HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)
Mr. Chuck Porter (Vice-Chairman)
Mr. Alfred MacLeod
Mr. Keith Bain
Mr. Graham Steele
Mr. David Wilson (Sackville-Cobequid)
Mr. Keith Colwell
Mr. Stephen MacNeil
Ms. Diana Whalen
[Ms. Diana Whalen was replaced by Mr. Leo Glavine.]
[Mr. Stephen McNeil was replaced by Mr. Wayne Gaudet.]
In Attendance:
Ms. Mora Stevens
Legislative Committee Clerk
Ms. Elaine Morash
Assistant Auditor General
Department of Education
Mr. Dennis Cochrane, Deputy Minister
Mr. Darrell Youden, Senior Executive Director
Corporate Services
Ms. Ann Power, Director
Student Services
Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority (APSEA)
Mr. Bert Tulk, Superintendent
Ms. Heather Lawrence, Director
Finance and Administration
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HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2006
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
9:00 A.M.
CHAIR
Ms. Maureen MacDonald
VICE-CHAIRMAN
Mr. Chuck Porter
MADAM CHAIR: Good morning, I'd like to call the committee to order. Today we have with us, witnesses from the Department of Education and from the Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority with respect to the AG audit on special education and APSEA. We will proceed in the usual fashion with introductions from members of the committee, and the personnel from the AG's office and our witnesses. Then there will be an opportunity for an opening statement from the Department of Education, followed by a round of questioning. We'll start with introductions.
[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]
MADAM CHAIR: Welcome to the witnesses. Some of the witnesses have been here before, but for our first-time guests, the little red lights go on and at that point, you're being recorded for Hansard. We will try to have the members, when they address questions, be specific about who they're addressing the question to, to give Hansard that opportunity to figure out which mic they need to light up. I will also try to facilitate that as much as I can. If you wish to add to a response that's been made by one of your fellow panellists, if you would just signify to me that you would like to say something, I'll identify you and that way Hansard will be able to turn your microphone on. We'll now start with an opening statement. Mr. Cochrane.
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MR. DENNIS COCHRANE: Madam Chair, we're pleased to be here this morning to have an opportunity to address the Auditor General's Report as it relates to special education, particularly with regard to Chignecto-Central and Annapolis Valley Regional School Boards, where the audit was conducted, and also with regard to the Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority to talk about - actually it's a good opportunity to talk about APSEA because many people don't have a really good understanding of how we deliver services to those particular students.
We are pleased to be here. We were pleased, also, that the Auditor General did the research into special education and APSEA. That may sound odd, but, quite frankly, we don't look upon the Auditor General as any kind of an intrusionary force, we look upon him as someone, an agency, that gives us information so that we can attempt to create better accounting systems for the various branches and divisions, partners of the Department of Education. We are pleased with the Auditor General's Report, and generally fairly pleased with what the report recommended and what it said.
We were before the Human Resources Committee yesterday, so we had a number of comments about special education in the Province of Nova Scotia. I'm sure some of that area will also be discussed again today. With regard to APSEA, APSEA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the four Atlantic Provinces. It was created in 1975, and it was designed to provide services to our blind and visually-impaired and our hearing-handicapped students, not only in Nova Scotia but also throughout the Atlantic Provinces. It was meant to provide an efficient way to deliver the service. When it started, most of the services were residential and we had facilities, but primarily in Nova Scotia, that did deliver services to those two populations but very much more on an in-house, in-residence system.
The provincial Auditor General acknowledged that APSEA provides a high quality of service, in fact he quoted the independent consultant who was doing the work on special education in the Province of New Brunswick, a Dr. Wayne MacKay, and Dr. MacKay said, "The quality of the services provided and the APSEA approach are now internationally renowned and many young people with visual or hearing impairments have benefited." We happen to agree with that. In the 31 years since APSEA has been there, it has provided a high quality of service to our clients.
APSEA is administered by a board of directors which consists of 12 members. The deputy ministers from the four Atlantic Provinces made up the executive committee of APSEA and each province then has two other members who sit on the board of directors. Nova Scotia has a rather unique approach to that in that both of our members, up until recently at least, have been consumers and other provinces have people strictly from the departments or from the school boards, but Nova Scotia has had two citizens who actually were consumers of the system. The two who have been there for a long period of time are Heather Macpherson and Urban Cannon. Both provided good service
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over a number of years but because of term limits and so on, aren't able to be reappointed and we're looking now at replacing them.
Also, we were fortunate in the last year to recruit Dr. Bert Tulk, who is with me today, as the Superintendent of APSEA. He sat as a board member from Newfoundland and Labrador from 2001 to 2004 and went through the search process and has joined the professional staff of APSEA. We're pleased to have him not only at APSEA but also pleased to have him with us here today, so welcome, Bert.
The provincial Auditor General's Report noted a number of things and it talked about financial reporting and governance. Around governance there have been some significant changes with regard to APSEA. We did an accountability review with external consultants in December 2004. In May of this year we did a space utilization review and next month the board will be dealing with the final recommendations that came as a result of the external consultants' review and the review of that consultants' report by the directors of special education in the four Atlantic Provinces.
One of the things we have to note is that no organization can stand still and we constantly have to look at ways of delivering our service in an efficient and effective model and so on. One of the big changes that has taken place in that kind of service is going from a residential service to an itinerant service that we provide in the four Atlantic Provinces. We do still have short-term residential programs, both based on assessment and short-term programs as we find a specific aspect of that child's needs that could be dealt with at the centre.
The special education part of the report from the Auditor General is also clearly outlined. A number of comments of the Auditor General related to the whole question of providing information with regard to the clients, the number of clients, the type of service and so on, and we are in the final processes of putting together a plan to go forward on a new student information system in the Department of Education to deal with our partners and obviously the partners, the eight school boards out there, would be providing information on a much more detailed and readily available basis than perhaps what we're doing now.
Those are some opening comments. We would be very pleased to take any questions that the members of the committee may have, Madam Chair. Thank you.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. The first round of questioning will be 20 minutes and I recognize Mr. Wilson from the NDP caucus.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for coming before the Public Accounts Committee. This is definitely an important issue, one that I know many members on the committee and myself have dealt
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with since being elected. We get many calls from concerned parents around wait times. I think wait times for any service in government is always an issue, but especially around education because, of course, parents feel that their children are important and the education they get is important and getting results, hopefully, is the key.
I have a few questions on different categories, some around the APSEA program, some around the funding for special needs in the education system. So I'll try to keep them separate, but I know some of the questions will relate to both of the topics that I'm going to cover. Many of my questions come from the Auditor General's Report and some of the recommendations that they have and that they've made, and I've noted that they make them on a continuous basis over the years, once they re-audit a certain area.
My first question, I know the deputy minister mentioned around the student information system - and I know the Auditor General had made mention of that in the report - where are you with that? When do you see it coming on-line? I think that is a key to addressing a lot of the needs and a lot of the concerns with parents, especially around wait times, waiting for services that they think their children need. Maybe the deputy minister - I don't know if there's someone more appropriate to answer.
MR. COCHRANE: I appreciate the question. As we get into detail, I'll pass it off to Darrell. It's interesting that we've spent a lot of money on information systems associated with finance and information systems associated with HR, and I think you had a chance to question some of the other departments with regard to that, recently. We're part of that, because we're going to be a major consumer of those new systems. However, the student information system is one really specifically for us.
British Columbia is the only province in the country that has initiated a province-wide student information system. So we've actually had a fair amount of consultation with British Columbia to see what they've done and what has worked and what hasn't. We've had discussions with other Atlantic Provinces, as well, because we all have pieces of a system. We spent some time looking at the definition of what we need and consultation has gone on with our school boards. Now this doesn't mean that each school board doesn't have some kind of a system. One of the difficult things in changing anything in education is getting a school board that has a system that thinks it's the most wonderful system ever to accept a provincial system that may be different. We're going through that process, and I think we have them in line now.
So we are ready to go forward. We issued a request for proposals in October 2006, and actually that closes on November 28th. We will be doing some analysis of that particular RFP. The money comes through the capital budget of the Province of Nova Scotia, so we have discussions with BTAC, which deals with technology. We're in the queue and we're very near the front of the queue, obviously, to get the kind of funding that we need.
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The boards have been supportive. They're looking at this. We're all quite excited about what it needs to do. The estimated budget that we put in the budget for this year, we had $415,000 to begin the kind of work that we needed to do, and we'll determine the final project cost when the RFP actually comes back. We would do a stage implementation, and we would work on the pilot aspects of that from April 2007 to June 2008. That will enable us to craft the kind of system that we need to make sure that we can provide this kind of information.
What we have to remember as we do this is that it has to be user-friendly. We have 10,000 teachers out there who we would really like to have focus their time on teaching in the classroom as opposed to kind of inputting data; however, that's a very important part of what we do and a very important part of trying to make sure that we have the information on our students that will enable us to do the best possible job we can in meeting their educational needs. So the comments of the Auditor General were relevant, and we are working on it.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Do you feel that with such a system you can start to address some of the wait times of what parents have concerns on, on assessment times? Do you feel that with this technology, this information system, that would help in trying to get assessments - that's really what I'm saying - for students and for parents who are concerned about such a long wait time?
[9:15 a.m.]
MR. COCHRANE: No question, it will have a positive impact. When we do our wait time assessments now, we really go out and talk to each of the boards about what they perceive to be the time that their students are waiting for various services. This will give us much better information so that we'll have a province-wide picture at any particular point in time of how long students are waiting for those services. It will be much better, and it will give us an opportunity to have a dialogue with the boards and challenge the particular issues and statistics that come forward.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): With that, I know there are a lot of tentacles around the wait times, and I think a lot of it comes down to the number of staff you have, the number of specialists, speech pathologists, resource teachers or resource specialists, or whatever the terminology is, I know that each region uses a different terminology. Do you feel that we have an adequate number of those individuals in the system right now to address the concerns parents have and the concerns around education of our children who have some difficulties?
MR. COCHRANE: We're much better off than we would have been five years ago. We've begun with Learning for Life I and Learning for Life II to target these particular professions - we call them core professional services. We actually have had the
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statistics for years from every board about the ratios, for example, how many speech-language pathologists did they have, how many students per speech-language pathologist and so on. We're actually getting very close now to meeting the ratios that were established by the Special Education Implementation Review Committee as a result of doing their work in 2001 and 2002. So we've come up to the ratios that we're looking for, we're very close.
For example, on speech-language pathologists, the ratios recommended were one speech-language pathologist for every 2,000 children. Now these aren't 2,000 children who need speech-language pathology, these are 2,000 children in the system, so if we have 142,000 children, we should have 70-some speech-language pathologists. We're now up to for every 2,093 students we have a speech-language pathologist.
So the answer to your question is no, not yet, but a lot better off than we were. That will do much to begin to address - well, we've already done much to address that question of wait times. All the ratios are tracked. The new one that we're getting into and beginning to target services is the one for school guidance counsellors and there has been some controversy about the qualifications, but nonetheless we are moving forward in providing funding to the board.
The side effect of this is boards often say to us, we don't want targeted money, just give us the money. Well, I'm sorry, that's not an option. When we have a provincial goal of meeting the SEIRC recommendations from 2001 as to the ratios that Nova Scotia needs to meet the needs of our students, then we're going to direct that the money be spent there. We're going to track it and we're going to make sure we bring ourselves to the level that will provide that level of service.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): We know - well, I know and I think most members here know, and I believe you might agree with this, that we're playing catch-up. We all know that in the 2000 budget there were major cuts to education from this government, major cuts. There were people picketing in the streets and a lot of student support workers lost their jobs then.
Do you find that we're at a point where we've surpassed prior to those cuts in the late 1990s, early 2000s, that we're back to a level that we should have never been dropped below, that the services will be delivered in a timely manner for the students and for the parents?
MR. COCHRANE: Yes, we are. We are way ahead of where we were at that time, we're way ahead of where we were up until that time, actually. The fact that we dedicate the funds through Learning for Life I and II, I think is a major step forward. Both those initiatives came after that particular discussion that happened in the budget of 2000.
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So we have added significantly to the number of support workers, the number of people dealing with autism, special education pilot projects and special education services. We're way ahead of where we were. We're not quite where the SEIRC report wanted us to be, but I would say that we are one budget away.
Our next problem is going to be recruitment. It's hard to find, you know with a class of 30 or so totally in the Province of Nova Scotia for speech-language pathologists, it's very difficult to find those kinds of professionals. We are pretty aggressive about our recruitment, but nonetheless it is an issue. I think we're addressing it quite well and a significant improvement with regard to the money.
At that time the SEIRC committee said $20 million. Well, we're beyond $20 million now, obviously, and it's not incremental, that's an annual increase. If we had $20 million when the SEIRC report came out, we couldn't have recruited the people anyway, not the qualifications that we're after. So we're working our way and actually I wouldn't want to have been here five years ago answering the same kinds of questions that I have to answer today, I have to tell you, although I was.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I mean it's great to hear that government is spending $20 million here and $20 million here, but ultimately the test is the outcome for the students and trying to assess whether we are spending the money in the right places. Is the $20 million, the $100 million, whatever it is, being spent in the right way? What does the department have to track or measure the impact of the spending that is going on?
MR. COCHRANE: We do a great deal of work in that regard. The study that we announced yesterday will certainly deal with the question of efficiency of what we spend, and are we accomplishing the outcomes that we want from the way that we deliver our service, and are we accomplishing the outcomes as a result of putting the money into the budget where we have.
I'll ask Ann Power, who is our Director of Student Services for the Province of Nova Scotia, if she would address the question.
MS. ANN POWER: We have a number of systems, particularly when we have targeted funding, where the funding goes specifically for an initiative. What we do is we set criteria for boards to apply for that funding, and then we measure against that at the end of the fiscal year in terms of how well they've applied that funding directly to the particular initiative that it was meant for in the first place. We hold them accountable for that.
So for each of our targeted initiatives, that's how we've done it through Learning for Life. Then we also have, at the individual student level, a number of directed funds,
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for instance, severe learning disabilities, Reading Recovery, which are directed specifically to individual students, and we measure the student's achievement. We do a baseline of their achievement entering, and then we measure how much they've progressed by the end of the time when they're exiting that program. Or in the case of severe learning disabilities, if you're getting service over a few years, that would be several times a year that we're looking at the student's progress.
We have everything from individual student data, which is then looked at at the Department of Education to ensure that the program as a whole is achieving what it's intended to do. Then we also have the broader program initiatives and accountabilities that are built right into those targeted funds.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): That actually brings me into the next question. Deputy Minister, I remember you were here, it might have been a year ago, I believe, whenever it was, and one of the questions . . .
MR. COCHRANE: It seems like just yesterday. (Laughter)
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): One of the questions I asked you was around how many students do we have seeking services or who are under the special needs funding. I believe - and I can't quote you exactly - you said, I'm proud to say that we don't keep track of students, and I think you might have used "label". I understand the word "label" but how do we measure the outcome of the funding if the department doesn't keep track of what the needs of the students are and how many students are receiving services from the department? I can't understand how we can have a positive assessment of the impact and the outcome of the spending when we don't really know who's getting it and how many there are and is the amount of money appropriate that we're spending right now?
MR. COCHRANE: Our tracking of the ratios has done a lot with regard to making sure that we have the adequate service in place. We actually do know how many students are accessing each service. It's not always the same student. In other words, someone who may get speech-language pathology may not deal with psychology, they may not even have resource. Another thing, 21 per cent of our Grade 1 students in the province, in every school, get Reading Recovery, and that will vary. The severity of a child who gets Reading Recovery in central Spryfield may be significantly different than the severity of the child who gets Reading Recovery in Cambridge, for example.
But I do have all of the numbers. For example, in the Annapolis Valley - and that was one of the ones the audit was done on - there were 2,555 students in 2005-06 who accessed resource services; 292 accessed school psychology services; 685, some aspect of speech-language pathology - that could be once a week, it could have been an assessment and a determination there was no need, it could have been once every month.
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So we have all the statistics that are out there, and we are able to track how those students access those services and how much service they get.
We continue to work with our boards in making sure that they do document that, that we do have a sense of that. One of the things that we will be looking at is making sure - and I think now as we're close to the ratios, this review we're doing will also enable us to go back and say, gee, is the population of Nova Scotia different in access to speech-language pathology, and maybe that ratio of one to 2,000 isn't going to work for us and we have to move it to one to 1,800 or whatever. Those kinds of things we will be determining and continue to discuss as we get to the ratios.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): So I know you've mentioned around the pilot programs and what I'm talking about is the profile sheets. I'm just wondering how you're trying to see or trying to evaluate the impact of the pilot programs, will they come on mainstream and which programs will or won't?
MR. COCHRANE: There's a whole number of pilots that are going on out there, obviously. The ones that you're probably referring to, we gave each of the boards a certain amount of money over a three-year period to add a number of projects. I think it worked out to 24 projects that we were expecting in the system, and we'll be evaluating those. We did some work on them, and so on, before.
The boards report to us annually on the pilots. One of the difficulties of a pilot in this area is once you create the pilot and the service, it's very difficult to either say whoops, that didn't work, and we're going to remove the pilot and change it. People get very comfortable with the kind of service they get and so on. What we have to determine is whether the pilot has the outcomes we want that would enable us to expand it. That's kind of an ongoing process that we're looking at.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): So one of the things I know we've heard a lot about is around the teacher assistants, or the EAs who many teachers rely on in their classroom. I believe that reading through the criteria and some of the information, I know that the Tri-County board has some concerns around the hiring of EAs and currently it's for behavioural or medical issues. Is that correct? Is that the criteria when they hire EAs, it's around just behavioural and medical needs of a child?
MR. COCHRANE: It actually can be a number of areas where students need support. It could be severe learning disabilities, it could be autism because we do see that, we're making a great deal of effort and we're trying to add that. We try to recognize - the medical ones are actually the easiest ones to assess and to assign because it's quite evident. However, some of the other ones, the behavioural ones particularly, is it 100 per cent TA time, is it 80 per cent? We actually have the highest ratio of teacher assistants in Atlantic Canada. I don't know if that's a fair reflection on the nature of our population
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but sometimes, in the absence of people feeling they're getting the other services they might want, there becomes a focus on I need someone beside my child, I need individual assistance.
In some cases we resist that, not just for budgetary purposes but for independent living and independent growth of our students. Our ratio now in Nova Scotia, and this is 2005-06, for every 75.9 students there was a teacher assistant. We have 1,874.2 student assistants and back in 2000 we had 1,400, and we have significantly less students in our system than we did at that time.
We are concerned about the growth of that particular field. One of the things we're concerned about is the qualifications and we now have raised the bar with regard to who becomes a teacher assistant. We have to make sure they have general qualifications because you may be hired as a teacher assistant for a student who may have a medical issue and, all of a sudden, because that student moves on or graduates, our obligations with regard to seniority and so on, that person may then be assigned to another child, and they won't have the strong suit of qualifications. So we want to make sure we raise that bar and continue to get qualified people who are more utilitarian than perhaps they might have been at one time.
MADAM CHAIR: You have 20 seconds.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I think I'll wait till the next round. Thank you.
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Glavine from the Liberal caucus.
MR. LEO GLAVINE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to welcome all of our guests here today to Public Accounts and I look forward to the opportunity to ask some questions. Possibly, like yesterday, the deputy will have more revelations. Anyway, I will go there for a moment because I feel in some ways that the Auditor General's Report and work here is somewhat vindicated by the department moving to do a review of special education in the province. It certainly looks now like it will take place in 2007 and finish in the same year as well. Can you give us some idea as to what the review will entail, especially with some of the commentary and specifics that came from the AG's Report?
[9:30 a.m.]
MR. COCHRANE: Certainly we're interested to make sure that the way we deliver our services is working, that we're accomplishing the outcomes that we've established for our special needs population, and to make sure that it's efficiently delivered, uniformly available, which is always a concern to us, and that we're able to
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come to the conclusion that what we're doing is working. Also, a recommendation as to what we need that we don't have now, and they may come back on the question of speech-language pathologists for example, what's the ratio. We're looking at additional programs that might work for us, we're looking at possible deletions - although it's always difficult, but some of the things we're doing may not be working in some areas - and what kind of recommendations can be made for improvement.
One other aspect is we do want to take a look, and I think it's one of the things we discussed yesterday, is the provision of special needs services through our inclusionary process, the effect that might have on the learning environment in a classroom and in the school. That's always difficult to determine. Most of the time it's anecdotal. At the same time, we do want to talk to the parents and the students and the professionals in our system to see if our model is working the way that we want it to and so on, and what kind of modifications might we need to make it work better.
MR. GLAVINE: In some ways, then, we can say certainly special education has grown, really in leaps and bounds, when you provide some of the statistical data, and also I would say many improvements for our students. But we still lag behind in some areas. Really, it's all about our students and where they need to be. In some ways, then, the review is really saying that we do have some distance to go yet. Would that be a fair assessment, deputy minister?
MR. COCHRANE: I think we know where we are going, and we're getting close, if we use ratios as a benchmark. I think we know where we're going and we're doing fairly well. What we want to do is kind of stop now and say, well, this is where we're going, is that going to give us the desired outcome of how we deliver service to our population. There are always comments that are made, and I know you made some yesterday and people are expressing to members and so on about some aspects of it. It's reasonable to stand back now and say, well, let's take a look.
The last serious look at this, and it was a big look, a major consultation that took place with the Special Education Implementation Review Committee work in 2000-01, in fact it was one of the largest consultations we've ever conducted. It's five years after that. We've made some major changes, both Learning for Life I and II - which is still a work in progress - have been out there. So it's a good chance to take a look and either to deal with the reality or deal with the myth associated with some of the aspects of it. Our big goal is to make sure we're accomplishing the outcomes for our students.
MR. GLAVINE: In terms of this review, will it just be two people who will be primarily doing this review?
MR. COCHRANE: Actually we're looking at how to craft that. We've drafted the terms of reference, we've had discussions with the school boards getting ready for
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this. I anticipated there would be some effort to get this information out of us yesterday. That's not how I normally like to see these - I like to be that nameless, faceless bureaucrat, however I don't always get to do that. Nonetheless, the minister and I had discussions the night before, and she was ready to let it go forward.
We're still working on it. We think two persons, but we may put an advisory committee to the study. That may, I think, engage a number of other people, particularly who get excited when you take a look at anything. We had 22 groups represented on the Special Education Implementation Review Committee in 2000-01. We're looking at, should there be a steering committee of the study, and that would engage more people and I think allay some of the fears. As soon as you say you're reviewing something, everyone says, oh, it's a cut. Well, I don't think it's that at all, in fact I know it's not that. We want to make sure that people have a comfort level with where it's going, and that we are able to contain the review inside the terms of reference of the study.
MR. GLAVINE: The credentials for these two primary people heading up the review and also the time line, are those in place at this stage?
MR. COCHRANE: I'm sure we're going to get a pile of resumés as a result of yesterday's announcements, and we will be looking at those and taking a list of recommendations to the minister. Ultimately, she'll be the one to pick who does the study. I think yesterday I established the time line, kind of on the back of a napkin. We'd like to have the work started in January and finished by June. These things always take time.
In our normal procedure, the review team would make recommendations to the minister, the minister then would decide what process she would put in place to get input and then the government would issue a response. So I'm hopeful, January to June, it doesn't have to be eternal to be effective.
MR. GLAVINE: Okay, I'll just move in another direction here a little bit. With special education we have restricted and unrestricted funding. Perhaps just even in relation to the two boards that the Auditor General took a look at, how much restricted funding has been allocated to the school boards over the last five years? I'd like to see that pattern, if possible, or have it provided to the committee.
MR. COCHRANE: For example, we do a number of areas where it is restricted. For example, let's use the one on severe learning disabilities. We provide a grant, we have $1.3 million that we control that they access, so it is not just given in the general envelope; Reading Recovery - similarly, about $2 million specifically for that purpose; autism, about $380,000 this year; Tuition Support Program, I referred to yesterday. A lot of that was the $904,000 comes allocated particularly for that specific purpose now. About 90 per cent of the funding, I think, in that whole area is restricted.
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I have, if I can, an additional answer to a question that came yesterday that may be helpful. We looked at the question with regard to how did the Hogg report decide how much money has to be given. What's done - basically, the Hogg report takes an estimated 1.76 per cent of the student population that would require intensive support. These would be severe issues, probably a TA, probably a lot of one-on-one time, and they provided funding for a one teacher per 10 student ratio and 104 students for TA funding ratio. That works out to $6,583 for that particular part of our population.
On top of that, there's a general allocation of $720 for every child in the system, whether they need special services or not. So that all goes into how much money the department gives to the board to try to provide those kinds of services. Then you have the average per-pupil expenditure that's out there anyway, so this is all layered on top, which causes that $8,200 to be the $8,200 that it is. That's all in the formula, but it's all funding that's directly given to boards to deal with special needs services, in addition to some of the money that we hold centrally and pass out.
MR. GLAVINE: In addition to the monies dedicated and restricted, of course, for the Tuition Support Program, can a board still fund a student to one of the three schools, apart from the Tuition Support Program?
MR. COCHRANE: Yes. What we found, and it was an interesting exercise, there used to be tuition agreements and boards would apply to the department for a tuition agreement. So if you had a child to go to Landmark East and the tuition was $20,000, you could apply to the board for full support. The board then applied to the department and we assigned the money.
Back a number of years ago, I'm not sure when, maybe three or four or five, we gave the boards their money and said, you make those decisions. The next thing you know, there were no tuition agreements in the Province of Nova Scotia - go figure. We recognized that there was a bit of a problem here, so then we created the Tuition Support Program and it doesn't pay the full shot but it pays the average student pupil expenditure to the school. A board still can, upon application by a parent, give a full tuition agreement at any one of those three institutions.
MR. GLAVINE: In terms of unrestricted funding, is there a cap? Is there a dollar-per-board, based on students or is it assessed according to a board that may have exceptional needs, over and above the general population? Yesterday again I referenced in the Annapolis Valley where one or two schools have very innovative, very strong programs to deal with autistic children. Is some of that unrestricted money able to be put into areas where there is a greater need? What is the kind of figure that we're looking at there?
[Page 14]
MR. COCHRANE: Ann and Darrell, both, I think you may want to take a turn at answering the question. Darrell was really involved in the creation of the Hogg report and the consultation that went on with the boards in regard to that. Ann, obviously, with regard to the services. Darrell, do you want to?
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Youden.
MR. DARRELL YOUDEN: I'm not sure if I entirely understand your question, but I'll speak to the restricted funding element of that. First off, in funding school boards, we fully recognize that they make choices as between their priorities, where they see them, and that in the application of money between categories could occur, from transportation to instructional to special education. The system is very much built on their being closest to the action and in the best position to make the right decisions around children. We would fully anticipate that they would do that, and we see them doing that all the time.
In terms of the special education funding and the restricted component, generally speaking, we restrict about 90 per cent, as the deputy alluded earlier. In conversations with school boards, it's very easy to restrict 100 per cent of everything and target it to initiatives, but back to my earlier comment, we do respect that they are making choices, they are closer to the action. So the system is built that way. They do that regularly. I'm not sure if I'm fully getting at what you asked.
MR. GLAVINE: I didn't really want a specific breakdown, it's more about percentages that may be there that boards did have some ability to address their specific needs. So you're saying about 10 per cent of funding in that general special education category would go there?
MR. YOUDEN: I would maybe state it slightly differently. I would say that, first off, what we're allocating to school boards for special education approximates what they're spending currently under the new model. In any given year, the boards have entire discretion with respect to 100 per cent of those funds as to how they allocate it to special education and then make the choices and decisions around that. We build that number in terms of how much we're going to give them based on ratios, desired staffing ratios, however the board then chooses, they may use more or fewer teaching assistants, they may use more or less of the any of the specialist services, but they fully make those choices.
MR. GLAVINE: I'm going in that direction, because at the in camera meeting with the AG's office, the statement was made along the lines that special education expenditures are not accurately reflected in the financial statements of the school boards and are under-estimated in the opinion of the Auditor General. I would like your reaction to that, Mr. Youden, or Deputy.
[Page 15]
MR. YOUDEN: There are probably two points that are relevant to your question. The first has to do with having a student information system so that we can very precisely track what students are accessing - what services - so that we can get some longitudinal tracking around that. There was an earlier question that had to do with student information systems. A lot of the information that we gather today, we are somewhat dependent upon a survey approach. That is somewhat mechanical in approach. You do it from time to time.
Where we would like to be, and what the Auditor General has suggested that we should move toward and what we're doing, is moving toward having an automated approach with a very high degree of information. It's actually a project that's going very well. Not all projects go as well as others. In this particular case, over the past year and a half or so, we've been moving towards standardizing the data, what do we need to collect, and that involves consultation with 430 schools, and it has been going really well. A lot of the pre-work is well in hand. Having that information allows school boards to accumulate their costs with respect to special education in a far more precise way than we're doing today. That's the journey that we're on, and I'm quite pleased with where we're at.
The additional point that was raised with respect to the tracking of special education expenditures by the Auditor General related to direct costing of special education. This issue, perhaps, speaks to how precise does one get, and to some degree I would suggest it is a judgment call. The issue that was raised in the report was - a large example was that the cost of special needs busing was not recorded as special education expenditures. That comment from the Auditor General is accurate. The information is available to boards and is available as required.
[9:45 a.m.]
MR. GLAVINE: Would the Auditor General's recommendations sort of supercede where the review panel may be going, or will they work concurrently here? How do you see that unfolding?
MR. COCHRANE: Certainly the review panel will be well aware of what the Auditor General has said. We'll also make them aware, and boards will make them aware of their comments and so on with regard to funding and allocations. It will be available to them. Much of the detail, of course, of how we report the information won't be in the purview of the review committee. That's really a management logistical exercise between the department, the government and the boards.
The student information system is crucial to our operation. It doesn't come cheap. We'll have to build it over a few years, but we'll need a capital allocation to do that. I think the estimate is $10 million, Darrell?
[Page 16]
MR. YOUDEN: The very, very preliminary. (Laughter) I wouldn't want to nail it down in any strong way today. We have an RFP out. We really don't know until we do that, as to what the cost may be.
MR. GLAVINE: One of the other areas, and I'm certainly aware of this one as an educator - the AG recommended the concern surrounding teacher assistants and personal student assistants conducting medical procedures, and the liability concerns. I think at the micro level, there could also be health implications here. The AG recommended that the DHAs be brought in to begin to develop some form of policy framework to address these concerns, ensuring the TAs and PSAs have the adequate and proper training.
Now, I'm just wondering, is this something the department will be addressing in the future, and have very clear policy for all the boards in the province so each one is not out there going their own way? I know here in HRM, there is consultation with the IWK. Is there a policy in place for all eight boards of the province, or will there be in the future?
MR. COCHRANE: There will be. We've actually made a great deal of progress on this recently. We have a departmental policy which goes to the boards, dealing with the administration of medication and the guidelines. Oral administration is different than some of the other applications, obviously, that we're concerned about. We've established procedures. There is a guideline that comes out with regard to that. We're now working with the boards about getting memorandums of understanding with the health authorities as it comes to the other kind of administration and so on, that we have some concerns about.
This is constantly an issue brought forward by the teaching staff, that they don't always feel comfortable with regard to this. That's why we put together the guidelines and the protocol, that's completed. The actual procedures and so on, other aspects of it, are underway. So we've been able to make some progress in regard to that. There's a new guide on anaphylactic applications that will be coming out in 2007. People were used to the Epi-Pen, and that's the issue that comes forward there.
So we have made some really good progress across the province with regard to guidelines, and we're still working on the final aspects of that and engaging the DHAs in that particular discussion.
MR. GLAVINE: I know there are always some very exceptional circumstances with catheters and so forth. Do TAs, in their current training when they take child care courses and so forth at the community college, is there anything in their training that would at least prepare them in a general way? Although, at the end of the day, I still find myself troubled around the liability issues that could emanate from this.
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MR. COCHRANE: There would be some general training that they would take, transferable skills that we're trying to develop in that two-year program to make sure these people are able to deal with the nature of our client. Basically, we have to go out in each case. If you have a specific child, we have to make sure not only that that child is going to be in the care of that teacher assistant in the next year, we have to be ahead of the curve. We have to make sure we give them the specific training that they would need to do that.
We deal with the Continuing Care Division of the Victorian Order of Nurses, for example, that provides some of the training that we need for our people. Obviously, DHAs would be involved in some high or intensive situations. We really have to look and say, is this child going in the care of that teacher and that TA, and to make sure that they both have the kind of training they need to deal with those kinds of issues.
MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time has now expired.
Mr. Dunn of the PC caucus.
MR. PATRICK DUNN: Thank you. Once again welcome to the committee meeting today. Perhaps again the first comment dealing with APSEA and special education, APSEA, I think it was approximately 1975, you mentioned, that it was initiated. I began my educational career in September 1976 and certainly from that point to 2006, I saw a significant improvement, an improvement that I was very, very pleased with the high quality of services offered by APSEA throughout the years.
I think you mentioned in your opening statement something about guidance counsellors, qualifications and so on, that may be somewhat of an issue. In our schools, in particular the schools that have guidance counsellors or resource centre coordinators, they're sort of the front-line people when we're dealing with special needs children. I'd like you to comment, perhaps going back to guidance counsellors, you mentioned something about an issue of qualifications of guidance counsellors, or is there a grandfather clause?
MR. COCHRANE: I can see the member from Cape Breton Island smiling because I managed to crank up that whole board. One of the things we did when we recognized we were going to specifically fund, as a target, guidance counsellors, we said, what are the qualifications? Our Director of Student Services came to me and made it very clear that the qualifications for a guidance counsellor in our system, in every system in the country now, is a master's in guidance.
That begged the question, of course, of a course that was being offered at Cape Breton University. The course was approved in 1994 and it allowed Cape Breton University to offer a diploma in guidance, but very specifically to deal with the
[Page 18]
classroom teacher and their qualifications to deal with the kind of student that now is in the classrooms in the Province of Nova Scotia. It was not designed to qualify them to be a guidance counsellor.
That was fine, that was agreed to by the minister of the day, the Honourable John MacEachern, and the Minister's Advisory Committee on Teacher Certification went through it, made it very clear that was a concern and so on, that they did. As a result, they were allowed to do it; we gave a certificate of recognition even for that, an upgrade.
As the years went on, the caveat that said this is not meant to qualify you to be a guidance counsellor disappeared from the syllabus and, all of a sudden, people were taking it, thinking that might enable them to do that. In the absence of people who were qualified with a master's, some of these people were engaged. That was great, they were willing, they made the extra effort.
As comprehensive guidance has come in and it's a much more broad scope for a guidance counsellor to deal with the nature of our students, it became more and more evident that they had to have a master's. So all we said was, we're targeting funds, we gave $500,000 in 2006-07, which enabled us to hire 12 more in the province, with more money to come, we said they must have a master's.
Now we're dealing with some people who are kind of a little frustrated out there that they took a course that they thought was going to give them an outcome that it didn't. I've had words with the President of CBU about that and they were interesting. As a result, Acadia University, which is the program in Nova Scotia to deliver the master's in guidance, is dealing with CBU, with those teachers, recognizing a certain number of credits for the hours that they took and the diploma program they took at CBU, and then making it clear that here's what you need to upgrade to get the master's.
So we're working our way through. I think a few individuals, unfortunately, may have taken the program with a different view as to what the outcome would be, but we're trying to ameliorate that as we go through. Our main purpose in this is to make sure that our classroom teachers are well qualified to deal with our students but very concerned that our guidance counsellors have the level of qualification to deal with the nature of the issues across the province for our students.
MR. DUNN: With reference to the new student information system, some boards are very pleased with the data that they have and that they are collecting, and they think they're doing a top-notch job. I'm sure that sometimes they'll wonder why is there a new system coming in, why are we changing things, things are always changing and, of course, in whatever level of work, lots of people are - when you think of change you think, well, the negative sense of it or whatever, why break something that seems to be working? So in this particular system, who's involved? There must be representation
[Page 19]
from every board, and when do you think there will be completion of this particular system where it's finally complete, running?
MR. COCHRANE: I'll make a general comment and then I'll ask Darrell to give us the specifics. We're leading the effort in our department. John Fahie is our director of technology, and so on, that supports the system. Boards, as a result of necessity, created some kind of programs. Most of those processes are really now held together by duct tape and baler twine because times have changed and they haven't been given the money to upgrade the systems and so on. Some are quite innovative, some are very user-friendly for a particular board, but it doesn't necessarily give us the kind of information we need on a province-wide basis. We have been trying to do many more things kind of provincially. For example, Reading Recovery is a provincial program, it's no longer an option for a board to have Reading Recovery or not.
The minister is the only person in the province, and I see a former minister here, who has to stand up and say, I can assure you there's equality of educational opportunity across Nova Scotia. She's the only person who has to do that, so we've been really focused on what are the provincial programs, what's good for the province and how are we going to fund it. If we dictated it without the funding that's one thing, but the funding has always followed. For example, class size initiatives are funded by the province, the boards implement, put the classes in place.
This is another example of that and it's interesting, when we went out and did the provincial report card, for example, we had to create and we are creating in part of this system the mechanism to support it. You can have a provincial report card but you've got to have a computer system that generates the report card.
Every board thought they had the very best report card, and I said, well, aren't I blessed to be deputy in a province where we have the eight best report cards in the universe. It was difficult to convince them that we had to go to a different rubric, in a different system, and that's fair. But there was a demand across the province for someone to pick up a student's report card in Clare and pick up a student's report card in Pictou and see the outcomes and see the measurement being somewhat similar, at a similar grade level.
Anyway, the specific question as to the team and the committee, I'll ask Darrell to address.
MR. YOUDEN: If I could have your patience too, I'd back up one step and make a comment about generally what we're trying to do with student information systems. The student information systems exist in schools today. If you were to walk into a typical school, any school in the province, you would find that they have a student information
[Page 20]
system which is used for scheduling. It's used typically for production of report cards and tracking some basic information such as parent contacts, but it's a very, very limited tool.
What we're trying to do is to expand that application greatly, to take what exists today, to add to that with discipline tracking, add to it with special services. The reference to wait times earlier, tracking that information and an awful lot more, we've gone through the process of consulting with school boards and with schools at all levels within the organization, saying what is it that we need to track?
The challenge is to take what exists today, which is nothing more than a school-level tool which accumulates that information for your one school, to make that available in a database to the board so that the board is informed in their decisions what services students are accessing, what are their wait times, et cetera, and to accumulate the information by board into a provincial database and make it available for use at all three levels within the system. So that's what we're trying to do.
The process over the past year and a half or so on this, reaching consensus as we set out on this journey, has been one that it would not make economic sense to reproduce eight different systems in eight school boards. We've asked the school boards to participate in a process of selection of one system and, as part of that, there's a huge effort and arguably even the larger part of the process is standardizing the data that you're going to accumulate in that student information system. That's where our efforts have been intensely involved over the last year and a half, we've had a team on the ground doing that.
[10:00 a.m.]
My earlier comment about being very pleased with the way it has been going, there are very, very committed people wanting this to happen, without exception. While we will experience a resistance to change later on when you go through the actual implementation, if you talk to the people doing this today there's a need, there's a desire, they want it to happen, and that's where we're going.
Actually today is the closing of the RFP. That will inform us, to some degree, as to what's available in the market. There are challenges. As much as the desire to do this and the need has been in place for a long time nationally and internationally, the systems that are out there are growing and evolving. We may be a little bit at the front of the curve there, and we'll see as we go through those RFPs. Once we're informed about cost, we'll be advancing that and looking for support to go forward.
MR. DUNN: Again, in the opening comments, it was mentioned that in May, I think, the utilization review and so on, and ways to deliver service, just can't stand still, and of course if education is going to improve in the services, that's something that has
[Page 21]
to happen. Learning for Life I and II, with the aim to accomplishing outcomes for students, and there has been an improvement in the ratios and so on with regard to speech-language pathologists, psychologists and so on, it appears there's never enough, we need more in our systems and so on. Is there anything being addressed, from your department, with regard to that?
MR. COCHRANE: The teacher assistant allocation?
MR. DUNN: Not the teacher assistant allocation, but with regard to providing more specialized . . .
MR. COCHRANE: Recruitment and funding. When we started, actually, almost every board didn't meet the ratios in any category, so we gave them the money and said, okay, recruit what you can to get you up to the ratios. I was looking a moment ago - for example, the Strait has a one to 1,717 ratio for speech-language pathologists, so they're okay. They've got five and they need 4.4, great. So they won't spend the money we give them next year for speech-language pathologists, they'll go out and pick up more guidance counsellors or resource teachers or whatever.
We are looking at attempting to determine if there is a need in some of the very specialized services of recruiting a little more nationally, a little more aggressively, almost a come on home if you're a speech-language pathologist and would love to work in a beautiful environment. We're looking at that. But what we've got to satisfy ourselves with is we've hired everybody who is qualified here in Nova Scotia, because they'll find their way to your office really fast. We want to make sure we get an opportunity for the people here and engaged in our system. So we are looking at that.
One of the areas, for example, is the speech-language pathologists who can deal in French as a first language. Chances are they're not going to be coming from a system in Nova Scotia, and we have to look at where we find that kind of person out there.
We're working with the boards, we've had really good discussions about recruitment. Our job fair and the early-hire process that we went into about three years ago is meant to get us out there before our kids go somewhere else. There are some people who are still going to want to go somewhere else. That's just the nature of how things have worked for years. We are going to be much more aggressive. I'm saying, if there's a real need you have in one of these areas, tell me where it is and we'll see what we can do together to recruit people to come to Nova Scotia to fill those needs.
MR. DUNN: Just a question on educational assistants, EAs. I'm sure in every school across the province, they're requesting and asking for more. Over the last number of years, the buzzword - inclusion. As more students are leaving the special education sector, the classrooms and so on, going into the regular classrooms, either partially or on
[Page 22]
a full-time basis, where the classroom teachers are requesting more assistance from educational assistants, and boards have an allotted amount of money that they can divvy out wherever they wish to, will there continue to be an increase in funding in that specialized area where there are enough assistants for these students who are being integrated into the regular classrooms, which was something that didn't happen years ago?
MR. COCHRANE: We certainly are funding it through the Hogg formula, looking at the number of teacher assistants we have and so on. We're really cautious, and the boards are very cautious, because one of the things we don't want to get seduced into is moving from funding allocations for the professional, the teacher, the speech-language pathologist, the psychologist, the guidance counsellor, moving into that paraprofessional, who are all good people and, quite frankly, now come into the system better qualified. But we don't want to have it go this way so that we take the children who need the most intensive service from the most professional, well-qualified person and put them in the hands of the paraprofessional.
There's a balance out there, and the boards are struggling with this every day. When you're sitting there and a parent is in front of the board with the microphone, with their child, asking for a teacher assistant, it's sometimes hard to resist - even when you know pedagogically a certain allocation of teacher assistant time and a significant allocation of professional time would better serve that child - it's sometimes hard not to get into that kind of here, take one of these and you'll be fine. There's a balance, and I like to think the boards are trying to find the balance.
One of the things we've tried to do, our population - and it's an interesting debate that, as MLAs, you're going to have to face more and more - as our school population is dropping and our population is getting older, people are less concerned about education and more concerned about health care. Quite frankly, we've been fairly successful in convincing the Legislature, the government, the Cabinet to reinvest money that might, under normal circumstances, be taken out of a shrinking system and putting that money into the core professional services we need and so on. It's a debate every day.
I think there's a balance out there, but we have to keep working at that. As our population gets greyer, there'll be less excitement about a pre-Primary class, even though they're their grandchildren. We have to make sure that we advocate what's best for the system. So far, we've been fairly fortunate in getting the government to reinvest money that could be taken out as a result of a declining enrolment. It's a balance. Both a balance provincially, on the allocation of money, but a balance at the board level in providing the paraprofessional services and the professional services.
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MR. DUNN: Educational assistants, dealing with the training that is required prior to entering the school system. Is that something that is continuously being reviewed?
MR. COCHRANE: We actually raised the bar a couple of years ago. At one time I think it was kind of, if you had a bent for dealing with this kind of a child, you were there. At one time, most of our systems were looking for people who could deal with physically challenged children. There's a different set of circumstances or qualifications in dealing with a physically handicapped child and an emotionally handicapped child, for example. I'll ask Ann to address that, because we've gone out and made some statements, we've encouraged our educational institutions to get more aggressive in this regard, as well.
MS. POWER: We're currently looking at specific areas, as well. Most of the boards now look for a degree, for instance, related to child development or early childhood or perhaps a degree in the human services or community college certificate in that area for hiring. But now we're also looking at other areas where we can be part of working with the community college system, for instance, and with other training agencies for specific needs. One example would be autism, where there are specific needs for training that wouldn't necessarily be found in a human service type of degree, but where we can focus in helping the school boards to train the teacher assistants once they are part of their system.
Because teacher assistants move a lot, and may go from school to school, and are often moved for lots of good reasons, as well, in terms of ensuring that their competencies are best used in the system, we also have to be able to train on an ongoing basis, so we build the capacity within the system, as well as pre-service education.
MR. COCHRANE: It's interesting, just as a comment. Nova Scotia has one department looking after all of the aspects of education. We're not unique, but it's 50/50. Sometimes there's a deputy and a minister for post-secondary and public school. We also look after the private career college legislation. I can tell you that not too long ago we cancelled one of the permits to one of the private career colleges that was providing training for EAs and TAs because it wasn't meeting the criteria that were needed and wasn't meeting the number of hours of instruction, they didn't have the qualified instructors, they didn't have the right curriculum. We knew what the system needed, and at the same time we're on the regulatory side, so we're able to balance that.
A lot of things like that do work in a very integrated system like ours. We deal with the community college, we fund the community college, and we want to make sure that their certificate program, their diploma program is going to enable us to have people who are qualified. For example, we're now funding library assistants and library technicians under Learning for Life II that we never did before. We also have the training
[Page 24]
wing of the department that makes sure that we can have people qualified to meet those job demands as they're there. It's rather interesting.
MADAM CHAIR: Order. Sorry, the time has expired.
We'll have a second round of questioning now, 15 minutes per caucus.
Mr. Wilson, you have until (Interruptions) That's right, 10:26 a.m. (Laughter)
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Madam Chair, I won't comment on that comment.
MR. COCHRANE: By the way, paramedics or MLAs make excellent TAs in an afterlife. (Laughter)
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I'll keep that in mind. I want to continue questioning. I do want to get to APSEA, because I think it's important that we recognize some of the recommendations, especially from the Auditor General's Office on that, but first I want to continue on with the special needs area in our education system - special education.
It's interesting, one of the things that's interesting about being an MLA is how many fronts and how many battles you fight. You hear from so many residents, especially around education and special needs, about just trying to get their child recognized for what they need, to hopefully improve - they recognize there's something there, that their child needs some assistance. You try everything you can to try to expedite that and try to hurry that assessment process up. But then you also have those families that have gone through that process, have identified what problems their child has, and are into programs or now they're looking for what programs are available.
Many of the families, or some of them, that have the resources have chosen to take it upon themselves to exit the public system and seek what they feel is the most appropriate assistance or training or help with educating their child. Especially around the funding of those programs, I know there are about 100 tuition agreements currently in the province. One of the big issues is around - once your child is identified and they're in a program and there's funding given by the department, the problem we find, or parents encounter is as their child gets older, their needs may change a bit and there may be a better program. The issue is around the funding and why doesn't that funding follow that child? It seems like they have to start over again if they get to a certain point in the education of their child, that they have to go through the assessment again.
What are you doing to help or try to continue the funding to a child or to a program, and have that funding follow that child throughout - until they're finished?
[Page 25]
What are you doing to try to do that, or are you trying to do that? Are you trying to limit that?
MR. COCHRANE: It's funny, I made a comment yesterday about Health making a recommendation that someone get speech-language pathology and then they're on a waiting list in Health and they come onto a waiting list in Education. I have a hard time criticizing what doesn't appear to be a seamless transition between two departments when I'm sometimes concerned about what doesn't look like a seamless transition in our own system.
I think it also depends on - at some point I think a lot of that comes from the system analyzing it and saying, okay, they don't need that service now or they don't need the same degree of service, and the parent may not agree, and therefore they have to go back through that whole issue.
We just happen to have with us a couple of booklets. This one is really valuable, and I think it really addresses a lot of the concern. It talks about the transition planning for students with special needs, the early years through to adult life. I think you saw, in the board that you have the honour of representing a constituency within, a whole debate last summer about the 18- to 21-year olds. When we finish our educational program, who's out there? We think it's Community Services, but we're going to work with them to deal with that.
[10:15 a.m.]
We also have a whole issue and a guide for parents on program planning - what kind of programming is in the system and how you access that and so on. We're trying to make that transition as seamless as possible. There will always be bumps in the road. Hopefully, they're not a bump in the road that's going to have an impact upon that child's education. It may frustrate the parent unfortunately, it may frustrate our administration, but our goal is to make sure that the child doesn't see that kind of a transition. I can't say that we've handled that to 100 per cent. I can say that we're working hard with the boards and our professional staff to deal with that.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I would have to agree with that comment. It is difficult for parents because I think at a point they just want the best education for their child and they think at the time that they can afford that training and then they find themselves strapped at the end and now have to try to make that transition back into the public system, realizing that for one, they're broke and two, that the services they think they need aren't there in the system.
I don't need a comment on that, I know you're very good at your job and you can eat up time very quickly, so . . .
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MR. COCHRANE: Not on purpose. I have a quote about that I'll give you later.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): . . . and that's a compliment. You mentioned earlier around recruitment and retention of specialists or speech pathologists, for example, and the issue around recruitment and retention, especially in some of the rural communities. What have you done? Have you talked to the training institutions? What is government doing to try to address that?
It's good to say that there is going to be a problem, but are you giving any advice or asking questions, or what are you going to do. What are you trying to do to try to address that shortcoming, which is probably upon us now, not in the near future?
MR. COCHRANE: One of the big initiatives that we've put forward about three years ago is the early recruitment and the job fairs that we run as a province. We go to the four teacher training institutions that are recognized - another debate - but we go out and actually have a job fair by which all the boards are there with their teams. We collate the applications and then we give the boards the list and they decide who they're going to interview.
We've actually started doing that for speech-language pathology as well. It wasn't part of what was done at one time, but it's now being done. We're dealing with the institution that does the training, of course in that case it's Dal, to make sure that we have a process by which those students can send their applications to the department and we collate that, and so on, as we go through the system. So it's better.
What we try to do also is we talk to the boards about going out, and the boards and their professional staff, particularly in the area of Student Services, go out to the facilities. I know the other day Mike Sweeney, who is our Senior Executive Director of Public Schools, was speaking at the Mount - I think it was the Mount - with the education class about the opportunities in Nova Scotia and so on. We go out to the programs training school psychologists and those who train speech-language pathologists and talk about employment opportunities in Nova Scotia and so on.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Along the same lines as the recruitment - I think in the same lines and I know we're talking about specialists, but one of the recommendations from the Auditor General around the audit done to the Strait Regional School Board was 8.3 and it recommended that the department or the regional school board establish salary guidance for all non-unionized staff at regional school boards. I know there is an issue around parity and it's different from school board to school board.
So under that recommendation I know it's a little different than what we were just talking about with speech pathologists, but I think it's still under the same theme of
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recruitment and retention. Is that recommendation being looked at to try to make sure, especially in our rural communities, that parity is important and that recommendation is looked upon seriously, and hopefully a change is made so that we don't have that problem in the future?
MR. COCHRANE: Interestingly enough in Nova Scotia, speech-language pathologists and school psychologists are members of the NSTU, so therefore their wages are determined on a provincial contractual basis and so on. That's not the case in every jurisdiction but it's here.
We actually have made some - our issue is not comparisons and attraction between boards, our problem is a couple of the other provinces out there that have huge budgets and no conscience and come down and try to get our people. When Alberta wants to talk to me about teacher training, I say you're not my solution, you're my problem. So that's a problem, that we're not able to pay the national scale, but there's a value of working in our system and thank goodness all these people appreciate it and they are here.
We have standardized some of the non-union staff at the board level. For example, the superintendents now are on a salary grid across the province. The directors - the Director of Student Services, Operations, all that, are on a provincial grid as well.
It was kind of my intention to go down to the next couple of layers but even I, who's in their face all the time, do have some reservations about what I'm trying to do. We are recognizing that there should be parity amongst the boards and that there should be a competitive position in the Strait, as it should be in Tri-County.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I think it's important. It's nice to say the superintendents are equal but you have to make sure that everybody is important, no matter what job you do in the school board.
I want to switch quickly to the review of the special needs requirement or system that you mentioned yesterday. What promoted this review? Why did you mention that yesterday? Any quick, small answer on it?
MR. COCHRANE: There's no such thing as quick with me, you know that. The minister, as many of our ministers who have come to the table have had areas of concern that have been expressed to them. One of the areas that has been expressed to this minister and previous ministers is the whole area of inclusion and how it works and some of the myth and reality associated with that.
The minister asked if we could draft the terms of reference and put it together, so that's where it really came from. The minister initiated it, as a dutiful public servant. We
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brought forward what we thought were recommendations that would enable us to do the kind of work that needs to be done, without upsetting the system greatly either. You've got to do this in such a way that everyone recognizes that it's not a cut, it's not that kind of thing.
So really it was the minister's comments, I presume garnered over the years as an educator and administrator, a citizen and an MLA.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Now I know that you're in the early stages of it and I think you said there would be two individuals on the board or whatever you call it, will they be making recommendations?
MR. COCHRANE: Yes.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): That's good to know because far too often we see reviews and consultations where recommendations aren't asked and aren't warranted.
I think I want to end this little section, I have only a few minutes, but I just wanted to quote something that was in the paper today, in The Daily News, from Sarah Malay, and her daughter - I believe her name is Sarah also. I would like to quote, and here is the quote - she is talking about her daughter, "She thrives from being with her peers, she learns better from them than from any teacher or parent." I think that really says a lot and I hope that any direction you give to this review, that that quote is kept in mind. It's important because I know that inclusion is debatable, but I think the payoff is far greater.
I will quote one more person in the paper, it was David Rodenhizer. He stated, "Nothing defeats prejudice like being friends with someone who is different." So those two quotes I think say a lot on what we have, the system we have now. I think if we can improve the system it's in the area of additional resources and allocating the money and resources we have in the most appropriate way.
I know I have only a couple of minutes so I'm going to jump to APSEA and some of the recommendations that the Auditor General made around that. I know that one of the things they had concerns around was the reporting of the progress and what the program has. One of the recommendations or noted concerns they had was around outdated legislation dealing with that aspect. We're going back to the 1960s, I think, the legislation that pertains to that. A quick question on that is, are you bringing forward, or is the department trying to bring forward, changes to that to bring it up to date? I mean we really do need to see some changes there.
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MR. COCHRANE: We're laughing because the legislation, oddly enough, is Nova Scotia legislation but APSEA operates in the Atlantic Provinces. I think I'm entering my ninth year on the board of APSEA in one realm or another. We've actually asked over eight years for House time to amend the Handicapped Persons' Education Act in Nova Scotia. We were getting close to getting House time last year, when we went out and did the review, and then we said, well, we had better not amend it now because we may have a bunch of changes coming from the review.
So it's our intention to propose a series of amendments to the Act here in Nova Scotia and put them forward once we've done the final review of APSEA and shaped the legislation to reflect the reality of what we're doing.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I think one of the other criticisms was that the Auditor General's Office stated how it's a top-notch system, and I wouldn't disagree with that. One of the questions put to them during our session with them was, how can we tell? There are no performance indicators to measure that. Do you have any comments on that? If it's such a top-notch organization, how do we know if those indicators and performance outcome indicators aren't there?
MR. COCHRANE: Certainly, under BVI, there has been a fair tracking system put in place to make sure that we do accomplish the outcomes. We're actually looking at upgrading that system. A lot of it comes from the evaluation of the public school system. Remember, these children are in the school boards in four provinces. So they are not only evaluated on the need for BVI and hearing handicap services, but also how they are doing on math and language arts and so on. We actually have two measures: one, we're delivering a service, but then the system is measuring how these students are doing as well.
MADAM CHAIR: Order.
MR. COCHRANE: I think we are going to make some improvements in that area, but I think there's a fair satisfaction level of the users in the system.
MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time has expired. I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Mr. Glavine, you now have 15 minutes, to 10:41 a.m., for the Liberal caucus.
MR. GLAVINE: Madam Chair, I'll pick up on that theme of APSEA and perhaps maybe get Mr. Tulk involved in the conversation a little bit. I wouldn't want him to come all this way without some engagement. However, I do want to preface my remark and rebuttal to the deputy minister first. He talked about that MLAs are going to be very much challenged in terms of educational dollars versus health dollars as population ages and our student population declines. My position and our caucus position, when you're
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in last place in funding in the country, you have nowhere to go. I still think there are many children whose individual needs are not addressed in the system. I think more versus less is where we need to be.
With that, in terms of APSEA, as my colleague pointed out, when we're talking about few performance measures and no mechanisms in place around some of the accountability areas and, really, again, no business plan, it is a concern for an association that does have such an outstanding reputation, that they want to even better their performance. I'm just wondering what movement is underway, perhaps, to change some of those realities.
MR. BERT TULK: Thank you. It's nice to feel wanted.
MR. COCHRANE: I do. (Laughter)
MR. TULK: Mr. Glavine, thank you for that question. For the past number of years, APSEA has been under probably unofficial review by the four provinces that form the partnership and administer and govern and support the operations and the APSEA structure. However, it came to the fore about a year and a half ago, when there was a realization that, indeed, we did not have a good reporting system, we did not have the standards that were readily available, and measures of how we were meeting various outcomes available to the partners, or to the general public.
As the deputy indicated, the level of satisfaction that was felt to be present in the community, certainly in terms of the parents and the clientele that we serve, was deemed to be quite high. These measures were borne out by various surveys, consultations, input that we received from the community, particularly parents, as well as the other stakeholders.
[10:30 a.m.]
On a go-forward basis, we're in the process now of analyzing all of the reports, in addition - I know, today, we're focusing upon the Report of the Auditor General and the recommendations which came as part of that broad-scope audit process, but we also have, last year, the space utilization study report, which gave us a view of how well we were utilizing the facilities and the other resources and so on that we had. We are now moving those recommendations from the Auditor General and the other reports through the board. The board has taken those recommendations and we've devised or designed a number of directions that will be refined and hopefully accepted at the December 11th meeting of the board, and following that, there will be a strategic planning process, which will endeavour to implement all of these recommendations and directions.
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Very quickly - I don't want you to get the sense that I'm just going on, as someone commented, the deputy has a tendency to do. A new student information database has been developed to replace a 1989 version which was in use at APSEA prior to this year. The phased-in implementation was begun in September 2006, just a couple of months ago. It's customized for APSEA, and this tool will facilitate the unique range of clientele and programs and services that we offer, and that database will enable analysis and monitoring of student outcomes and the associated reporting of progress, certainly once the baseline has been established and in the future.
MR. GLAVINE: Very quickly, what kind of representation is there from each of the provinces, on the board? How is the funding per province actually determined?
MR. TULK: The representation on the board, it's a board of 12, three from each of the four Atlantic Provinces. I think the deputy mentioned earlier that the four deputy ministers actually comprise the executive committee of the board. The funding is done on a formula basis. The administration and consulting component is based upon the actual census or the population of the four Atlantic Provinces, the four partners, while the short-term programs and the provincially-based programs are funded based on usage. So the actual costs of offering the programs to students in Nova Scotia are actually billed off to the Nova Scotia Department of Education.
MR. GLAVINE: I'm going to move back then to the recommendations from the AG's Report around the special education audit. Mr. Youden and yourself, deputy, have certainly allayed some of the long-term concerns around getting very good data and being able to analyze it in relation to cost. But currently there's still a lot of anecdotal information that is used, and we don't really get the full picture of special education cost to a board. I'm wondering, how much longer do we have to deal with this?
One of the schools close by my riding, in Middleton, has 16 autistic children, 20 to 30 EAs, by the way that the administrator doesn't even get any compensation for, which is another deficit. We get the anecdotal information, but I still maintain that we're not funding special education like we need to. When can we expect this system that has been identified to be in place and working to the satisfaction of the board and to the delivery to the child and the family?
MR. COCHRANE: I'll toss the question to Darrell, because I do think we've actually, through the Hogg report, identified the number. Much of the anecdotal information is information that MLAs get. We know how many TAs there would be in that board, and we know how many autistic children there would be at Middleton. If I don't, I can call Heather and she'll tell me. So we do have good information, the problem is often getting it out there.
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The funding numbers - the board allocates their money amongst schools and so on. I'll ask Darrell to address kind of how we now focus on the Hogg report and the allocation. At one time the board said, we spend 60 more on special needs than you give us. Well, I'm sorry, there's only one place they get their money, and if they allocate it there, the money still comes from the same source. So there has been a reallocation and a recalculation of how we do that. Darrell, do you want to speak to that, if it's okay?
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Youden.
MR. YOUDEN: Certainly. I believe the area that you're referring to is, what we do at present when we're funding special needs is we do not know specifically how many students with autism or other challenges, exactly how they reside between boards. We're operating under a general assumption that the occurrence of those special challenges occurs roughly equally across the province. That presents the challenge that if that assumption is wrong that the funding that is available to boards to respond to needs isn't allocated in such a way to respond to the board level challenges.
Now, interestingly enough, when we went through the process of looking at changing our funding approach to school boards, we did a lot of consultation, both directly with the Department of Education and school boards, and also through the consultant we hired to do that work, Bill Hogg. One of the things that I can tell you very comfortably is that all the school boards feel a pressure in this area. It was not uncommon in talking to school boards to hear the viewpoint that in our particular area, we feel we perhaps have a higher level of incidence of special needs students. I think the representation by school boards was a sincere one. I think it's just trying to respond to the challenge. I can tell you that we did hear it on a broad basis.
Some provinces, in determining how to allocate funding to school boards, do specifically identify the students. Ontario, as an example, has a graduated scale of identification of the severity of need and matches funding to that. In the report from Mr. Hogg, one of the recommendations for consideration in the future was that we look at that. The recommendation did not say go there, the recommendation said, look, that is an area that's worthy of evaluation and consideration. The upside of it is that it ensures that what you're doing is matching the dollars with the need as it exists across the province. The downside of it is if the incidence of children across the province, the students across the province, is relatively the same, it may in fact be a very intensive effort which is administrative in focus, and better to spend your money servicing students.
So that's the dilemma. It is on the radar, in terms of future consideration. The input we received from boards was not strong on that point, at least to date. But the question remains.
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MR. COCHRANE: On that point, you do have to question how much time and money you spend on administration as opposed to providing service to children in the classroom. That's what we have to weigh in that case.
MR. GLAVINE: One of the other areas that the AG commented on was regarding the special education resource staff and their qualifications and so forth there. I come out of a school community, 25 years of teaching and administering at West Kings District High School. We were an inclusionary school, I would maintain, and practised, long before it was, if you wish, official policy. We had some great teachers and quarterbacks to look after the needs of every special needs child possible. People like Maxine Lonergan, who set the stage, followed by Margie Weeks, and today a lady by the name of Donna Griffin runs the resource department.
I'm just wondering, Mr. Deputy, are there specific qualifications required for our resource staff and teachers in this province?
MR. COCHRANE: I'll ask Ann Power to address that particular question.
MS. POWER: We have been working with the boards to try to ensure that as many of our resource teachers as possible have master's degrees in the area of special education or educational psychology in the areas that you would require the competencies. We've outlined those, as well, in our resource teachers guide, which shows the types of competencies that teachers need. You can generally get those through a variety of background experiences and training, but the master's degree is the preferred route.
To that end, to ensure that we can help as many teachers as possible who are already in the system to upgrade, we've worked with Mount Saint Vincent University, as well as St. F.X. University, and have provided cohorts - what we call resource teacher cohorts - across the province to allow resource teachers to do their master's part-time. We actually were able to work with the universities to design the master's degree so that it fit our needs here in Nova Scotia. That was very helpful for us, and we modelled it after the types of competencies they need in the resource teachers guide, as well as the special education policy.
MADAM CHAIR: Order, the time has now expired for the Liberal caucus.
Mr. Porter from the PC caucus.
MR. CHUCK PORTER: Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions in a few different areas, so I'll start with a bit on the legislation and from the AG's report. It's stated in the AG's Report, "The legislation governing APSEA in Nova Scotia is outdated
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and does not reflect current operations. In addition, it does not link to the provincial Special Education policies."
I'm interested in hearing both Mr. Cochrane and your comments. Are you agreeing with that statement? It sounds like we've come a long way over the years and for something, I think we heard the words "outstanding program" used today, they don't match.
MR. COCHRANE: We totally agree with the statement. As I said, we had actually applied for House time for over eight years and you all know the schedule of the House and how difficult it is to perhaps get some House time. Nonetheless, we did pull it back as the APSEA board last year, when it looked like we had time because we had just done the review and we wanted to make sure that the new legislative changes recognized the most recent iteration at APSEA, so we'll be back. I suspect, it wouldn't surprise me if it's in the Spring of 2007 that we'll be looking for some time to discuss the Handicapped Persons' Education Act in Nova Scotia.
MR. PORTER: With regard to APSEA and realizing that this is something created within the four Atlantic Provinces, when we talk about Nova Scotia specifically, is there unanimous agreement amongst the board members of APSEA, given that it is four provinces, as to what we would do here, moving forward with policy and procedure, et cetera? Would that be something that would be agreed upon by all provinces?
MR. COCHRANE: Yes. The deputies serve as the executive committee of APSEA, and then we have the 12 member board, basically we're all involved in the strategic planning exercise and the policy initiatives associated with APSEA and so on. Most issues that would come forward would be agreed to and if one of the partners has a major concern, then obviously it's in all of our interests to make sure that partner's concerns are met. The last thing we want is to take a unit that serves Atlantic Canada so well and cause one of the partners to do something about the relationship that wouldn't be beneficial.
So we really do things by consensus, but we're pretty well like-minded in the kind of service. We actually attach ourselves to the service with different degrees. We don't provide the same kind of service through APSEA on P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador as they might in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. For example, the francophone system in New Brunswick doesn't use APSEA. So we all work our way through these policy issues and discussions and most of the time it's quite congenial.
MR. PORTER: A little bit about school boards. You made a comment earlier about the targeted dollars, I think that might have been the language you used, and the school boards say, well, just give me the money and maybe we'll do what we like with
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that. Is that a mentality that has just been out there, that the individual school board thinks they know best for their board and they move forward with that?
MR. COCHRANE: Each year - I mean there is a certain amount of their money that is unallocated, but almost all of our new initiatives are very targeted. That's by design, to make sure that we create that equality of educational opportunity across the system, but they constantly tell me that we should just give them the money. I listen and say thank you and they tell the minister, and luckily they've been fairly supportive and we continue to do what we're doing. As I said earlier, the only person in the province who has to talk about the educational opportunity being equal in Nova Scotia is really the minister, but we try to recognize it.
We also deal with boards regularly and talk about it. If they have a special initiative or a project, we'll look at that kind of funding. I was talking to the superintendent yesterday from Halifax and depending on how the application of the money under supplementary funding is done, they may have a staffing issue and we're not going to see that happen. So we had a discussion and said, let's see what that looks like and what the implementation date is and so on.
[10:45 a.m.]
So we really have a fairly good relationship, believe it or not. The superintendents meet every month, at what we call the Education Consultative Forum, and really they are the management team of the education system in Nova Scotia. So they are engaged - they're not always happy but, at the same time, we have really good discussions.
MR. PORTER: The priorities for school boards state, maybe to my knowledge or lack of knowledge, that a child is the same in Cape Breton as in Yarmouth, but yet the boards seem to have such different priorities. Why is that? I can't quite understand why there's such a difference? It's Nova Scotia, it's not Cape Breton, it's not down in the west, it's Nova Scotia.
MR. COCHRANE: Board members, by the nature of the democratic system, come from constituencies within school board areas. I see at least one here who was a school board member. They bring issues forward, obviously, from their constituents. For example, in Annapolis, the TA ratio is for every 68 children, there's a TA. The provincial average is 75. So they make decisions in their board specifically based on the educational needs of their community. They try to do that inside of a limitation. For example, when we went into provincial funding for Reading Recovery, two boards had no Reading Recovery. They obviously didn't think that was needed in their particular jurisdiction, based on the kind of money they had. So now that we're provincially funding it, every board has Reading Recovery.
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It's a variation. At one time, boards were much more autonomous than now, and that does cause some concern. But at the same time, you are the funder and we are trying to make sure there is that equality of opportunity across the province.
MR. PORTER: So the equality of opportunity is there. Maybe my follow-up question will be, is there consistent application?
MR. COCHRANE: Yes. For example, Reading Recovery is 20 per cent. A number of our programs are very specific so that there is that same opportunity. For example, the textbook allocation, the credit resource, is given per pupil. So it's the same across the province for that one. The funding formula has several parts, all of which are different, but nonetheless they do recognize there are some differences. We know that if you have a proliferation of small rural schools, your operation is going to be a little different. We know if you are, for transportation purposes, transporting 30 per cent of your kids for an average of 20 kilometres, it's different than the board that's transporting 98 per cent of their kids on average 55 kilometres. So we do recognize in the formula that these differences are out there.
MR. PORTER: Well, obviously we do pretty good in math in Education, in keeping track of certain things. That goes right into my next question with regard to ratios, and this is something that - obviously this program has been in place for many years now. The student ratio population, has it changed in the province? If so, how much?
MR. COCHRANE: It's interesting, we lose - I shouldn't say lose, because it gets people excited - the system has a reduction of about 2,500 students a year. That has been pretty consistent for the last five or six years. When I say lose, that means that if there were 146,000 kids last year, there might be 144,000 this year. We know where they are, we didn't just lose them. But the ratios across the province are a little different. For example, when we look at the enrolment decline and how many students, we track that. Unfortunately, there's a disproportionate reduction going on right now in the Strait and Cape Breton. We see a reduction, and so on, in those boards compared to the year before and so on, different than what they were.
Just an example. In 2002, Halifax had 37.6 per cent of the population, and they now have 38.2 per cent. So, automatically, you can see a shift, and the money under the Hogg formula will begin to follow those kids, although we put some protections in there and so on. Cape Breton is a good example. In 2002, they had 13.2 per cent of the student population in Nova Scotia, which was 150,000 kids at that time. Now they're down to 12.6 per cent out of 142,000 children. They lost almost 2,000 kids in the last three years. Obviously that puts a pressure on that board to try to deliver the services in the same way. Thus, they had five schools, last year, they were looking at closing, and so on. Boards are trying to adjust all the time to that.
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We track it; we're aware of it. Boards are certainly aware of their circumstances. Virtually no board is growing, except a slight increase in CSAP, which is the francophone board across the province, because the facilities are now getting to substantive equality, and we're working our way toward that. They're a growing population. They're encouraging the ayant droit, the francophones who are entitled to go to the French first language system as opposed to the other system.
Other than that - Halifax is growing in percentage, but even in population it's not growing. It has a bigger percentage of the population in the system, but the actual numbers are down over what they would have been three years ago.
MR. PORTER: So the reduction is basically smaller families, kids graduating, moving on . . .
MR. COCHRANE: Up until recently, our graduating class was about 12,000, 12,500. Our Primary class is about 9,500. So as you extrapolate that through the system, you're going to see that continued reduction.
MR. PORTER: Just on EAs - I have a couple of minutes left, I think. A question with regard to EAs, and we've talked quite a bit about EAs here this morning and their training and their abilities. I know some of the EAs have been in the system for maybe 15 years or more now. Some of those EAs, though, don't have a master's program, some never went to a post-secondary education. That's a grandfathered clause, I guess we'll say, as far as . . .
MR. COCHRANE: We wouldn't expect an EA to have a master's. Basically, for a long time, the entry level was Grade 12. We are now looking for some post-secondary, either a certificate or a diploma from a community college or a private career college or some other set of qualifications. We try to make sure that their qualifications match their workload. We have collective agreement issues on transfers and so on, but we do try to match that up so that no one is disadvantaged as a result of changes in the kind of student they're dealing with. They're a pretty resourceful group.
We do a lot of in-service. When schools and teachers are out at in-service, very often our TAs are taking in-service, as well. You must remember, when we first started in that field, and a number of members who were educators will remember, most of the time a TA was associated with a physical issue. Now the vast majority of our TAs would be dealing with a medical issue, a behavioural issue, autism, severe learning disabilities and so on. So the system has adjusted. Boards are doing really good PD for these people. We have raised the bar, we are now, at the entry level, looking at a different level of qualifications.
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MR. PORTER: Okay, master's may not have been a good example - post-secondary in general was what I was thinking. You've answered a bit of my next question with regard to EAs attending the in-services. I know they go often, and I guess they go regularly with the rest of the teachers on in-service days. We talked a little bit about some of the medical training. They obviously must have some basic first aid, CPR, for some of these kids who are in school who are - whether they're autistic, or whatever they are, obviously there's a medical need for a lot of these students.
MR. COCHRANE: As I said earlier, we try to track, and if you're going to get a student coming into your care next year who has a catheter and so on, or has diabetes or epilepsy or anaphylactic issues and so on, we make sure that person's ready for them and trained. There is some movement as a result of seniority and those kinds of things. All of our people have some background in WHMIS, all have background in first aid, and more intensive training in those areas, depending upon the nature of their client. We are also doing a lot of work with non-violent crisis intervention, those kinds of issues and so on, how a TA deals with a child who may be having a reaction to something that has gone on in their life.
Our people are well trained. We're trying to keep them current. It's an obligation of the employer, but it's a shared obligation, and most of our people are very actively engaged in making sure that they have the qualifications needed to deal with the child they may be assigned.
MR. PORTER: So there is a basic minimum for each and every EA who is out there?
MR. COCHRANE: Now, bringing them in, they have to have that training or that diploma certification beyond Grade 12.
MR. PORTER: What takes place during the in-service days? What type of education are the EAs receiving, and is it specific to their . . .
MR. COCHRANE: Just as an example, we have a racial equity policy and a code of conduct for student behaviour. We would do PD for our teachers on racial equity, and the TAs would be invited into that situation as well, so that they get the same kind of training that they do on the provincial policy associated with that. Maybe I'll ask Ann if there's anything different than that, but we do try to make sure that we give them training specific to what their needs are going to be.
MS. POWER: Each board has to decide, each year they set their priorities around the types of initiatives that are ongoing, then what part of that initiative the teacher assistants may need some additional training on. So, for instance, what I mentioned before, autism is a good example of where teacher assistants will need new training in
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that area, as the teachers do. So the Student Services coordinators and the boards and the principals and people who are working with teacher assistants will decide how they can best implement that during the year. Very often that might be parts of sessions with teachers, it might be specific in-service sessions or professional development and training for the teacher assistants if they're doing a specific part of that initiative.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Order, the time has now expired for questions and I would invite the deputy to make some closing remarks.
MR. COCHRANE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I really do appreciate the chance to be here. We're not shy about trying to be accountable, we're not shy about defending what we do, but we're also not shy about recognizing that we have to do more. It relies upon all the MLAs understanding the system and the needs so that Cabinet Ministers, government members, Opposition members are out there in that discussion about what we need and support for initiatives that we put forward.
I think we have gone a long way and come a long way, but there's more to be done. We recognize that and will continue to push the envelope, to make sure that our professionals and our budget allocations and our board knowledge and our provincial policies and the qualifications of our individuals are out there to meet the needs of a very diverse student population. I wouldn't want anyone to think that the deputy thinks everything is wonderful.
I try to explain things as best we can, but we do know we need to do more. We do know that the ratios aren't where we want, we do know that some kids fall through the cracks, but we also know that we can continue to rely upon MLAs and parents and teachers and professionals in our system to continue to move forward. O2 is a really innovative project in Nova Scotia that's going to meet some of the demands that we recognize the system hasn't met to the degree that was needed in the past. So we don't have our head firmly in the ground, but we want to make sure that we continue to move things forward.
I was thinking of a quote that Dalton Camp came up with one time. I know that sometimes we do get long-winded. But it's not just me, if you noticed - did you notice that? To invite an educator or someone like me who feels strongly about what we do, to talk about education and not be excited and enthusiastic and long-winded, is like inviting a cannibal to dinner and not expecting them to eat. Thank you.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. On behalf of the committee I'd like to thank all of the members. I understand that Mr. Steele has one additional item of business.
[Page 40]
MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Yes, Madam Chair. The committee has had a very busy schedule of meetings in the month of November and we haven't really had time to stop and reflect on what we've done and I think it is important that the committee do that, that we actually follow up on things that have happened. Therefore, I would move the following motion:
That the Public Accounts Committee direct its Chair to table a report at the next sitting of the House of Assembly stating that a witness, namely Ms. Heather Foley Melvin, declined to answer certain questions put to her by the committee and that the committee recommend to the House that she be found to be in contempt of the House and punished accordingly.
MADAM CHAIR: Is there any discussion on the motion? Mr. Colwell.
MR. KEITH COLWELL: I'm surprised by this motion but not surprised. Would the honourable member provide me with a copy of that?
MADAM CHAIR: Yes, we could, I think, get copies of this circulated. Mr. Steele.
[11:00 a.m.]
MR. STEELE: Yes, by way of brief explanation, while the member for Preston is reading the motion, the appearance of Ms. Foley Melvin was the first time, certainly in my recollection, that I remember a witness, a civil servant particularly, appearing before this committee and refusing to answer a question. I believe that it fundamentally undermines the work of this committee if a civil servant can appear before us, refuse to answer a question and then have nothing happen as a result. I think for the integrity of this committee, for its good functioning in the future, it is imperative that witnesses who refuse to answer questions know that there are going to be consequences.
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Colwell.
MR. COLWELL: Yes, I believe that the honourable member's motion has some merit and some validity; however, I would like to consider this. I'd like to defer this to our next meeting of the whole committee. I would like to take this back to our caucus to have it reviewed there.
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Steele.
MR. STEELE: I think that's quite reasonable, since, obviously, the other members are hearing it for the first time. By a happy coincidence, the next meeting of the full committee will be during a sitting of the House.
[Page 41]
MADAM CHAIR: We will table the motion, and it will be brought forward for further discussion at our next meeting, which is on Wednesday, January 10th, at which time we have an in camera briefing session with the Auditor General. However, I believe that the motion will not be discussed in camera. It's our practice to have the AG in camera and then go back into the public domain for any other business. Is there any further business?
Hearing none, we stand adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:02 a.m.]
