Yes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my pleasure to rise on second reading of Bill 2, the Education Act. I want to congratulate the minister and his predecessors for the very large amount of work that obviously went into this, a large amount of consultation. There are many good things in this act, and we'll get into some of the things that I think could be tweaked in a couple of sections to make it an even better act when we get to Committee of the Whole. .
Today I wanted to give kind of an overview of what I would like to see in our education system, and of course there's no better time to discuss it than now since this act covers so much of what we're trying to achieve in the education system in Alberta. Of course, I will have some good things to say. I will also have some criticisms of where we've come from on a few things and some suggestions of actual solutions. So I hope that the Assembly and the minister will give at least some time to listen to this and, hopefully, implement some of the suggestions. Ensuring that Alberta's children have access to a world-class education is one of the most important roles the provincial government can play in building our province. In partnership with the important core values taught by parents, education provides a launching point for a healthy and contributing citizen. To deny a child a proper education is to greatly increase the risk of losing that child to ignorance, poverty, and even crime. The provincial government currently spends more per capita than any other province on education. Although many of those dollars are sent into programs and to the front lines where they are needed, the problem is that hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted and often misallocated by what has become a massive, centralized bureaucracy at the Legislature and a lot of political decision-making. As we have seen with the new Alberta superboard, placing control of program and service delivery in the hands of a large, centralized bureaucracy is a recipe for disaster. Even more disturbing has been the current PC government's record of selecting new school sites based on politics rather than actual need. It is far more transparent, efficient, and effective to decentralize decision-making into the hands of parents, local schools, and elected school boards. They best understand the needs of their students and would never think to play politics with our children's welfare. An important feature of Alberta's education system is that it provides parents with a greater range of educational choices than other jurisdictions in North America. This is one of the strongest points of our education system. Although strong public schools are critical to our education system, Catholic schools, public charter schools, private schools, specifically nonprofit private schools, and home-schooling provide educational opportunities and teaching methods that are sometimes unavailable in our public system. In fact, our public schools have responded to competition from Catholic, public, charter, as well as private and homeschooling by rolling out a diverse range of excellent core and optional courses that are benefiting students across Alberta. Continuing to foster a culture of educational choice, innovation, and competition will pay dividends for our teachers, our parents, and of course for children for decades and decades to come. As most teachers and parents well know, the traditional classroom model of a teacher lecturing students of the same age has become increasingly outdated. This type of system often results in gifted students having their potential restricted by peers who may not learn as quickly while students who have not grasped key concepts are moved on to higher grades and more complicated subject matter regardless of whether or not they are ready. This can result, of course, in frustration, the domination of a teacher's time by a few struggling students, and perpetual poor grades for some students, and frustration and poor grades can lead to behavioural problems. Furthermore, all students respond to different teaching methods in different ways. The standard classroom lecture model may work well for some students, but for others it results in a constant battle to comprehend and to learn. Fortunately, emerging technologies and teaching methods make it possible to centre teaching on the learning needs of each individual student. Taking advantage of these educational advances will ensure that our children are able to learn at the right pace and in the right way for them rather than participating in the traditional one-size-fits-all approach.Moving on to the area of special-needs students, something very near and dear to my heart, there are thousands of Alberta parents – and any of us who go door-knocking have met dozens and dozens, even hundreds of them – that have children with special learning needs. It is absolutely critical that we ensure that these students and their parents are provided with the funding necessary to address these challenges as early as possible in a child's development. Failure to do so can have catastrophic consequences for the child and the child's family and will result in massive, massive costs to taxpayers down the road.
Unfortunately, although our preschool programs for specialneeds children are actually quite good, one of the best in the country if not in North America, our programs and our funding for special-needs students in the grades 1 through 12 education system are chronically underfunded, frankly, and we need to do a better job. Often special-needs funding in the K to 12 system is difficult to access, with parents and teachers having very limited say in how it is best utilized. In most cases parents will want to work with their child's school to include their student in a regular classroom setting. When proper support is provided, inclusive education is very beneficial to both special-needs students as well as their classmates. Some parents may choose, however, a different option, and this choice should be respected as well. Each special-needs student is unique, very unique, and should in partnership with parents be considered and supported accordingly. We in the Wildrose feel that Alberta's students and parents deserve improvement in their education system. They deserve better. So the following are several points that a Wildrose government, if elected or if in opposition, would push for in order to strengthen our K to 12 education system by implementing the following reforms. First, we would empower individual public, Catholic, and public charter schools by implementing a funding model that sends per-student operational and maintenance funding directly to the school each student attends while accounting for the fixed costs of schools in smaller rural communities. Individual schools would then be able to determine how to allocate those resources most appropriately, be that to hire more teachers, for new equipment, et cetera. Second, we would transfer decision-making authority concerning the building of new schools away from the provincial government and place it squarely in the hands of locally elected school boards. This would be done by implementing a publicly disclosed and objective funding formula that grants capital funds directly to local school boards based on student enrolment, school utilization rates, student growth projections, and other relevant factors. We'd get them the capital funding that those boards need; they would decide where the schools are most needed. Third, we would establish multiple pilot projects across the province where open enrolment and tuition-free public, Catholic, and public charter schools are committed to opt into what we call a competency-based learning and assessment education model. Students in these schools would have the opportunity to learn at a pace and in a way that is tailored to their individual needs and would not move on to more advanced material until they had demonstrated strong understanding of a previously taught subject matter. Students who learn at an accelerated pace under this system would also be able to obtain college- and university-level course credits while still in high school. Students that start falling behind in this new system would be immediately identified and would receive the support they needed to catch up to where they should be at their age level. We need to end the days where we push kids almost like cattle through a stall just to get them to the next level so that we don't have to deal with them anymore in the grade that they're in. But we don't want to go to a system where if a child isn't excelling or passing a certain unit – they're not doing well in a certain area but are doing well in all the other areas – we fail them and send them right back to the beginning of their grade. Both are equally unacceptable. We've got to find a better way to use technology, to give our kids the learning opportunities they deserve. Fourth, we would grant public, Catholic, and public charter schools more flexibility to offer a specialized curriculum track in the trades, arts, music, physical education, and in business. Also, we would protect a parent's right to choose what school their child attends – be it public, Catholic, public Charter, private, or homeschooling – and continue the current Alberta Education practice of permitting a fixed percentage of regular per-pupil funding to directly follow a student to the nonprofit private school of their parents' choice if desired. Next, we would mandate the public reporting of each school's graduation rate and overall subject-by-subject assessment results so that parents have the information they need to make informed decisions regarding their child's education. Next, we would work with teachers and other educational professionals to replace the outdated and inadequate provincial achievement tests with a new standardized assessment model that evaluates a student's actual improvement and comprehension of subject matter and more effectively identifies where further learning is required. It is also important to ensure that teachers are provided with the professional development training necessary to implement such a model. In other words, Mr. Speaker, the PATs are very flawed, indeed. However, they do serve a purpose. They do allow us to have some sort of standardized assessment of our students that is open to teachers, and we would not be in favour of just simply cutting the PATs in favour of not having them and not having any way to assess our students. I hope that the minister will not go down that road.However, the PATs are flawed, so we need to look at a way that we can transition to a new assessment model using that competency-based learning method that was talked about earlier as one possible way to do it, where students aren't moved on in a unit until they've shown that they understand the material. This will give our parents and our teachers the ability to know exactly where their child is, where every child is at any one given time. They'll know exactly if they need to get more resources, instead of waiting two or three years later before they realize: “Oh, no. This child can't read. This child can't read at a fifth grade level, and he's in grade 7. This is a problem.” We need to make sure that our learning assessment model gives parents what they need, gives teachers what they need, and gives students what they need with regard to knowing exactly where their kids are in the curriculum at any one given time. Also, we would ensure that students are properly assessed and any special learning needs identified as early as possible in a child's development. We would mandate that adequate funding follow each special-needs student to the institution of that child's parents' choice to be used in a way that the parent and the school's learning support team feels will best meet the individual needs of the child. Right now special-needs funding is sent to the school boards, and they decide what to do with it. This model doesn't work. Every parent with a child with special needs that I talked to says the same thing: it doesn't work. The funding for special needs has to follow the individual child so that when a parent goes into a school and sits down with the learning support team and their child is assessed and is found to need X amount of support, that money goes straight to that child and not to the school board, which sometimes will hand out that money based on, well, different funding pressures and things that they're dealing with. Finally, we would respect the choice of parents who wish to give their special-needs students the opportunity to attend the same classrooms as typical students wherever possible and ensure that adequate supervision and support is provided to each such student so that the classroom can remain a healthy learning environment for all. Mr. Speaker, these are but a few of the ideas that we've been hearing as a Wildrose caucus as we go out and talk to folks. It has honestly been one of the most interesting and exciting areas that I have been involved with over the last two years, in particular, as Education critic. As someone who has four kids – two are in the public system; two are too young as of yet but will be there soon – I feel very passionate about this. I want to make sure that they and their friends and all Alberta's kids have an education system that is second to none, is best in the world. We have a good education system now. We can do better. Thank you very much.