools?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, there is a little difference in the new one. We have avoided, as a result of the location of the school, in using some of the fields in the Commons. So the department, rather than spending $200,000 to build fields, has contributed that to the fundraising effort with regard to making the gymnasium bigger.

MR. MACKINNON: I wanted to go back to the point that was made by the member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley. She made reference to this issue, with regard to the expenditure of money, the school board accounts issue, and the fundraising and the accountability of it and so on. I think she used the figure of $50 million. I know in the Province of Saskatchewan what they do in a case like that is they assess the property taxpayers, and I would hope that that's not the intent of the government, to move in that direction, because that would be quite a shift.

Is the province looking at developing - I know the general policy, but this inequity between the haves and the have-nots, if I could put it so bluntly, with children who just can't afford to participate. The individual schools have their individual policies, but the school board doesn't have a policy per se to deal with that. I'm just curious where the province fits into this. To give you some background, I was a school trustee for a number of years, particularly when they had taxing power. Of course, the Progressive Conservative Government took it away. Now the focus has shifted quite dramatically.

MR. COCHRANE: Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, we have a very strong concern if it's a co-curricular activity that students feel limited in taking part, due to the fact that there's a financial fee or there's a restriction. That would be our first focus. Certainly schools have policies, boards have polices. I think it would be incumbent upon us to review and to look at what the boards' policies are, to see that there's some consistency across the system. We know the reporting is going to change as a result of GAAP and the new changes that are coming, which, as the senior executive director of corporate services indicated, would be in place for this year.

So, it would be our focus to look at the co-curricular aspect of that, to check boards' policies, to make sure that they do have a policy in place to deal with it. If they don't, then we would look at some consistency in that regard.

MR. MACKINNON: One other question, quickly. I know it's been an issue that's been on the table before with yourself and CEOs of school boards, and that's with regard to

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the possibility of the province taking over transportation and facilities. Is that issue still on the table and, if so, what's the status?

MR. COCHRANE: It's not on the table.

MR. MACKINNON: So the province has abandoned that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That brings to an end the time available for questioning, although, based on the very interesting questions of the member for Cape Breton West, I can't resist asking the question, which in your opinion, between making sure children have something to eat in the morning or classroom size, is the more likely to improve educational attainment for our students?

MR. COCHRANE: One is certainly a parental responsibility, one is a departmental responsibility. We're going to assist, or we're going to hope to assist in dealing with the children who have needs because some parental responsibilities either can't or aren't being lived up to. So they're both important, they both rest in different fields, but we're going to be involved or we're going to be recommending that we get involved, because, unfortunately, the children are the ones feeling the effects of that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I would now like to invite you, Mr. Cochrane, to take up to five minutes with any closing comments you wish to make.

MR. COCHRANE: I'll keep my closing comments very short, which is unusual for me. I do appreciate the forum and an opportunity to be here. I think probably what provoked our invitation was my comment about when the Stats Canada report came out and I made a comment that no one has shown me the direct correlation between quality and expenditures. That caused some reaction. It's not what people want to hear. It's a simplistic answer to just throw money at the problem. What we've tried to do with the resources that we have is put the money where it will have the greatest impact.

It really is a compliment to teachers and to our educators in the system, that our children do as well as they do, and that we do work the resources as much as we possibly can. We're conscious of that. Someone cast some aspersions and made a comment about being an advocate for the system and how could you, if you believed in that philosophy. Well, I'm entitled to believe in my philosophy. No one knows what kind of an advocate I might be with regard to the government, and it's not my responsibility to tell the public what I asked Cabinet or what we thought Cabinet should look at. They have to look at the priorities of the province, as every other Cabinet over the years has had to do and every other Cabinet in the future will do.

We certainly are trying to make sure that we can spend our resources where it has the greatest impact on our children and their chance of success. Our teachers share that, and they

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do an excellent job of that. One of the things that I do appreciate about being here is that we do have a chance to discuss the issue of quality and the issue of expenditures and what we can do and what we're doing to make sure that our money goes into the areas that will have the greatest impact on our students and their lives and their chance of success.

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That's a good opportunity and it's what I call a teachable moment. As an educator you never miss a chance to talk about what needs to be talked about in education. Just the fact that people are talking about education and money and what we need to do and quality, testing and results is a good thing. I do appreciate this forum and your invitation to be here today because it does enable us to draw attention to issues that we have and to the successes that we have, what the people out there in our system are doing and what our students are able to do and so on. Certainly, these are extremely important.

One of the things that we didn't talk much about was some of the money that goes into special education. We have been making some improvements. Each year - we have all the ratios. We know how many resource teachers there are, how many speech language pathologists there are, how many guidance counsellors there are and we've been providing money each year for the last two years specifically to increase the core professional services and get those ratios up. We're going to continue doing that and that will have an impact.

The class size initiative is also a special needs initiative. That means there's a different environment for the special needs child to function as well and better to be in a class of 25 than in a class of 35, 33 or 32.

So we think a lot of very good things are happening. I would never say that we don't need more money, but what I like to assure government is, when they do decide to give us more money, we will spend it in an efficient way and our teachers will put it to good use in our schools and make sure our students have every opportunity and the best opportunity that we possibly can give them. I think that's extremely important, but I do appreciate the chance to talk about education funding and education and outcomes and what we're doing, what's happening and what's going on in our classrooms, how our children are doing and how our teachers are working and so on.

I'll correct, on Page 16, there was an error in the text. I don't think I read it that way, but it did say $4 million provided to support struggling students. That wasn't the reference that should be made with regard to that and I just want to correct that on the record, as someone may look back and try to figure out what that was about.

But, anyway, I do thank you for the opportunity. Any time you'd like to have us come back, we're more than willing. You probably guessed, we're quite excited about what we do and quite enthusiastic about it. Certainly, that enthusiasm is shared by the people here in the Chamber with me today and people back at the department, all the way out to our schools and every classroom in this province. I think people are passionate about what they do - we know that you are and, certainly, the opportunity you've given us to focus on education is appreciated. Thank you.

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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Thank you to your colleagues as well for appearing today. The next meeting of the Public Accounts Committee is next Wednesday, October 20^th at 9:00 a.m. in the Chamber. We'll have representatives from the Halifax Regional School Board addressing in particular Chapter 4 of the Auditor General's 2004 Report. Are there any other items of business requiring the attention of the full committee? If not, a motion to adjourn.

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

This meeting of the Public Accounts Committee is adjourned.

[The committee adjourned at 10:58 a.m.]