The Canada Education Council?

DR. WATSON SCOTT SWAIL President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute

Education policy in Canada is a sticky wicket. Controlled by the provincial governments, the only authority the federal government has is through block grants and a few other legislative levers, almost all of which involve transfers of funds from the feds to the provinces. Money is the only national lever that really exists.

Provincial autonomy cuts both ways. Every region in any country wants local control. There exists a belief that decisions made locally can better suit the particular needs of that locality than something emanating through federal governance. And this certainly does and can hold true.

But as time goes on, the global economy grows, and the world shrinks, this argument carries less water. A main problem with provincial or localized control is that there is little regard for national development and global competiveness. True, Canadian students test well against the world, often ranking in the top tier of countries on tests. But this is happening by chance rather than by a careful act of consideration. And it is also true that each province is competiting globally. But together we prosper; divided we fail. READ MORE...

Visible minority or racialized groups are three times more likely to be poor than other Canadians because of levels of education, barriers to employment and low wages. They are also more likely to be poor because of persistent social exclusion and racialization in the labour market. It is estimated that 33% of Canadian children (children of Canadian born parents) will complete university. Performance of racialized groups varies considerably with about 23% of first generation and immigrant children from Caribbean and Latin American parents and less than 20% of children of Filipino parents completing university. Since level of education affects employment and income, without appropriate interventions the racialized income gap will likely be maintained for some time.
Source: Institute of Well-Being

THE NEWS

Suspensions on the Rise for Special-Needs Students
Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa's public schools are suspending a growing number of students with special needs from autism to learning disabilities, according to a new report discussed Wednesday by the board of education's Special Education Advisory Committee. The report also shows that at the same time overall suspensions have dropped almost 38 per cent over the past five years. But it is the increase related to the suspension of children with special needs that is raising concern.

Schools of Their Own
Ottawa Citizen
About one-third of aboriginal youth have parents who went to residential schools. The abuse that children endured in these school systems has been linked with the ongoing pathologies afflicting aboriginal communities in Canada, including violence, alcoholism and depression. One consequence of the school experience at residential schools is that it created, among First Nations peoples, a distrust of educational institutions.

Murky Education Road Ahead Worries Albertans
Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal
People are worried because so much is murky about what the Alberta budget review, combined with a potential massive rewrite of the province's School Act, will mean for students and schools. Education Minister Dave Hancock stresses that he never talked precise numbers, although other high-ranking education officials have. In a series of meetings with trustees, superintendents and other education groups, government staff asked them to describe the impact of cuts of $100, $200, and $300 million.

Ontario to Introduce Full-Day Kindergarten
Windsor Star
Premier Dalton McGuinty was expected to announce the creation of full-day kindergarten classes for 35,000 Ontario children this fall. The program will be phased in during the next five years. Research shows that children who attended full-day programs had better academic performance and social success as they entered Grade 1 than children who attended half-day programs.

Native Kids Don't Need Segregation
Mindelle Jacobs, Winnipeg Sun
Cities such as Edmonton and Winnipeg have aboriginal schools, Toronto opened its first Afrocentric school last year and many students across the country have an array of specialty schools from which to choose. But nothing done has prevented staggeringly large numbers of native kids from dropping out of school. Some say aboriginal school boards are the answer.

Big Ideas: 'Womenomics' Promises Some Wrenching Changes -- Particularly for Men
Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun
Millennia of male dominance in workplaces, governments, companies and countries could come to an end in the next few decades. This revolutionary power shift isn't due to social programs or social engineering. It's about economics. Some call it "womenomics" because women already account for 80 per cent of all purchasing decisions. More formidably, women may soon be the primary breadwinners. It's a trend that began more than 30 years ago as women flooded into colleges, universities and trade schools.

Jobs with Staying Power
Linda White, Toronto Sun
The global recession has taken its toll on numerous sectors, but health care, information technology, energy and skilled trades will remain strong regardless of the economic climate, while demand for sales professionals leads the pack. In Canada workers in demand include software engineers, application specialists, network administrators and programmers. It is in these positions where lifelong learning is critical.
 
Cash-Strapped Canadian Universities Compete for Foreign Students
CBC News
Representatives from 14 Canadian universities tried to attract Chinese doctoral students to their schools during a recruitment mission in Beijing last Friday, competing with institutions from eight other countries. And while diversity on Canadian campuses is one reason behind the recruiting drive, putting more money into cash-strapped university coffers is another.

Educating Canada
Toronto Globe and Mail
An important debate has begun about the quality of undergraduate education in Canada as leaders of five of the most distinguished research-intensive universities have recently argued for increased investment in graduate studies and research in their institutions in order to generate the innovation that will be necessary for Canada to remain competitive at the global level.

Jobs at Stake in Windsor, Ont., Meeting
CBC News
Skills development will be the key to tackling unemployment throughout Ontario but especially in Windsor, Ont., where the unemployment rate is consistently the highest among Canadian cities, a group of federal, provincial and local politicians agreed Monday. The meeting, titled "Economic Development and Jobs Creation Strategy," involved more than two dozen politicians, business representatives and members of the WindsorEssex Development Commission.

Sick Leave Blowing School Budgets
Suzanne Smith, ABC News- Australia
This month, 344 primary schools in New South Wales asked the Department of Education for what is known as a "short-term relief budget allocation". To translate the jargon, it means those 344 schools have not been able to survive on their global budgets - the money the Department hands out for essential educational and teaching resources. At the heart of the matter is the way schools are funded for employment costs such as sick leave.

Students Can Enter Virtual World to Test School Design
BBC News
Students and teachers in Birmingham will be able to test plans for rebuilding schools using a computer-game style virtual world. A project linking universities and software developers will allow schools to experiment with different furniture layouts and building designs. It has been likened to playing a computer game in which characters can move around a 3D environment. Birmingham has plans to rebuild or refurbish 82 secondary schools.

British High Court Says Jewish School’s Ethnic-Based Admissions Policy Is Illegal
Sarah Lyall, NY Times
Britain’s Supreme Court declared Wednesday that it was illegal for a Jewish school that favors Jewish applicants to base its admissions policy on a classic test of “Jewishness” — whether one’s mother is Jewish. The student suing is not considered a Jew by the school because his mother converted in a progressive, not Orthodox, synagogue.

Online Colleges Surge with Marketing to Military
Daniel Golden, Business Week
For-profit online colleges are taking over higher education of the U.S. military, lured by a Defense Department pledge of free schooling up to $4,500 a year for active members of the armed services, costing taxpayers more than $3 billion since 2000. The schools account for 29 percent of college enrollments and 40 percent of the half-billion-dollar annual tab in federal tuition assistance for active-duty students, displacing public and private nonprofit colleges, according to Defense Department and military data.

Student Loans Delays Continue over Christmas
Angela Harrison, BBC News
The latest figures from the Student Loans Company suggest 28,000 people from England are still waiting to receive their loans and grants. Another 38,000 still have applications in the pipeline, although nearly half of these have had most of their money.

Inclusion of Special Education Students Doesn’t Affect Classmates’ Education
In British Columbia, students with special educational needs typically learn in the same classrooms as other students. This inclusion policy may sometimes arouse concern that other students could see their education negatively affected. In a new study, the Centre for Education Research and Policy at Simon Fraser University found that increasing the proportion of students with special educational needs has only extremely small and statistically insignificant effects on the achievement of other students.