May 2, 1994                                                SOCIAL SERVICES ESTIMATES COMMITTEE


The committee met at 9:00 a.m. in the House of Assembly.

MR. CHAIRMAN (Gilbert): Order, please!

First of all, I would like to welcome the minister and his staff here, and welcome back the committee.

Mr. Harris informed me that he won't be able to attend this morning. He has to be pallbearer at a funeral. Dr. Joy died over the weekend, and he has to go to that funeral so we will have to carry on without him.

Before we welcome the minister, the minutes have been circulated and I would like for someone to make a motion that they be adopted.

On motion, Minutes adopted as circulated.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Just in case there are some people among the officials who don't know who the committee are, I will ask committee members to introduce themselves.

I am David Gilbert, MHA for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir.

MS. VERGE: Lynn Verge, Humber East.

MR. LANGDON: Oliver Langdon, Fortune - Hermitage.

MR. HODDER: Harvey Hodder, Waterford - Kenmount.

MS. YOUNG: Kay Young, Terra Nova.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Now, I will ask the minister, and the minister has fifteen minutes, to introduce his staff and make some opening remarks. Then the Opposition member has equal time that he can make a statement or they can question back and forth if they want.

I understand that Mr. Hodder is the education critic and he will be conversing back and forth with the minister.

I now ask the minister to introduce his staff.

I would suggest, if any of the staff are required to speak during this meeting that they introduce themselves first, because the people who are recording this know our voices by now but they don't know yours. So, for that matter, if you would introduce yourselves it would make it easier for transcribing this afterwards.

Mr. Minister.

MR. DECKER: Chair, Madam Deputy Chair, I want to introduce Deputy Minister, Dr. Len Williams. It seems that whoever sits in that seat has to have the name `Len'. As you know, Dr. Williams wrote the Royal Commission. He was appointed deputy minister just a short time ago. He is not involved in the day-to-day implementation of the Royal Commission report, but no doubt, as you can appreciate, being a member of the executive he does take part in most of the executive meetings where we discuss the Royal Commission.

On my far right is Dr. Bob Crocker, Associate Deputy Minister responsible specifically for the implementation of the Royal Commission report. As you know, Dr. Crocker has been seconded from the University for a two-year period, with an option for a renewal of an extra year if we need some further time for the implementation of the Royal Commission report.

Next to Dr. Crocker is the Assistant Deputy Minister, Florence Delaney, who is responsible for finance. What's the fancy title, Florence?

MS. DELANEY: Finance and Administration.

MR. DECKER: Finance and Administration. In actual fact, Florence runs the complete department, but we will say she is Finance and Administration.

The Assistant Deputy Minister responsible for K-XII is Dr. Wayne Oakley, and for the post-secondary is Dr. Frank Marsh, who is here. We have a Director of External Finance, Jack Thompson, and the Director of Personnel is Mr. Eric Yetman.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to take up any lengthy amount of the committee's time, using up valuable time that could be used for question period. I will just take a few minutes to say, though, that the emphasis this year is mostly on the implementation of the Royal Commission. We have new legislation prepared which hopefully will come before the House this session. It will be up to the House, then, what happens to it, whether the House wishes to pass it over to a committee or whether the House wishes to pass it.

As you are aware, within the past week or ten days we have already made a few minor changes to the legislation, the five items which were tabled in this House, I think it was on Thursday or Friday of last week. I don't think I will go into any more detail than that, Mr. Chairman. I will just make myself available for questions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hodder.

MR. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I want to say welcome to the members of the staff of the Department of Education, many of whom are well-known to me, and to compliment Dr. Williams on his Royal Commission report, probably one of the best analyses of the status of education in this Province that we have had in the last quarter century, in fact, the only substantive report, and that is not to say that there aren't things in there which cause all of us at some time to question how and when we should implement it.

There are some things I would like to bring out and things that probably we will come back to during the three-hour session but I wanted, first of all, to direct some attention to the general contents as contained in the last year's Profile-'92 - I understand that the data should be now substantively completed for Profile-'93 - and to ask the minister when that information will be tabled and whether or not there are some changes that have occurred from the last testing period, which I believe last year we tested the Grade - what grade did we do last Fall?

MR. DECKER: Bob, what did we do last Fall?

MR. HODDER: Grade III, wasn't it? Grade III, it was their turn to be tested, I know, and we did it in Grade III, Grade VI and Grade VIII - whether or not that data is now collated and when it will be ready for publication, and also some of the work that was talked about last year arising from some of the indicators in the Canadian Test of Basic Skills and particularly as it applies to the achievement levels that we see evident between boys and girls. For example, we find that while it is very encouraging to see the increased performance standards of females in some of the sciences and in the other courses, that we have been, for a long time, encouraging females to participate in - that's going up - at the same time we are seeing that the scholastic achievement of boys, as indicated in the public examination results and the courses that they are selecting, show there is some need to address that particular issue and I am sure that Dr. Crocker has some information and he might want to comment on that.

I wanted to address, as well, the distance education project, and some of the criticism that is coming in my direction is that, while it is a very worthwhile concept - certainly it is bringing quality instruction to many Newfoundland communities. I do believe there are sixty-four projects that are now operating in the Province or something like that, and I am wondering if there has been an analysis done of the impact, you know, what are the improvement standards that we are finding as a consequence of distance education? Is there an evaluation process in place on that particular project of the department?

As a general principle, I think it is commendable, and the question I would have is that, while we are making the opportunities available for the more gifted child in some of these communities, are we reaching out to all the children we should be reaching out to? These are just general questions on the project, not put in a negative way to the project, but certainly it is something we should be looking at. On the new role for parents in education: the Royal Commission talked of changing the role of parents. I know that the department has had a committee working with the Newfoundland and Labrador Home and School Association which is in the process of developing criteria for parental involvement. I would like to direct some questions in that area later on in the morning.

School improvement initiatives: that topic has been around for a long time and again I am wondering if there have been any evaluation of the process we have been following. The topic has been around for the better part of a decade now and we have had people working aggressively within the department and within the school boards to bring about school improvement initiatives. I am wondering if we have been evaluating the process and whether we can show that the school improvement initiatives of the department really are having an effect at the school level, and what criteria we are using to evaluate them.

I would like to address the issue of student aid and what has been the result of the meetings that have been ongoing between the student representatives and the department, and whether or not there have been substantive changes to the way in which student aid will be functioning in the next school year.

I would like to talk a little while about full-day Kindergarten, what plans have been in place, and whether or not the ministry is still committed to a full-day kindergarten, and whether or not the proper procedures are now ready to be put in place so that we can try to address the issue from the point of view of planning for facilities, for teacher education, and for the curriculum aspects of that.

There are many other issues but I think that would probably be sufficient for us to get started for the morning.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Minister.

MR. DECKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Profile-'93 - we can probably get rid of that one pretty fast. Dr. Oakley, what is the situation on that?

DR. OAKLEY: Preliminary statistics have been compiled for that particular document and the department is presently in the process of finalizing the document. We anticipate it will be available within the next six weeks.

MR. DECKER: Dr. Williams, would you like to speak?

DR. WILLIAMS: I would like to respond because you raised quite a number of issues. I don't intend to respond to them all because we would be here all day but I would like to share responsibility around with the department. Each one that you raised merits a good deal of discussion. I would like to respond in a more comprehensive way to your first question, and then if you would pick them up or whatever I will come back if you want me to.

The one on accountability, you touch on a very interesting and important function of what we are up to. One of the main thrusts of reform is not only to address what should be the main goal of schooling, but also, how do we account for its performance? The thrust of the department emanating from the commission is to focus the curriculum, because when you do that you say that one of the prime goals of schooling is academic, and while there are many other functions that would be laid at the doorsteps of schools we have to recognize and make it clear to teachers that the prime function is an academic one.

The school is an academic institution. It has to address the needs of all children admittedly and that is a very difficult thing in this particular societal context in which we operate, but if we do not place a paramount importance on the first that I am stressing, there is no way to talk about academic achievement.

So, for the department, it is to look to the curriculum, to attest whether it is of the highest quality possible, anchored with national and international. Our assessment is that we are now - when we've done that we have a curriculum philosophically that is as good as anything in the country.

If you look at the basic principles undergirding it, it is sound. There is some considerable work with respect to refocusing, particularly at the secondary level, where in the past ten years we had a philosophy in this Province of containment. There are just too many dropouts emanating from the 1960s, and in order to address the dropout dimension we tried to broaden the curriculum to make it interesting and attractive to keep people in school. I think, in some respects, in doing that we de-emphasis the academic performance dimension and we're now trying to focus that secondary aspect, really beginning at the junior high school level. That's one component but the other is accountability, which you put your finger on, accounting for performance of a system and we have made a number of major initiatives already.

We are going to establish an indicator system, Kindergarten to Grade XII and post-secondary because we have to focus on the philosophy of education for life. For too long we have segmented our thinking of the K to XII separate from the post-secondary, separate from all of the adult education initiatives that are going on in the Province. We need to develop a system where we have a smooth transition from the beginning of school right to the end of schooling wherever that is and if that's at sixty-five or seventy, then the education system must be able to make a smooth transition in the carryover of credits.

We will have an indicator system which will address a number of things. The first will be benchmarks or attainment targets. We will look to the end of primary and be able to address what young people should know in the different disciplines. What should young people, by the end of Grade 3, which is primary, know in mathematics and in language arts, for example? What should they be able to do at the end of elementary, at the end of junior high school and at the end of senior? At the end of senior we're working with the other provinces in the Atlantic region to develop what we call graduation outcomes. Now, all of that is the backdrop leading to your specific question with respect to testing. There is a lot of testing in the school system and we have to focus that.

With respect to your specific question of CTBS, we had a meeting on Friday and I've been told that for the first time we've exceeded the national norm with the mathematics component and the results of that will be coming out later. Last week the students wrote the national writing component and we're now moving towards a national science component in the next year or so. All of that, though, is one external attestment of performance which we have to link into. It's not enough simply to focus ourselves to our own goals but they have to be anchored nationally and this is what we're trying to do with these national assessments. The CTBS has been a troublesome one for a long time, as you know, and we are moving away from that more towards a criterion reference which means that it's directly related to our curriculum. That's why I began by talking about the curriculum, because it is so important, if you're going to do that, that your curriculum is of the highest quality in terms of being compatible with what is in Canada.

We will, within a year, have these benchmarks, these attainment targets identified - we are pretty well there now with respect to primary and elementary - and that will do two things; one, we will have a refocused curriculum, and two, it will be very clear to teachers, to parents and to students what is expected to be attained at the end of the, what I call, the transition level. We will then refine the testing mechanisms, if you like, or the assessment mechanisms, to see if the system got there, and CTBS, criterion reference test, mathematics test, science test, all of that sort of thing will be integral to the assessment of the system.

I will just stop there because -

MR. CHAIRMAN: That possibly is a good point to stop because Mr. Hodder's time has run out at that. I will now recognize Ms. Verge.

MS. VERGE: Thank you. I hope that is put in plain language for the parents and the general population, but it sounds like a worthwhile objective. I would like to ask a few questions about the modifications to Adjusting the Course. I take it this is the correction so that we don't go on the rocks. I should reiterate my support for the thrust of the recommendations in the Williams Royal Commission report for reforming the school system, and I hope that is where the government ends up.

In the modifications, point three has to do with uni-denominational schools. That is quite confusing. I would like to ask some questions about what is meant. On the one hand it says that in areas where there is now just one system - essentially where we already have uni-denominational schools - the first example that comes to my mind is the southern Avalon where most people are Catholic and there have only ever been Catholic schools. It says that the consent of at least 90 per cent of parents is required for the continuation of uni-denominational schools. How does that make sense for the continuation of one system in the southern Avalon to depend on the approval of 90 per cent of the parents?

MR. DECKER: Do you want me to address that now? In Adjusting the Course, it was our aim, it was our intention, let's say one minute after midnight, after the legislation was proclaimed, that every school in the Province would for a split-second be interdenominational. That was the thrust of Adjusting the Course.

The churches have argued all along that one minute after midnight when the new legislation comes into place all schools should remain as they are. Then, over a period of time, parents or whatever would make a request that this school would be interdenominational. We said: No, everything would be interdenominational first and the parents would request to be uni-denominational. What we have done now is, we have said we will have a transition period of about six months. During that transition period all schools will remain as they are, but during that transition period there will be a process put in place to determine whether or not a school will be uni- or interdenominational.

The churches said: Well, let us say one, two, three, four, five, these are all uni-denominationals. Essentially, we've been saying: Let us say all interdenominational. As a compromise, we have agreed that we have to put in place a process whereby maybe the churches, maybe the school boards, someone will say: The school in Trepassey is uni-denominational. Government might say: No, it is interdenominational. But to resolve that problem we will go to the people of Trepassey, the parents of the children in that community, who are either attending the school or are entitled to attend the school. They will decide whether it will be a uni-denominational or interdenominational.

Now, 90 per cent. Take a place like - and the one I'm most familiar with is Conche, where practically 100 per cent of the children will be Roman Catholic. Logically, you would assume that if the parents are asked would it be uni- or inter-, most likely they will say: It is interdenominational. Let's go to another place where maybe it is predominantly Roman Catholic but there are some Protestants there. Now, we have said in our viability guidelines, as we (inaudible) we not going to bus children past a viable school. So you have a viable school - let's take, for example, Bide Arm. In Bide Arm, the population is not predominantly Catholic, so I can use an illustration. Let's take Bide Arm. Suppose Bide Arm were 85 per cent Catholic and 15 per cent Protestant. Government will not pay to bus people out of Bide Arm to a Protestant school down the road. Every person living in that community is entitled to attend that school.

So it breaks out that 85 per cent of the children are Catholic and 15 per cent are Protestant. Now, should we say, with a school that looks like that, that it is a uni-denominational school? We believe not. We believe it is an interdenominational because of the 15 per cent who are Protestant.

MS. VERGE: Okay.

MR. DECKER: The trouble we have -

MS. VERGE: I only have ten minutes.

MR. DECKER: May we have leave? I mean, we are not going to fool up - the lady is on an excellent line of questioning.

AN HON. MEMBER: No problem.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.

MR. DECKER: The trouble I have, Vice-Chairman, is the 90-10. You are expecting every child to attend that school. Where is the cutoff? Is it 90-10, is it 85-15, is it 95-5? You have to remember that the minorities have rights as well. The whole system of education we have talks about minority rights. Personally, I'm having a bit of a problem with the 90-10. But that is the logic behind it. The neighbourhood school belongs to all the people in that neighbourhood. When everyone attends that school, if you find out that a significant number is of a minority group, whether it is Pentecostal or Catholic or whatever, somewhere they have to be able to say: It is our school, it is an interdenominational school.

MS. VERGE: Fine. The situation I am particularly concerned about, given the district I represent, the District of Humber East, which takes in part of Corner Brook, is the large communities where several "viable" schools (inaudible). In Corner Brook, whether we want it or not, or whether it is viable or not, we have an Integrated system, we have a Catholic system, and we have one Seventh-Day Adventist school for the lower grades. Many of us in Corner Brook would like to see neighbourhood schools which are interdenominational and with attendance zones for the respective neighbourhoods, so that in Corner Brook east everyone would go to the same couple of schools, et cetera.

Are we going to be able to have that under the point three - none of this is very easy for lay people to understand. The education jargon is bad, but when you get ecclesiastical jargon injected, it is impossible. Perhaps it is deliberate on the part of the people writing these documents to conceal the true intention, but it is really not very easy for parents to understand what is going on.

MR. DECKER: Yes. There are two - when we got into this modification we really talked about two scenarios. One was the Trepasseys, the Conches, the small, rural areas. The other was the urban areas where we said it is possible to have more than one viable school. The illustration we had in mind was Brother Rice and Gonzaga in St. John's.

MS. VERGE: I wonder if the minister could keep to the examples I'm giving. I would like to know specifically about Corner Brook.

MR. DECKER: Yes. The first thing any school -

MS. VERGE: St. John's is a case unto itself.

MR. DECKER: You first thing you have to remember, any school, whether it is Corner Brook, or whether it is Conche or whatever, would have to be viable. If there is only room in a particular area, neighbourhood, for one school, and if the make-up of that school is interdenominational, then it will first and foremost be an interdenominational school. If there is room for two schools - and the illustration I use - assume there are two schools in Corner Brook.

MS. VERGE: Well, in Corner Brook there are buildings and I can't imagine that we will have enough money to build new buildings. We are stuck with the buildings we have, most of which have many years of useful life remaining. So, with the buildings that are now on the ground in Corner Brook, can people get what most want, which is all neighbourhood interdenominational schools? That is what most of us thought the Royal Commission was calling for.

MR. DECKER: If what you say is correct, that most of the people want interdenominational schools -

MS. VERGE: Well, your own polls show that.

MR. DECKER: There is not a doubt in my mind that there will be all interdenominational schools in Corner Brook, if that is the case. But supposing -

MS. VERGE: What does the 90 per cent have to do with it?

MR. DECKER: The 90 per cent has to do with - we were thinking mostly about places like Trepassey and Conche and these places, but in the urban areas where there is room for several schools, there might be a group of people in Corner Brook, maybe there will be enough families in Corner Brook, who will want a Catholic school, that they can have a viable uni-denominational school which will not make another school unviable. That's very important. You can't strip one school to make a viable Catholic or viable Pentecostal. The norm must be an interdenominational school, but if there are enough children in one area to make a viable uni-denominational school, then we will allow it.

Dr. Crocker, maybe you can help me out here. You know more about that even than I do.

DR. CROCKER: A brief additional comment, I think, on the urban area.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Could you please identify yourself?

DR. CROCKER: Bob Crocker.

The urban area situation, as the minister said, is different from the rural in this sense, that we assume that there are sufficient schools that if there is a relatively large number of people of one denomination they can, somewhere in that locality, find a school in addition to the neighbourhood schools that might exist.

If we take the Corner Brook example, a very nice example, I think, would be the distinction between, say, Herdman Collegiate and I think it's Regina, the Roman Catholic high school there. Under the system that's being proposed, if there were sufficient Roman Catholic parents in Corner Brook who indicated, through whatever consultative mechanism is going to be put forward, who indicated that they wanted to retain that school, if that school already exists, if that school doesn't, in the process, make another one non-viable, the argument is that there would be no particular reason why a Roman Catholic high school still couldn't exist. If there weren't sufficient parents to make the school viable, then it couldn't exist.

There may well be, under these circumstances, a shift of students from one school to another, and in the short term it may even create some space problems, but the general idea is that if there are enough buildings in the town, and if there are enough parents of a particular denomination to justify setting up the school, and if there is no additional busing required to do it, then there would be no reason not to do it.

MS. VERGE: To continue with Corner Brook, the high school situation is easy; there are two central high schools. One is now integrated with the larger population; the other is Catholic. The problem arises with the primary and elementary schools, where people are being bused from one neighbourhood across town to another neighbourhood, but if you allow the continuation of a uni-denominational primary or elementary school, then it becomes impossible to have neighbourhood or shared or multi-denominational schools because there is a limited number of buildings, so you can't have it both ways. If the one building in one neighbourhood is going to be taken by one denomination, then obviously everyone else is going to have to be bused somewhere else to go to school.

DR. CROCKER: I think this is a matter of zoning - it is entirely possible. Let's say we had a town - I don't know exactly how many primary and elementary schools are in Corner Brook, but there are several; most of them would become neighbourhood interdenominational schools. On the other hand, especially in a town such as Corner Brook where enrolment has been declining, there may be a building that is about to become vacant, or with a little bit of shuffling of students, a little bit of rezoning, there may well be a building that could be made vacant. If there were, and it wouldn't matter where that building was located, if it was going to become vacant, or if through some rejuggling of students, through zoning, all students, or most students, could still attend their neighbourhood school, if there were a certain number who didn't want to attend, or whose parents didn't want them to attend the neighbourhood school, whose parents were willing to bring them to whatever school is available to be uni-denominational, then that school would be uni-denominational in the same way that in many localities alternate schools are set up at the instigation of parents. The parents are willing to bring their children to those schools, and they don't even have to be uni-denominational. Another good example would be a French immersion school.

Under these circumstances, the children wouldn't be bused to these schools. The schools would be set up at the parents' initiative and the parents would bring their children there. Most other children, however, would still go to neighbourhood schools.

Now, there is a possibility, if there is a very large number of parents wanting these kinds of schools, it could then begin to interfere somewhat with the neighbourhood concept, but by and large there is a sense that this would shake out reasonably well, especially given that over the years denominations have tended to build parallel schools in neighbourhoods so that it's not unusual to find two schools in close proximity to each other. One of these could become, in the future scenario, the interdenominational neighbourhood school; the other could conceivably become the uni-denominational school for a particular group - that line of argument.

MS. VERGE: It sounds like a more complicated system than we have now.

DR. CROCKER: Yes, it is complex.

MS. VERGE: Who would get to participate in the decision-making? Would it just be parents of children enrolled? Would you have periodic reviews? What happens if the parents vote one way the first year and a different way in the third year?

DR. CROCKER: In an urban area we would anticipate that this wouldn't be problematic because the 90 per cent criterion, or whatever criterion you set up, wouldn't have to apply in an urban area. Effectively the uni-denominational school in an urban area could be 100 per cent of that particular denomination. It would be assumed, at least over a fairly lengthy period, that there would be sufficient children coming up through the system to keep the school viable. Once the school is no longer viable, then it disappears anyway.

MS. VERGE: How do you define viability?

DR. CROCKER: We are in the process of trying to define viability. It is not an easy matter, but it would be done on the basis of programs, enrolment, busing patterns, and things of that sort. The idea would be that the school would be set up through some consultative process initially and as long as there were sufficient children who continue to want, or their parents continue to want them to attend that school and to keep it viable, that school could continue being a fully 100 per cent uni-denominational school for as long as it is viable.

MS. VERGE: In an earlier version of Adjusting the Course or correcting the course or whatever the titles are, there was a clause about - similar to what is in the Charter for official languages protection, ensuring that parents could have their children continue in the school they are in now and have other children or siblings attend the same school as the older children. Is that contemplated in this latest mix?

DR. CROCKER: By and large it is contemplated.

MS. VERGE: In other words, is there going to be some provision for continuity?

DR. CROCKER: By and large it is contemplated, yes. However, in the case of situations where there are parents who will wish and insist that their children attend uni-denominational schools once these are set up it would be anticipated that at least some of the children, perhaps even most of the children in that future uni-denominational school, would have to move from other schools in order to do so. That would be their choice, in that sense, because they could always go to the neighbourhood school. If they are in the neighbourhood school now they can always stay there.

The idea here is to shift, if you like, the initiative for creating uni-denominational schools to those who want them, and then under these circumstances they are the ones who would be expected to move the children, not the other way around. We would anticipate most children would remain in their neighbourhood schools, and their siblings and so on.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Verge, I'm wondering if - you are operating now on the leave of the committee and we have a couple of more speakers. If you could clue up that topic with another couple of questions and then - so the next time you come back you will be on a new topic.

MS. VERGE: Okay. I will ask this of the minister. Is the current plan having the House of Assembly pass new legislation, then having school board elections, and then allowing the school boards to hire or appoint their CEOs and their administrative personnel, in that sequence?

MR. DECKER: The plan is to pass the legislation and then, in the interim, appoint boards - I think that is what we are talking about - appoint a board for a six-month period.

MS. VERGE: Who would appoint the boards?

MR. DECKER: The minister would appoint the boards - for a six-month period. During that six-month period we would arrange the elections and so on. The CEO - when do we intend to hire the CEO? During that appointment time?

DR. CROCKER: (Inaudible) CEO, that would be the first action of the interim board, to hire the CEO.

MR. DECKER: The board would hire the CEO but -

MS. VERGE: This is a major encroachment on local governments. In other words, the minister is going to pick the boards and the minister is effectively going to hire the CEO before you allow school board elections.

MR. DECKER: The problem is, it is a time factor. We are trying to get the boards in place as fast as we possibly can. I believe it is quite common. What happened the last time? Didn't they appoint the boards for an interim period when the changes took place in 1969?

DR. CROCKER: I'm sorry, I don't recall. (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: Yes. It is -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) appoint these from existing boards.

MR. DECKER: Yes, of course, you would most likely look to existing boards. But probably, what might be of some concern to yourself, it certainly is to some of the superintendents, is that, even after the boards are elected, in our Adjusting The Course, Part II and, I would assume, in the legislation, we are saying that the minister, whomever he or she happens to be, would also approve the hiring of the three directors ten years from now. We see - and especially I could put forward a case for the chief director, whomever he or she is.

MS. VERGE: What is a chief director?

MR. DECKER: The superintendent. We are using -

MS. VERGE: Oh, okay.

MR. DECKER: They are calling them directors.

MR. CROCKER: The new terminology will be directors and assistant directors - not that that matters a great deal.

MS. VERGE: A little more confusing.

MR. DECKER: Okay. For convenience I will call them superintendents.

MS. VERGE: Okay.

MR. DECKER: We are suggesting that from here on, the Department of Education, through the minister, would have an input as to whom the superintendent, the assistant superintendent and the financial administrator are; and the argument we are giving is this, especially in the cases of the superintendent and yes, the assistant superintendent, too, with curriculum: There is a role which - they have an obligation to the Province as a whole. These school boards are handling millions and millions of dollars, there is a -

MS. VERGE: But will you go through the Public Service Commission in hiring the chief directors or superintendents?

MR. DECKER: We haven't got down to that detail yet; that could be one possibility, but -

MS. VERGE: Will there be an affirmative action policy to try to get some women in these administrative positions, given that we have never had one single woman ever in our whole history (inaudible) school board superintendent position?

MR. DECKER: We have not got down to these details yet but I certainly share your concern about the lack of women.

MS. VERGE: How do the churches feel?

MR. DECKER: We have not discussed this with the churches.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Anyhow, thank you, Ms. Verge. I think we will now recognize Mr. Hodder.

MR. HODDER: If I could continue on with the same line of questioning and then we could go to something else after.

I do have some grave concerns about the dual loyalties of the chief director, in that we are going to have school boards and it is the school boards that have the legal responsibility to spend money and to look after the taxpayer's interest, you might say, and I don't see that situation being different from the manner in which the Federal Government puts money into the Province or the Province puts it into the municipalities or umpteen different ways in which money is transferred from one governing group to another. I do see a potential for tremendous difficulties developing over time between the superintendent and/or the director as you want to call them, and his or her school board.

It works quite well in the municipalities where there are tens of millions of dollars that are transferred every year to cities and towns and other jurisdictions, but I am wondering about this divided loyalty. You are going to have a director, a CEO appointed by the school board, who will be answerable to two different authorities. You know, the school board is going to be evaluating this person, the department is going to be evaluating this person -in theory it seems to be okay but the practical reality, when you get into a difficulty between a board and a superintendent or a director, it is going to cause tremendous difficulties, and at best, I could see it as an interim measure during a transitional period but not in terms of the long term. These school boards are, in terms of Newfoundland, substantive corporations that have legal responsibilities.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Chairman, I don't share the analogy of Provincial Government versus the Federal Government. You are really talking about two independent agencies, both of which raise money by taxes. Now, in the case of the school boards, at one time there were school tax corporations, but not anymore. The school board raises no money. They are spending the money which is given to them by the Department of Education. There are some precedents for serving two masters, if you will. The president of the community colleges is hired lock, stock and barrel by the Province, yet, he or she is also a servant of the college board in the community college system. So there are precedents.

The other one, which you raise yourself, is the role of the town. If you will check into the responsibilities of a town manager, you will find that there are certain circumstances under which that town manager does have a responsibility to even act contrary to his council and report to the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs. There is an acknowledgement there that the person who fills certain roles, performs certain functions, does have a responsibility to the larger entity, namely, the Province. I don't see it as being a major problem in the day-to-day working. He or she will be an employee of the board and 99 per cent of the time will be reporting to that board.

One of the weaknesses that I find in the present system is the existence of twenty-seven isolated boards which operate almost as if the government which is funding the whole thing did not exist. I think there is a role there. I will certainly argue strongly that we would leave that in place, whereby the person does recognize that he or she is an employee of the board, yes. But he or she also has an obligation to the Province which is paying for the whole shot, and he or she has to be part of the whole provincial system where education is being delivered, not only in his or her own board but is also being delivered throughout the whole Province. I think it will certainly improve what we have now if that position serves two masters.

MR. HODDER: I think we are all in favour of improving the existing system. I'm probably putting up warning signals or concerns about the further centralization of decision-making authority at the Confederation Building level, you might say. The whole idea of creating smaller numbers of boards is to have centralization occurring at the community and regional level and not necessarily to have a focus in the Department of Education.

I'm all in favour of having it more of a central authority and a more regional approach to education decision-making, but I'm a little leery of having these eight or ten superintendents who are essentially going to become with divided loyalties - you know, they are people who are going to be very busy, they are going to have a lot of things on their desk, you might say. And I just haven't seen the evidence that good functioning school boards can't really administer the kinds of programs that the department puts forward.

I would like to move to another topic.

MR. DECKER: Before you do, I should advise you, you are not the only one who is leery. There is a considerable amount of concern throughout the system about this dual role as well, so you are not alone when you are leery about that.

MR. HODDER: I know. The superintendents have done their homework.

On the issue of once you appoint your boards; therefore, all the existing boards then are ceasing to exist. Therefore, every teaching position in the Province, in essence, is then redundant. How are we going to overcome the problem that was created, for example, a few years ago - as the Deputy Minister would know - when we changed just a school. Mount Pearl Central High School ceased to exist, and the two schools were created: Mount Pearl Junior High and Mount Pearl Senior High. In essence, when the school ceased to exist, every teacher in that school then essentially became redundant and it was only by agreement being reached that we could have an easy transfer and division of staff. I'm going to ask the question of what progress has been made with the Newfoundland Teachers' Association and what procedures are in place to ensure that we don't have a lot of disruption occurring because of the difficulties that might come, albeit, there are positions guaranteed under the various legislation at the Department of Labour.

MR. DECKER: I think, Mr. Hodder, you put your finger on it when you said `agreement being reached'. Most people of good will want to see the system reformed and I don't think there's any difficulty in reaching an agreement. However, in the event that we don't, again there are precedents. I was Minister of Health when the Grace Hospital and the St. Clare's Hospital came together. Now, they have an agreement, the two different units of the same union made an agreement and recognized each other's seniority and what have you. In the case of the Janeway, where the Anderson Centre was taken over by the Janeway, an agreement was not so readily reached. But in the event there is no agreement, of course, we have a Labour Relations Board that will do these things, but I certainly don't see the need for that. I would say that we can do it through agreement. I don't foresee any major hurdles there.

MR. HODDER: Could I move to the - let's talk about the 2 per cent savings clause, the impact it is having on rural Newfoundland and the fact that the government has, by ultimatum, said that they will not sign a collective agreement in which the 2 per cent savings clause continues to exist; and the small schools policy that the department has worked out in which, as we all know, the 2 per cent savings clause was an initiative of the government and later on, rightly or wrongly, got added in as an addendum to the collective agreement.

What are the steps being taken, in this school year, to implement a small schools policy? Could the minister comment on what would be the - of the 362 positions that are declared redundant on the 2 per cent savings clause, how many of these positions will be, in essence, recovered by the school boards, and what criteria is being used?

MR. DECKER: For the benefit of Hansard - I don't know if this is being covered by the media or not, but for the benefit of anyone who doesn't understand what the 2 per cent rule is, the 2 per cent clause of the union, the NTA contract, says that no matter how many students are lost to a system, no matter what the impact of declining enrolment is, the board cannot lay-off more than 2 per cent of its teachers. Now, if you push that argument to its logical conclusion, supposing that all the people on the Great Northern Peninsula had to move off that peninsula for some reason or other, whatever it was, we would be left with about 400 teachers up there who are being paid from the public purse. Now, that's the effect of the 2 per cent clause, and it's on a board level. It's the board, if it were on a provincial level it wouldn't be quite as bad.

We have said that we will not sign another collective agreement with the 2 per cent clause in it. That's not to say that we won't recognize that there are places like Harbour Deep, like Conche, like Red Bay, like Pinware, like North West River, and what have you, that have a problem with small schools. So we have to address these small schools based on a provincial policy. We can't just say, if the small school in Harbour Deep is lucky enough to be part of the Deer Lake School Board, which has twenty-eight teachers on holdback, then their problem will be dealt with. Supposing they didn't have twenty-eight teachers on holdback, they'd be left with one teacher for thirty-five students. So we recognize that we just can't say if enrolment declines at a certain rate that we can let all teachers go proportionately. We recognize that. But we're coming at it the wrong way. The 2 per cent clause is not there to protect the school - the 2 per cent clause is there to protect the employment of teachers. Now, I look at that as a bad thing, because the schools are dependent on the clause in the collective agreement.

Supposing, for whatever reason, that clause comes out; your schools are left in the lurch. So I want to see a policy where, regardless of what happens to the collective agreement, we have a policy in place for the small schools and, as opposed to calling it a small schools policy, we are looking at an isolated schools policy. You see, you can have small schools and you can have isolated small schools.

You have two small schools in Roddickton, side by side. One is Pentecostal and one is Integrated. They should not be classified as small schools. The common sense for them is to come together and form one school and they wouldn't have to be a small school any longer, but the people in Harbour Deep don't have that option - they have only one school.

We want a policy that puts in place some sort of regulation or rule or understanding so that we will deal with the small schools specifically, but we will not encourage schools to be small. The ironic thing about it, a lot of the small schools legislation that we have actually encourages schools to remain small when they don't have to.

You talked about the number of teachers who have not been reassigned because of the 2 per cent clause and the fact that we left it out. Now, I don't look at it that way at all. You're coming at it from a negative approach. I look at it positively. We look, as a department, at the whole Province. How many teachers do we need to address the problem at Howley? How many teachers do we need to address the problem in the Mount Pearl school where you taught? How many teachers do we need? And we assigned 7,200-and-some-odd, whatever it was, to address the problem. Now, we believe we can address the problem with that.

As a result of that, there are 135 teachers who would have gone over and above the 2 per cent rule who will be redundant and, what is it, 190-something positions, I believe -

MR. HODDER: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: Yes, but twenty-seven, or fifty-four, I believe it was, co-ordinated, was it? Fifty-four. So they're not all coming out of the classrooms; fifty-four - two co-ordinators per school board. So I am confident that the number of schools that we have assigned is perfectly adequate to deliver the educational system this year, and I want the flexibility to be able to say if we need another 100 teachers I'll do it, but if we need 100 less we'll take them back. We don't have that flexibility when we're bound by a 2 per cent clause.

You know, as I do, that there is a lot more problem with - what's the opposite of declining - increasing enrolment in the Conception Bay area, in the Avalon North area, than there is in parts of rural Newfoundland, yet they're really having a tough time getting enough teachers in the Mount Pearl area where the enrolment has been increasing for a number of years.

Your argument has always been, we need extra teachers.

MR. HODDER: We do.

MR. DECKER: But Appalachia, we have forty-six teachers on hold-back.

MR. CHAIRMAN: As interesting as the topic is, Mr. Hodder's time has expired. Does he have leave of the committee? We have several speakers lined up. It's interesting, and I know everybody wants to hear him. Does he have leave of the committee to ask one more question to clue up this line of questioning?

AN HON. MEMBER: One more question.

MR. HODDER: The concern we have is that the decisions are being made at the school board level right now with twenty-seven school boards making decisions on staffing for next year. The complaints of parents is that the school boards are making decisions about dropping programs, about essential services like guidance and these kinds of things, and that there are interim measures being made that are made because the school boards are making them in the absence of what they interpreted to be a well-defined criteria under a small schools policy.

Again, the small schools policy was an initiative of the Newfoundland Teachers Association and had nothing to do with collective bargaining at all. It just happened to have `snuck' in there over the years and it was an initiative of the Newfoundland Teachers Association itself. The concern is not, for my part, a negative one. My concern is getting the criteria out there that will satisfy the concerns of parents, whether the schools are isolated or not. But there is a real concern in many communities that the school boards are making decisions that are negatively affecting these communities and I am wondering if the minister could assure that the precise criteria are being communicated and are understood, and if the department is monitoring this very closely as far as isolated communities are concerned.

MR. DECKER: I will ask Dr. Williams to deal with that specific issue.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Dr. Williams.

DR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, we are monitoring that very closely. As you know, the deployment of teachers is the responsibility of the school boards.

AN HON. MEMBER: Exactly.

DR. WILLIAMS: That is why it is of such concern. The department determines the actual number to be given to the systems and then each school board allocates according to its priorities. We have been working with the superintendents in recent days on that very thing and are continuing to do so.

There is a broader context in which we have to place all of this. The 2 per cent, as was indicated, was a formula brought in to deal with decreasing school enrolment and the protection of teachers. Unfortunately, what it did, since it wasn't corrected, was it enabled certain school boards to build up an abnormal number of teachers in surplus - in surplus to our regulations for allocating teachers, I should say, not necessarily in terms of a surplus of need as they perceived it. And we had a board with 20 per cent more teachers than it should have received.

Consequently, that had to change, because every indication tells us that our enrolment is almost on a precipice fall and going to go down. We lost over 3,500 students this present year over last. That will give you an indication of the decline of our population, and the projection is just as dramatic for next year. So, something had to change with respect to that formula.

The second component of it that we have to look at is the small schools formula. We still have that, by the way. The troublesome element in the small schools formula is that in this Province, with multi-denominational schools, it protected the denominational component of the system. Because the formula obviously was advantageous to the maintenance of small denominational schools.

The third element is distance education. We've moved significantly in the last few years to deliver the senior high school course credits through distance education. Indeed, we now can deliver all of them. The problem is, of course, getting funding to go to as many sites as we would like to. That is costly. In this present year we have eleven teachers employed by the department who are teachers through the distance education media. We have to extend that because as the minister said, there will always be small schools in isolated communities and that is what we have to look at. More importantly, though, we have to define a foundation program for these schools. Each child should be entitled to a foundation program. Once you determine that then you have to determine the kind of resourcing, whether that is teachers on site plus distance education, or what mix. That is where we are moving. Distance education has the ability for us, particularly at the high school level, to carry all of our high school credits. It is a very costly venture.

We will be looking at all three of these in the next little while to see what mix makes most sense. To your question specifically, we are monitoring very carefully the need in communities where a school must exist. However, we cannot maintain regulations which would support multiple schools in settings where one school would do.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you Dr. Williams, thank you Mr. Hodder.

Ms. Young.

MS. YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Minister, I'm very pleased that I have the opportunity to attend this morning. As a former educator, my prime concern is that each and every student in Newfoundland is educated to the highest standards that we can attain. I'm also very pleased to hear about the isolated schools policy because that sort of covers off some of the concerns that we have in St. Brendan's, where we currently have eight teachers in an all-grade Roman Catholic school. They are also availing of the distance education program and from what I hear, it is working very well. I want to congratulate the department on these initiatives.

I'm also concerned, though, that teachers are portraying a very negative image to students regarding curriculum and classroom size. I'm sure you read the letter that I forwarded to you from one of the students who had been given a lot of negative information. That is a concern of mine, because that student was undergoing a lot of stress when she was considering the courses that she would be enrolling in, in the next school year.

As a Kindergarten teacher, I would like to know more about the Kindergarten program, if it is a full-year program. I'm quite familiar with the half-day, but when we are going to a full-day curriculum I would like to think that the curriculum is such that students are - I don't know...it is a concern of mine that we have some kids being bused in. It is sort of a long day when you consider the busing. I'm hoping that the curriculum is varied enough so that it meets the individual needs of all of these children.

With regard to the dropout rate, I understand that because the fish plants operated in a lot of communities before the collapse of the fishery, many students went to work at the plants during the summer, got big dollars and then dropped out of school. Is it too early to have statistics on what's happening currently? Maybe I could also ask the question, too - there's some talk in my district that there may be an all-grade school set up to accommodate students from the Lethbridge - Musgravetown area. Is there any data that shows that there's a higher dropout rate of students in an all-grade school?

MR. DECKER: Thank you. I'm going to ask Dr. Crocker to deal with some of these issues, and because these are his favourite issues, I'll give him an opportunity to expound on them.

MS. YOUNG: Thank you.

MR. CROCKER: Thank you, Mr. Minister. I'll try to respond specifically.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would you identify yourself again Dr. Crocker just so we know that - those people up there won't know you, you see.

MR. CROCKER: My apologies, we keep doing that - Bob Crocker.

I'll try to respond to some of the specific questions but also perhaps range a little more broadly because I think the questions in some ways had broader implications. On the question of whether teachers were giving negative images of the current curriculum, that's not something that I know anything about. I think it is fair to say, yes - I think the minister referred to it earlier - that studies of the curriculum that have been done hasn't been as comprehensive a piece of work as you might like. We intend to do more on the high school curriculum. But studies that have been done lead us to believe that the curriculum in itself, in this Province, is in reasonably good shape. There are clear exceptions in the high school curriculum - I won't get into that in detail unless you wish - but by and large, the curriculum that we have in this Province is driven by - I'm sorry?

MS. YOUNG: Maybe I set you off on the wrong foot by what I said. They were concerned about the courses that they would be able to avail of in the high school because of, I guess, the 2 per cent clause and changes in the overall structure in the education system.

MR. CROCKER: Okay, let me take a slightly different tack, then, because of that. The hope is and the intent is as a result of a high school review that we intend to conduct - the Royal Commission recommended that this be conducted by the way, so we will follow it through; we're just about ready to do that. The intent is to try to create a system in which the difference in programs available to students across the Province is much smaller than it currently is. That is to say, students in the smallest schools, we would argue, ought to have access to a program which is pretty comparable to what exists in the larger schools. The current high school program is not built on that premise. It's built on a different premise and that is the premise that there's a wide range of programs available but the assumption is that only the larger schools can offer these although we would - I guess there's an expectation that the smaller schools exert extraordinary efforts and that has included, in many cases, putting into those schools more teachers than might otherwise be there in order to offer the program. Now, that becomes extremely costly. So the line of argument we would take is that there seems to be a sense on the part of the public, and I might note, not just locally but nationally, that the high school program needs a bit of tightening up, it needs a little bit of narrowing, it needs greater focus. In doing that, what I would anticipate would come out at the end of the day would be a curriculum that we would have to identify as a foundation curriculum that would be available to all students in the Province by whatever means and at whatever cost, I presume, and that the difference between that curriculum which might be offered in say, St. Brendan's and the curriculum that might be offered in Mount Pearl Senior High School would be much smaller than it is now. We can hardly sustain a situation in which a bare bones curriculum only is offered in small schools and a much greater, much more varied curriculum, some of which may be questionable in character, is offered in the larger schools. So it is a narrowing of the gap we hope to achieve. Now, I don't know if that's a helpful answer to your first comment.

MS. YOUNG: Yes, thank you.

DR. CROCKER: Full-day Kindergarten, you mentioned, and I'm not sure precisely what the question was there, whether it was on the desirability or the intention to proceed or perhaps -

MS. YOUNG: No, you have developed a full-day curriculum, haven't you?

DR. CROCKER: It's in the process of being developed, yes, and in fact there will be an intensive effort this summer on that. A committee made up of teachers, the primary consultant in the Department of Education and a person from my own staff, of the Royal Commission Secretariat, have been working on that now since about February. The intention was to mount an intensive effort in the summer when we could get somebody to come in full-time for a period of time. We have examples from other localities, of this sort of curriculum, and I would certainly see no difficulty in putting it together.

There are some arguments about the nature of the Kindergarten curriculum, whether it should be primarily a kind of a broad readiness type of curriculum or a much more focused, if you like, academic curriculum. We have an example from New Brunswick at the moment, of which our committee is saying: well, perhaps that one is a little bit too loose to our liking, that sort of thing. That's being worked through and we would certainly anticipate that by Fall we would have available to the schools an outline of the proposed curriculum.

Now, since full-day Kindergarten will not be implemented until 1995, that also gives a bit of time to work the curriculum through the system a bit, perhaps even to have some schools that might want to start it in '94, act as experimental schools; in fact, there are some schools already offering full-day Kindergarten. So, we think we have room to manoeuvre and we will have by the end of the day, by September 1995, a very good Kindergarten curriculum.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Ms. Young, can you finish up with one more question?

MS. YOUNG: I just want to know about the dropout rate; I had asked about that. Are there any statistics available?

DR. CROCKER: On your specific question, there is no evidence available, that I am aware of, that as a whole, all-grade schools produce fewer or less graduates than the other kinds of schools. The question of dropouts is fairly complex, it's related to a large number of factors; you referred to the fish plants, as a very nice example. Well, fish plants may or may not exist in communities where there are small schools or all-grade schools, if that is a phenomenon, and again, we don't know that for sure either. If it is a phenomenon, it wouldn't inordinately affect our grade schools, it would affect schools that happen to be in communities where there is that kind of employment, so I don't think we ought to make any inference with respect to all-grade schools, the dropout rate one way or the other.

In general, there tends to be higher dropout rates and lower performance in rural schools, not vast differences but differences that are detectable, and that being the case, you might argue whether this is a rural/urban phenomenon or a socio-economic phenomenon more broadly, rather than simply saying it's an all-grade school issue or small school issue as such. There would have to be a connection, of course, between school size in urban/rural

areas.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Dr. Crocker and thank you, Ms. Young.

Mr. Smith.

MR. SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Minister, I would like to get back to the 2 per cent savings clause again, if I could.

In your response to Mr. Hodder, you referenced the Appalachia School Board as being one of the school boards that has a large number of teachers on holdback under the 2 per cent savings clause, and as you would be aware, I was in the employ of that school board prior to becoming involved in politics and I am quite familiar as to what the 2 per cent savings clause has meant to that school board and certainly to the school where I was Principal for a number of years, and what the withdrawal of that 2 per cent savings clause is now, in turn, meaning.

First of all, very specifically, in terms of the department's plans to withdraw these units, I understand a number has been set for this year, that they have been asked to remove from the - Is it the plan to remove all of the units that are currently on hold back?

MR. DECKER: Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Does Appalachia have forty-seven teachers on holdback? Forty-seven. Now, in an ideal world, it would be perfectly acceptable for Appalachia to have these forty-seven teachers on holdback, but the Pentecostal system in Newfoundland and Labrador doesn't have any teachers on holdback so we would have to make it available for - what's available for one part of the Province has to be available for others unless there are some extenuating circumstances, for example, a small, isolated school.

We looked at the Appalachia School Board and again, as I told Mr. Hodder, we appointed to that school board an adequate number of teachers to deliver the programs required by the Province. I don't have it off the top of my head, I don't know if the deputy does, just how many teachers we allocated, but you know, we are coming at if from a different way. We look at the need in each board and we assign the number of teachers; as a result of that, I suppose if you want to interpret that as being a loss because of the 2 per cent savings clause, Appalachia lost, how many - 20 per cent? twenty teachers or something like that?

AN HON. MEMBER: At this point in time?

MR. DECKER: Yes.

AN HON. MEMBER: Around twenty teachers.

AN HON. MEMBER: You are losing twenty-four this year.

MR. DECKER: Twenty-four. The intent is not to take them all. The intent is to provide the system with the number of teachers that are needed on an equitable basis throughout the Province so that you don't make chalk of one and cheese of the other. You address the small school problem, you address the special situations, but you make it available on an equitable basis to all the people of the Province. That is the intent.

I don't think at the end of the day we will have fewer teachers proportionately than we have right now. I would think we will have more proportionately. You have to remember, of course, that there is declining enrolment, so in absolute numbers there will be fewer teachers, but there is no intent to make the teacher-student ratio any smaller.

MR. SMITH: But the allocations to the school boards will not be done on the basis of programs so that schools will be guaranteed - for example, the school that I was Principal of in Lourdes, right now has an enrolment of about 200 students. There will be no guarantees, not right now, under this arrangement - parents living in that area, sending their children to that school, don't have any other options - that they will have guarantees to programs like music, phys. ed, and things of that nature. I mean, that is not built in, it is at the discretion of the school board. They have so many units and they have to be able to determine how that can be done.

MR. DECKER: Dr. Williams (inaudible).

DR. WILLIAMS: You are quite right in the sense that at the present time the salary units are allocated to the school board, as you know, and the board decides how it is going to deploy them - in that particular case, if the board puts priorities around certain of the curriculum subjects that you've referred to, then these programs will be on, and if not.

The unfortunate thing about the 2 per cent is that many boards got into many creative initiatives, worthwhile initiatives, that went beyond the school and into the community. In your area you would know what I'm saying. Unfortunately, the resources just weren't there in terms of our being able to maintain that. With respect to what programming will go on under the present formula, it will be the determination of a school board.

MR. SMITH: If I could just pursue that a little further, because to me it is very relevant. I certainly can speak first-hand from my own area. Having been in that position for twenty-two years, I have seen a lot of things develop over the course of that time. I think, one of the things that I find most encouraging about my experience in Port au Port was that we had initiated a number of things that were proving to be very, very worthwhile. For the benefit of those who might not be aware - and I'm not going to go into great detail about the whole community education initiative, which I think is something that the department really needs to pursue quite closely. Because I know from my experience in the system that for years we were very frustrated, we were trying so many things, and really not getting anywhere.

There were two things, for example, that were happening in my school when I left there last year that I have great concern about. They are quite unrelated in a sense but equally important. One of the programs that was offered at the elementary school in Lourdes where I was Principal, that we were able to do because we had that 2 per cent savings clause, was an extended core French program. As you are probably aware, that school is located within a bilingual district. While we have the French school system at Mainland, which is a French first language system, we also have recognized that in that area we have a quite a few people of francophone descent who want to preserve their language and their culture. There has been a tremendous movement in the last number of years to try to promote that. As a result, because the school board had that luxury, one of the things we were able to look at was an extended core program, where in the school that I was Principal of, up until this year - I understand the program has now been dropped - all children in that school did daily periods of French. Again, because we wanted to try to allow these children as much opportunity as possible to get the exposure to their language and culture so that they could possibly retain or regain it.

The other program that was brought in a couple of years ago - and it was brought in again in direct response to the efforts of that school board to deal with the drop-out problem. Back in 1980 when we started looking at seriously the drop-out problem in our school system - and I submit that we were probably one of the first systems in the Province to start looking at it in a realistic and comprehensive way, we determined that in the Lourdes school system we had a dropout rate at that time of 70 per cent, and that's not that long ago. From that time on, up until present, it was a constant struggle devising ways to deal with it, and one of the very innovative programs that was introduced and to me proved to be a real breakthrough, because one of the factors that was identified as contributing to the dropout was underachievement. In that area, for a various number of reasons, a lot of our children do underachieve and, subsequently, if that continues then the inevitable happens, and those of you who are educators certainly would be aware of that.

This reading recovery program which was brought in a few years ago - a tremendous success. Now, I understand that at my school the decision has been made - they have made their choices - they are going to continue with that program for next year. This again to me is a very, very worthwhile program dealing with something that, if we don't deal with it, we are just spinning our wheels.

The problem that I have, having lived in that system and worked in that system is, if we don't deal with the problems adequately there, what's going to happen, for example, if that program is withdrawn, some of these students who can now be salvaged will be lost, and what will happen is that we will pay for this down the road. We save now, but down the road, ten years from now, these students are not going to graduate. They are going to drop out and they are going to be the unemployed, the people to whom we can't give the proper skills to go out and make a living and make a contribution to society.

So the argument I've always put forward is that we're going to pay one way or the other, and I would argue that I would be more inclined to make the investment up front rather than be paying for twenty-five, thirty or forty years down the road.

I guess it's at a philosophical level that I have difficulty with it. To me, in terms of what we're doing and what's happening with that school board I have grave concerns, and I would certainly like to think that there was some latitude there, to ensure that some of these programs do continue to exist. Because if you take out - if you have twenty-four this year - if you go after, you're saying it's forty-six or forty-seven, I thought it was around forty, but you would know better than I, so you are looking at taking out the same number again next year, then I can assure you, in that school in Lourdes, those programs are gone. In Lourdes next year at that school you will just have the basics. Music will almost certainty be gone, physical education will certainly be restricted. I have difficulty with that. That, to me, is retrogressive. That's the kind of school system that I came through.

I recognize the economic restraints and everything else. I am just wondering, in your deliberations and in your considerations, is there some way that we can look at trying to guarantee some semblance of comprehensive programming within these schools, because I would be terribly, terribly disturbed if I were to go back to my community next year, to visit that school that I left last May, and see just the classrooms, and the four classroom walls where the children go in and that's it for the day - it's a three R's - and there are really all these other things that larger schools in the Province have access to that there's no way we can make them available to us.

Of course, with that sort of thing I don't see distance education. I don't see, for example, in physical education, where distance education is going to have a direct application there. The same thing with music - maybe at the high school level it might, but I am talking about the programming at the primary and elementary levels.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Smith listed some excellent programs. The extended core program is a good program; attempts to deal with the dropout problem is a good program; the reading recovery program which he mentioned - these are good programs, but the dropout program is not confined to the Appalachia area. The extended core program, albeit might not be specific for French but there are places in the Province.

We, as a government, have to determine whether we're going to make extra funding available so that all of our people, whether they're in Appalachia or in Nain, can have access to these programs. The inequity in the system has been that by the luck of the draw a particular school board would end up with extra teachers and they could do all of this, but by the misfortune of the draw, other schools, and I could name many in the Province, other school boards did not get these extra teachers and, of course, they couldn't go with the extra programs. So we have to deal with the needs and the wants of our people on a fair and equitable basis.

You're a member of the same party as I, and our argument has been from day one that we believe in fairness and balance and we try to treat our people as equitably as we can throughout the Province.

We have to look at the Appalachia area, and there are places where schools can amalgamate and be able to deal with these issues. You talked about the unfortunate situation where a school in your area would not have the same services as a school in a larger area. My answer to that - in my own area where I live there are places where schools could amalgamate and come up with the same services as a school like Mount Pearl Central High.

When we've used up all our opportunity to amalgamate and bring schools together it is then we have to go into the public purse to try to put the extras in place through distance education or through extra teachers or what have you.

If you go around the Province you will find that a lot of the school boards did go out into the community, and that's not a bad thing, but we have to remember first and foremost that the Department of Education is set up; our workers are with the schools. The extra things in the community are good. Maybe we have to try to find extra money there for it, but what upsets me is that it's happening just at the luck of the draw. It is not a concerted - it might be a plan in a particular school board, but something is happening in Appalachia, something in happening in the Strait of Belle Isle, something is happening somewhere else, and there is no co-ordination. To me, it has to be a public policy, except the pilot project where you run it for a year or two, but you have to accept public policy which is applicable to all of our people, and we can't depend on being just lucky enough to have a few teachers left over. What would happen if, by the luck of the draw, you did not have any teachers over and above normal? And there are people exactly in that situation and we have to try to deal with them all in a fair way. Dr. Williams, is there something extra you want to add to that?

DR. WILLIAMS: I know the programs you refer to and they are excellent, there is no doubt about that, but it raises the broader question of what kind of personnel do we need in the school system, and this is a major issue that we are going to have to face. At the present time, all personnel is defined by salary units, meaning teachers, and I think we are going to have to look to a redefinition of that; we have social welfare needs in the system where a certified teacher and the allocation of a teacher-salary unit is just not the way to address it.

We are also going to have to take a look at the responsibilities of teachers. We are one of the few provinces in Canada, for example, where we have specialists in music, which you referred to, in the primary and elementary systems. In most provinces, and certainly in England and in other countries, that particular discipline or subject, if you like, is part of the regular teacher's responsibility, integrated within the curriculum for primary and elementary. We went the specialist route which is a very costly route, to the point now where, when boards begin to cut back because of this kind of response, the first thing that would go would be that which stands out, meaning the discreet music unit, which means the total music program, which doesn't make sense, because music should be an integral part of the curriculum, just as art, and that's the other one you hear about. So we have to take a broader look as we approach the next decade: what kind of personnel do we need?

It may not be certified teachers; there would be other kinds of personnel, and you mentioned the reach to the community, and I use it in terms of social work, not necessarily social workers as graduates of the Faculty of Social Work, but new kinds of personnel to address new needs that are in the school. Now, that's going to have to be worked out in collaboration with boards and with the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association, but if we are going to deal with the problems in the school system, in relation to the kinds of resources that are going to be given to us, we have to rethink the resourcing of the system in terms of personnel.

MR. CHAIRMAN: It is now 10:31, so your time has elapsed, Mr. Smith, but you will have another chance if you want it.

There is coffee prepared now in the government members' common room for the benefit of the officials who are with the minister; I am sure he knows where the government members' common room is and he will lead you to that. For the rest of us who know, we will get there and I will like to have us back here if we could, at 10:45, because we have an interesting morning, it is going too fast, as a matter of fact, and we hope to clue it up today. Thank you.

 

Recess

 

MS. VERGE: As I am next on the list of questioners, I will take my ten-minute turn and I will trust the Member for Port au Port to hold me to my time limit.

The Chair's list of speakers is: Verge, Langdon, Hodder and Smith. I would like to switch to the topic of public libraries for which the Department of Education assumed responsibility in December, I think it was. The government received the report of the Saunders Committee on public libraries last summer; I asked for it month after month after month, and eight months later I managed to obtain an expurgated version of the report and get it out to the public. Now, I would like to ask some questions about the recommendations in the report, at least in the public version of the report, we will never know what's in the private, confidential version.

The recommendations include eliminating twelve local libraries with an indication that the particular twelve libraries had previously been identified as targets for closure. What is the government going to do about that recommendation, and what are the twelve libraries under the gun?

MR. DECKER: Didn't we table the list of the twelve libraries?

MS. VERGE: I didn't see them.

MR. DECKER: I'm sure it was given out.

MS. VERGE: Oh, good. Well, let's have them now, then.

MR. DECKER: It's no big secret. Some of them were within two kilometres of each other. Some of them were underutilized. Do you remember the names of them all? Does anybody remember what they were? I know there's one in St. Lunaire-Griquet up in my district; there was talk about the one in Windsor; there was one somewhere out around Spaniard's Bay; but I will provide the full list, that's not a problem.

Dr. Williams, do you want to speak to the libraries board?

DR. WILLIAMS: I don't have the list in front of me, but I would like to speak to that report.

First of all, the Saunders report came to the department with the change and had to be referred to Justice - there were individuals identified, and whether or not we could make that public, and that sort of delay. Then, when it came to the department, it came with a directive from the government that the department would put a short-term and long-term plan in place to deal with libraries, and that's what I would like to speak to for a moment, because we did go to work on that immediately.

We have to blend the traditional concept of library as the centre of books with the information age and the information technology age that we're moving into, or we're now immersed in. We have to look at the thrust of the libraries with our thrust in literacy, and again, with our thrust in education, and try to bring those three thrusts together.

In the past, we have had multiple libraries spread out in communities, many of them with very little usage. Having said that, we had to try to get a profile of who the users would be, and generally they fall into two categories, these being school-aged children and older citizens of the communities.

Some of the initiatives that we are now into with the library board is with respect to trying to see where it makes sense to blend the thrust of libraries with schools and with other information centres in the community. In some communities we had the community library housed in schools, and we're following through in other areas, because of the profile of users, to see if it makes sense and what the constraints would be on moving these libraries into school settings or community college settings. Now, you would recognize that in some cases we're dealing with physical facilities and all sorts of problems in terms of external access and timing and that sort of thing.

Another thrust we're looking at is to give a high profile to the concept - and it may make sense, for example, in a particular region, of closing six or seven small libraries bordering on a regional mall and begin to look at housing an information centre, a library information centre, in one of our malls where most people go back and forth, spend a good deal of time these days, and make that a focal point.

In addition to that, we're trying to blend it, as I said, with literacy, with our literacy initiatives, and what kind of reading materials should the libraries be looking at. What kind of linkages should we have with schools? On a number of occasions now when we've had superintendents together we've had the director of the library board down and we're sort of talking to see what kinds of projects we can move on with that.

Within a few years, there will be a different library system. That is not to say that there will not be a stand-alone library in some communities, but there will be considerable initiatives to blend, as I said, information through technology, be that career information coming from one department of government now, or from the Federal Government, with the library and the school system. When I say `the school system' here, I really should include the college system, because we have to think of the libraries as an essential component of the educating of our people.

MS. VERGE: Okay.

One of the recommendations of the Saunders report is that the Public Libraries Board and the government begin planning for a library system that will eventually become the responsibility of municipal governments, somewhat similar to other provinces of Canada.

Now, as the minister would appreciate, there are major differences in the split in revenue-raising powers and service delivery responsibilities between provincial governments and municipal governments in this Province and in most other provinces of Canada. Therefore, assigning to municipal governments here responsibility for libraries when municipal governments, in many cases, can't even afford to pay for light poles anymore would simply accelerate the demise of the public library system.

Does the government accept that recommendation for the transfer of responsibility of public libraries to municipal governments, or is the government going to continue to accept responsibility and discharge that responsibility through the Department of Education in co-operation with school boards and community colleges?

MR. DECKER: Ms. Verge, you are quite right, there is a recommendation that we would put it to the municipalities. We have not made a decision. To make an observation, it is highly unlikely that we would put it over to the municipalities anywhere in the Province.

I want to address the libraries, and the deputy touched on it. I don't want to put in stop-gap measures. The whole thing, in my opinion, has to be reformed. We are looking at the community colleges and we are looking at other ways to deal with it throughout the Province. We have to bear in mind that they are no longer libraries in the traditional sense, they are information centres, and when you talk information centres you must have some sort of a computer network in place. The libraries boards themselves don't have any number of computers. They have no network. In the school system we have STEM-Net which is interconnected to practically every high school in the Province, and within two or three years every single school in the Province will be interconnected in the network system. The community colleges are looking at a network. Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador has a network.

We want to put something in place so that those centres - libraries, information centres - will be interconnected throughout the world and get out through the Province and, of course, get into the information highway and all that. That is extremely important. Now, the question is, how best to do that? In the recommendation they talk about closing a library here and a library there, which really is meaningless when you look at the big picture. They talk about closing up libraries which are less than two kilometres apart. They talk about closing a library - and I will give you an example: Out in my own district there is a library in St. Lunaire -Griquet which is sixteen kilometres from St. Anthony. And the recommendation was that you close it so that the people could go into St. Anthony and get their books or whatever. It might be a good idea.

However, the reality is that there are communities like Roddickton, Englee, Bide Arm, which are 150 miles from St. Anthony with no library. If you go throughout this Province you will find that we have 130 libraries, but there are places which are fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred miles away. So when we address the problem we want to - we have $7 million that we are spending there. I believe, if we took that $7 million and spent it differently - instead of going into spending a large amount of money with a computer system for the present libraries board, I think there is a possibility that we can tie it into some of our existing structures, be it the community colleges or the high schools.

If - and it hasn't been decided - if, for example, we were to take the five community colleges as the regional libraries, then each campus could be an offshoot from these centres. In communities where there are no community college campuses, then we could go into the high school. We recognize we are going to have to put up extra doors in the high school, we are going to have to make the high school available on certain hours and all that. The intent is, rather than go after the $500,000 or whatever we are looking for in the libraries board - rather than do it piecemeal, we want to put in place a program to make more available the services that the library, the resource centre, will offer, throughout the Province. Take advantage of the networks which are already there rather than spending a whole lot of government money into putting extra networks in place.

I'm not overly hung up over the ten or twelve libraries that are going to be closed. Maybe some of them, where they are two kilometres apart, might indeed be closed. I'm more concerned with making library services available to every single community in the Province.

MS. VERGE: Do you foresee a continuing role for libraries boards made up of volunteers? In particular, do you foresee a need for public libraries boards, local boards, regional boards or whatever, raising money?

MR. DECKER: There will always be a place for local input, there's no doubt about that. I can't see a time when ever government will refuse any money which has been raised by the public.

MS. VERGE: What incentive do you propose to give volunteers on libraries boards to raise money?

MR. DECKER: Well, I don't think it's a matter of giving incentive. The people who are involved as volunteers are not looking for any incentive. I mean, they want to make available a service to our people and we don't have to get out and give them candy for doing that. They do that quite willingly because they have a commitment to the people of their community.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Before I recognize the next speaker, I'm going to welcome to the gallery nine Level I students from St. Anne's School in Conne River, in that great district of Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir, accompanied by their teacher, Lynn Tobin and bus driver, Dan Jeddore.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Now, Mr. Langdon.

MR. LANGDON: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to go back and revisit for a moment that 2 per cent savings clause. As you know, in the area that I represent, in Fortune Bay, are some of the smallest schools and isolated schools that we find around the Province. I don't share the ideas of my colleague, the Member for Waterford - Kenmount about the 2 per cent clause gutting the rural areas, because in that particular board, the Fortune - Hermitage - Bay d'Espoir Board, I think there are three teachers in excess of what is allowed. When you look at many of the small schools that are not in the communities - there is only one school in each community anyhow apart from - there might be some shared services probably between Seal Cove and Hermitage eventually because they're in close proximity. Then you have students being bused from Belleoram, St. Jacques, Coomb's Cove and Boxey and so on, into the English Harbour area.

I taught for a number of years in the Grand Falls area and that particular board - even though you talk about the rural area, it is, in a sense, an urban area. On the West Coast of the Province, I think around the Stephenville area pretty much is where the other large number of teachers are on holdback. I have had compliments from the superintendent and people of the board there saying that this particular 2 per cent thing should have been addressed years ago and they are glad to see it happening at this particular time. However, I want to commend the minister and the officials in the department, because the minister has said that in many of these small schools and isolated schools, there is a possibility of extra personnel to man these schools so that certain benchmarks can be met as outlined by the department. Also, the distance education - I have distance education in the areas of Terrenceville, Rencontre, Seal Cove and Gaultois. These particular areas are doing very, very well with the distance education and I have to commend the department again for doing it. I know it's expensive but I'm hoping that you can expand and go further with that. So, two points on that.

The other point I want to raise again this morning with the minister and with the - primarily the minister, I guess, has to do with the facilities report. I want to find out - I think I know, but just for the record; as you know, the school in English Harbour West is dilapidated. The minister met with the people from the area only recently and I congratulate again the government, through the Williams report, on the initiative of having a provincial board to identify schools that need to be built on a priority basis. I spoke about it in the House here only recently, that there might have been some politics played within the Integrated system itself, where the school did not get completed for the English Harbour people. The fact remains that there is still no school there and from every indication the minister has given me, it will probably not happen for the English Harbour people this year until there is some agreement; and yet, we have in Grand Falls - and I understand it to be correct - 400 empty spaces between the Catholic and the Integrated system. The government cannot do anything to impede the Pentecostal board from building a school for 300 people, attaching the school to their church at approximately $1 million. It is these types of things that have been allowed to accumulate through the system and it has to be addressed. If we don't address it, then obviously, the system itself will not be able to survive, just by sheer economic things.

With that, Minister, how do you see if there is an agreement with the churches over the next little while - and let's hope that there is, because the government has moved, I guess, along with the churches to find a consensus - if that happens, then what chance do we have in the English Harbour West area of seeing a new structure within the foreseeable future to take care of these kids who come from all communities? The integration or interdenominational system is really not going to affect the area because you have all communities, all churches, in representing that one school. Obviously it is not going to be one that is going to become redundant within the next year or so.

MR. DECKER: As you know, Mr. Langdon, with the non-discriminatory distribution of funds, government has to give 56 per cent of our money to the Integrated, 37 per cent to the Roman Catholic and 7 per cent to the Pentecostals. As a result of that you see three sets of priorities drawn up, and the Pentecostals' worst school might not be near as bad as the Integrateds' worst school or as the Roman Catholics' worst school, or what have you.

Under the proposed system that we are putting in place there would be a provincial committee made up of three people appointed by the churches, three appointed by government, and the chairperson would be mutually agreeable to both the churches and government. That committee would no longer have a Roman Catholic list and an Integrated list and a Pentecostal list and a Seventh-Day Adventist list. That committee would have a list of all the schools in the Province, and the one which is in the most need of being replaced would be replaced first, regardless. The worst three schools in the Province could be Catholic, and that wouldn't matter, it would be done simply on the basis of need.

In my opinion, there has been some abuse in the system. I was invited to an official opening of a school in Bonavista two years ago. The school cost almost $7 million. It was a beautiful structure, glass, brick, and I mean it was - there were extra rooms in it. It was probably one of the best schools in the country. But while this school was built for a cost of almost $7 million, there is a school out in Brigus that is falling into the ground; there is a school down in English Harbour where the rain beats in through the windows. There is a school up in Hopedale - I was up there in the middle of the winter, and the furnaces just could not keep the heat there. You would see the snow drifting in.

So, you know, that can't go on. Yes, we would like to have $7 million schools in Bonavista, but maybe we should be looking at the possibility of dealing with maybe two schools for $3 million each. We want to try to put some sanity into the way schools are built, recognizing that we are a province that doesn't have all the money we would like to have. Hopefully, this provincial construction board, which would look at the big picture, would be able to address that.

To address the English Harbour school if, in your opinion, that school is indeed one of the worst schools in the Province, then it would be the first one to be built. If there are schools that are worse, of course, they will be first. The problem we are having right now - for a few years there, we would say to the DECs: You have $10 million, $20 million, what have you, but you can pre-assign for next year. So, this year with $10 million, if we were to allow the DECs, they could probably start ten schools, but our concern is, where will these ten schools fit in after the reforms have taken place? Will you have a Catholic school and a Integrated school side by side, one of which will disappear?

That is why we are being very cautious and not saying to the Integrated people: you can start this and that and the other thing. We are anxious that they only start schools that we think we will need, but we don't have the authority to stop them. If the Pentecostals want to build a school in Windsor, whereas you are quite right, there are 400 empty spaces in the other two schools - 454, I believe, to be exact - and they're building a school for around 400 when there is sufficient space there, under the present system, we have to give them the money, there isn't one thing we can do about it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have about a minute, Mr. Langdon.

MR. LANGDON: Okay. Well, I'm not going to be able to do what I want there.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, maybe if the committee wants to give leave we can let you clue up.

MR. LANGDON: Just one more question.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. By leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. LANGDON: This one should go to Mr. Crocker, I guess. Where are we now at this particular stage with the implementation of the report? How far along are we? When can we expect to see some tangible results of the planning and so on that you have put in place?

MR. DECKER: Mr. Chairman, that's a good question but he's not going to be able to do it in a minute.

MR. LANGDON: No, I have leave.

MR. CHAIRMAN: He has leave.

MR. DECKER: It's a good question. I think it should be dealt with. Dr. Crocker?

DR. CROCKER: I will proceed, Mr. Chairman. You obviously will cut me off as you see fit if I take too long.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Try to make it as brief as you can, please.

DR. CROCKER: I will try to be concise.

In terms of time, we're almost half-way through the mandate. In terms of the agenda it's not quite so clear. There are a large number of things on the go. I am confident, and I do expect that within the two years most of these things will settle down and we'll be able to say that we've made the necessary progress on virtually all fronts pertaining to the commission.

Up until now we've focused on the structural changes, as we all know, and at the staff level at least, the level of the secretariat and so on, we've now completed our work in redrafting the Schools Act and the Department of Education Act to reflect the reform proposals that were made in the commission and in the two Adjusting The Course documents, so at that level, I guess we can say we're finished; it's now in the hands of Cabinet and the Legislature ultimately.

There is one other act that will require some further work, and that's an act called the Teacher Training Act. We expect to do the work on that one over the next number of months and have it ready over the Fall, so at least that aspect of it, from our end, is complete. It now goes through the political process.

In addition to the legislative agenda we have established working groups in a great variety of areas, some of which are well along, some of which are nearly complete, and some of which are just beginning, some of which haven't even started yet. Just to use a couple of examples, and I won't elaborate here, we have, for example, a total of seven curriculum committees, all headed and organized by a member of the staff in the commission secretariat, the person that we have seconded from the school boards.

These seven committees range from the one dealing with the primary program in the full day Kindergarten all the way through to a committee dealing with the question of the revision of the high school program, the foundation program and so on, so there are seven of these altogether. They are just about finished their initial round of work at least. We expect, by June, most of that will be done, but there will be work that will follow from that. For example, on the full-day Kindergarten, we expect the committee to know where it wants to go at that point, by June, and then we expect to hire someone in the summer to actually do some leg work in putting the curriculum on paper, so by September that will be done. Now the various curriculum committees are at these kinds of stages.

We have the Teacher Certification Committee, which is a Standing Committee dealing with matters of teacher certification. They are dealing with the whole issue of teacher certification, proposals, that are in Adjusting The Course, and also with teacher professional development.

In addition to that, we have just completed a feasibility study on the establishment of a provincial professional development centre for teachers, and the report is in our hands now. We haven't yet decided whether to adopt the model they're proposing or whether to make some modifications, but that will be available reasonably soon and we expect to have a clear picture on where the professional development centre is going by September of 1994.

We have a group working on school councils, and fortunately there we have reached a collaborative arrangement with a group at Memorial University which, in turn, has been funded by the Human Resources Development Secretariat. They're moving on a series of pilot projects on school councils. In the meantime, the committee is working on questions of the structure of school councils and how they should function. I might note, by the way, on school councils, the basic structure will be addressed in the legislation so that they will have official status in that respect. We expect, over the next school year, 1994-1995, we will have a number of substantial pilot projects going in the area of school councils, so that will be well along. Again, by, I say, the 1995 school year we expect the school council thing to be fully into place.

We have, as the minister mentioned earlier, an ongoing project on indicators and that all ties in with the issue of accountability and the issue of achievement. Again, I won't elaborate on that but that is well under way.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have about a minute, Sir, to finish it up.

DR. CROCKER: Okay, that will be long enough, I think. That is well under way. In fact, that predated the establishment of our Secretariat so I don't see any problem with that one moving along.

Finally, I just note in passing three areas that we are only beginning, and they are three difficult areas. One is the complete revision of the high school program. The commission made a recommendation that that be done. We have the commission of study. The committee has now made terms of reference for a study and we have the commission of study in that area which we will do imminently.

The second area is very controversial and very troublesome. It has to do with classroom issues: Issues of discipline, issues of management, issues of disruption of classrooms. The NLTA and government have established a group under the collective agreement that has been working along on that one. They are just about finished their work, and when they are finished we intend to pick up and pursue the classroom issues and policies in that area in some detail over the next number of months. The final area that I will mention is special education where again the commission simply recommended that that one be studied further. It is a very controversial and troublesome area and we are just to commission a study in that area.

We expect those three studies, by the way, and other areas to yield policy statements perhaps by the end of this year. Perhaps we will call them `Adjusting the Course - Part III, Part IV.' I'm not sure what we will call them yet. That is what we expect to come out by the end of this year. If all of these things fall into place and the structural things fall into place, by the end of the two-year mandate we expect to have a pretty complete set of reforms in position.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

MR. LANGDON: Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hodder.

MR. HODDER: Some issues that I was going to raise, the special needs study, the difficulties of disruptive students, have been touched on by Dr. Crocker in the last few minutes.

I want to return to an area that I've had some interest in for a long time and that is the issue of teachers teaching in those subject areas for which they have training, and the difficulties, in particular, of being able to focus our training in the core subject areas, of being able to ensure that all children who are being taught in the core subject areas at junior and senior high school levels, in particular - because the primary and elementary we can deal with these on a separate kind of question. I will ask the minister and, I guess, through him, probably Dr. Crocker: What are we trying to do, or what is the progress being made, to ensure that teachers are teaching in the areas of their expertise, particularly at the junior and senior high school levels? What arrangements are being made with MUN to ensure that junior high school training becomes a distinctive part of teacher education?

DR. CROCKER: Thank you, Mr. Hodder. It gives me an opportunity perhaps to elaborate on the teacher certification and professional development element of this, which I didn't have a chance to do earlier.

Let me mention three sorts of things. As you would know, in Adjusting the Course - Part II a reference was made to a complete overhaul of the teacher certification system and changing the basis on which teacher certificates are issued. The basis would move from a strictly University course basis - as you know now, you can move from Grade V to Grade VI to Grade VII just by taking University courses of various sorts. It intends to move from that to a system based on professional development which is job-related and to a system of certificates which is tied in with that, furthermore, a system of certificate endorsements which would recognize the specialties.

At the level of certification you can control the kinds of programs that people take in order to achieve a certain certificate or a certain endorsement of a certificate. The actual assignment of teachers to specific duties is, of course, a teacher hiring and teacher assignment function which the school board would have. What we would hope is that the revised certification system would convey a message to the school boards of greater emphasis on specialization, of achieving a greater balance in the teaching force with respect to the areas of specialization that are emphasized, and so on. Then we would hope that the school boards can act in accordance with that to assign teachers in a way that is more closely aligned with their areas of specialization than is now the case. Although we have to recognize, of course, at the level of the Department of Education we couldn't dictate these assignments to school boards. We hope that common sense would prevail once the certification system is in place.

As for MUN, we have had some discussions with MUN with a view to ensuring that one of the major problems of the system over the last twenty years is addressed. That is, that we have created a tremendous imbalance in the areas of specialization of teachers because we haven't tended to emphasize specialization in the core areas. We've tended, interestingly enough, to emphasize specialization in areas such as music and phys. ed and we've turned out, through these specialized programs, a substantial and very strong core of teachers in these areas. These teachers, as it happens, as the minister, I think, said earlier, typically are not assigned to classrooms. They are additional to the classroom complement and that causes problems in its own right.

With that aside, in not emphasizing the core areas, what we have tended to do, quite inadvertently, is allow prospective teachers to choose whatever area they wish, and virtually all of them choose one area, namely, English. As a consequence, we have created over the last twenty years a surfeit of teachers who've majored in English and a dramatic shortage of teachers with majors in other areas, most notably mathematics and science.

We are engaged in some discussions with the University. In fact, having come from the University, I can say that in the high school program that one has already been addressed by clear areas of specialization in a revised high school program that has come into force this year. Revisions are now under way in the programs for primary and elementary school teachers, and I haven't yet seen the outcome of Memorial's deliberations in that area. I would hope that they would reflect much the same thing, so that the future generation of teachers will be a much more balanced group than is currently the case and their certificates and their job assignments will reflect this greater balance. So, over the next decade, as the teaching force changes substantially, we hope to be able to redress many of the problems that have been created over the last couple of decades in teaching.

MR. HODDER: If I could move to another area. Going back to something we said this morning about school busing and the implementation of the Royal Commission report on restructuring the school boards. Did I understand the minister to indicate that school busing will not be, in the future, a contributing factor to the maintenance of uni-denominational schools as opposed to interdenominational schools?

MR. DECKER: Let me clarify. The busing is not one of the things which is protected by the Constitution, as the hon. member knows. What we have said is we will not bus past a viable school. The illustration: We were busing a few children from Holyrood past twelve schools before they reached a school in St. John's. We don't foresee that continuing. If the parents want to bring their children to a uni-denominational school, let that be their choice, but the public purse will not pay to bus students past a viable school. That is the way we look at it.

MR. HODDER: If I can just interject there, go back to what my colleague said a few moments ago, about the proposal to build a new school out in Grand Falls - Windsor. You know that to make this new school viable, students had to be transferred from Leading Tickles, Point Leamington, Botwood - these are at the high school level - to make this new school viable. Because, if not, the student population won't be there. Does the minister propose that in the future students from distant places - we have students being bused today as many as thirty-five, forty kilometres - that that will not be the case in the future?

MR. DECKER: That is certainly the intent, for many reasons. One reason - it is happening in the Province, where because children are being bused from a particular community, then the school that was left there was made unviable. Pouch Cove, for example - it is quite conceivable that there are enough children being bused out of Pouch Cove that you could, indeed, have a viable school in Pouch Cove.

Now, surely goodness, the inconvenience of having to put children on a bus outweighs the desire that you go to a particular denomination and, you're quite right, there are children being bused thirty-five miles. Now that's bad enough, but what makes it worse is that they are being bused past schools that are perfectly viable.

If there is no way other than to bus them thirty-five miles, we would have to look at doing that and the Province would have to pay for it, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to bus children past viable schools to get them to a school of a particular denomination, and we don't intend to do that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have about a minute, Sir.

MR. HODDER: Okay.

Could we go back to this facilities report. I was going to make a point, a caution. I know there has to be changes to the decision-making system that's there now. We all agree that there are problems in English Harbour West, and there are problems in Brigus, and all the rest of it. My caution is to say that at the moment we at least have three groups vying for decision-making rights. My caution to the minister is to say that if we're not careful we will have fifty-two people sitting in this House here who will be putting a lobby forward, we will have fifteen Cabinet ministers, in their own right, putting forward their criteria - we all know from experience how the political system works - there will be ten school boards putting forward their criteria, so instead of having three decision-making bodies we will have seventy-seven, and in the absolute, practical world of reality politics, and having been involved for many years, as people know, we know what happens when you get regional councils out there, maybe even add these in, all of these various authorities. How are we going to assure, in the future, if we change the system, that it becomes absolutely depoliticized?

MR. DECKER: Your point is well taken, Mr. Hodder. If there is a good thing about the present system, it is that the party politics does not interfere.

MR. HODDER: We need to protect that.

MR. DECKER: That's right, we protect that.

If you would excuse me for a minute, I would say this, that in the Strait of Belle Isle district, which for seventeen years held out and supported the Liberal Party, we had the worst roads in the Province, we had the worst government services in the Provinces, because of the sheer political nature of it, but our schools, believe it or not, are no worse than the schools anywhere else in the Province, because that partisan politics was not involved. That is why we are so insistent that this body that we put in place will be arm's length from government.

The Premier, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, the Opposition House Leader, the Opposition Leader, whomever, will not dictate to that construction body, as now. You, as a member, can go to the Integrated Education Committee and lobby, if you wish - you will be able to lobby this committee - but the intent is that it will operate arm's length by legislation from government, and it will have a criteria which dictates that they build based on need.

Now, that need is going to have to be an absolute standard because what you can perceive as a need and what Oliver Langdon perceives as a need might not be the same. Therefore, we have to put absolute standards in place so that when we say that the worst school in this Province today is in Brigus, then you use a certain criteria to determine that is indeed the worst school.

Your caution is well taken, Mr. Hodder. I don't want a system where we build schools depending on how people vote. We have to build schools based on need, and your caution is well taken.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister. Thank you, Mr. Hodder.

Before I recognize the next speaker, I point out that we are into the last half hour of this session if we are to clue up at 12:00 noon.

I know that we have a bunch of questioners who are knowledgeable in the trade and could carry on for a long time. Ms. Verge and I are the innocents in this group here this morning - we are not teachers, you see. We have two more speakers right now, Mr. Smith and Ms. Verge.

The other caution that I would give you is, if we don't pass the heads of this committee at 12:00 noon today the chances of this committee ever meeting again in this session, because the time - we've heard in the House that the time is going to run out sometime within the next couple of days. The best we will ever get to do is call the heads sometime before we come back to the House. If the questioners would have short snappy questions and the respondents would have short snappy answers we might get through this by 12:00 noon and get the heads passed.

I now recognize Mr. Smith.

MR. LANGDON: Mr. Chairman, I will forego my questions for the Opposition if that would help.

MR. SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Does that mean I don't have to give snappy questions now since Mr. Langdon is not going to ask any?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SMITH: I would like to reference, first of all, the situation with the full-day Kindergarten. There has been considerable debate since the government announced its plan to proceed at some point in time with full-day Kindergarten. Despite what the Chairman (inaudible), I should mention that fifteen years ago I was advocating full-day Kindergarten. Today I'm not so sure that is the best route to go, because I've had some experience in the last five years in developing and implementing a pre-school program. I'm just wondering, in that whole debate - I'm sure there must have been some concern or some question or deliberation or consideration to looking at lengthening the junior Kindergarten program as opposed to full-day Kindergarten. I would just like to know why we opted for full-day Kindergarten over the junior Kindergarten.

MR. DECKER: I'm going to let Dr. Crocker go into the benefits or the pros and cons of full-day Kindergarten, but I just want to make a point, Mr. Chairman, about one of the things I've noticed in this Kindergarten debate.

One of the major problems we have in the school system is a lack of expectations. You don't expect a ten-year-old to perform at a certain level. The expectations are so low that our students are not putting everything into it. It became so obvious when we started talking about Kindergarten: Oh, those little four-year-olds or those little five-year-olds can't do that. Gee whiz, I'm a grandfather, and I know full well what four- or five-year-olds can do, how active they can be. I've had two children of my own. Don't underestimate what a four- or five-year-old can do. I think we have to get the expectations in there for our children. It is quite obvious that the people who are talking against this are showing the problem which is engrained in the system. Our expectations are too low for our children, and if we don't expect a lot from them we are going to get even less than that.

Now, in the event that I'm wrong, in the event that a child should not go for a full-day Kindergarten, there is always - there is a safeguard there. The age for compulsory education in this Province is six to sixteen. If we offer a full-day Kindergarten and your child is four-and-a-half, and you don't have the expectation that that child should do a full day, you don't have to send the child to school. Keep your child out till next year. He or she will then go and do Kindergarten. But I assure you that Kindergarten will be a full day in this country within three or four or five years and if we don't get in on it now we are going to be left behind. Dr. Crocker, maybe you can elaborate on the professional merits of a full-day Kindergarten.

DR. CROCKER: I guess the short and snappy answer is that we decided to implement it because the Royal Commission recommended it and we had no mandate to second-guess the royal commission or go back and do it over again. That is not really a satisfactory answer, I'm sure.

We have in the Department of Education reports dating back to 1980 which are favourably disposed towards in fact both full-day Kindergarten and junior Kindergarten or whatever you might want to call it, an even earlier intervention. There is very good evidence that is well-documented, and these documents do exist in the department and they have been circulated to schools, I might note - or at least some of them have - that would favour both the full- day Kindergarten and the junior Kindergarten. The question is: Which would you prefer to do or which would be better?

It is not quite clear which would be better. What is clear is that a full-day Kindergarten is somewhat easier to implement in the context of the schools of the Province than a full-blown junior Kindergarten, which would entail bringing different children in, which would entail more busing, which would entail two groups of students being in the school for half-days, and so on. It turns out that if - there is no very strong argument in favour of full-day Kindergarten as opposed to a junior Kindergarten. You could go either way. You could go both ways if you could afford it. Under the circumstances, the full-day Kindergarten seems to be substantially easier to implement for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that we now assign teachers already as if Kindergarten students were full-day. We just haven't utilized them in that fashion, we've utilized them in other fashions. So a full-day Kindergarten, by comparison to a junior Kindergarten, is considerably easier to implement and the evidence suggests that both of them are good. We certainly could supply documents on that to anyone who wanted them, and we're now having a person in the department do an update on a document that was done in 1989, as I recall, which reviewed the literature in this area. We're going to try to get that updated and have that circulated as well, which will help. But there is substantial rationale for any form of early intervention. The earlier the intervention, the more schooling - the earlier the better all around. Whether we would want to take junior Kindergarten as opposed to full-day regular Kindergarten is a debatable point and you would make that decision on pragmatic grounds and that's what we've done.

MR. SMITH: The early intervention, to me, is very relevant. That's why I kind of lean towards the junior Kindergarten, because I experienced, in the last four or five years, in implementing a pre-school program, we had met with tremendous success. I should point out that the program was not implemented - the 2 per cent savings clause didn't help us on that. That was something that we - the program is primarily funded by the Department of Social Services.

The only concern that I have, with regard to the full-day Kindergarten, does not relate directly to the child's ability to be able to function for a full day within the classroom but having come from the situation where I did have Kindergarten students in my school - is the length of the school day - because a lot of these students are bused to school. They have had separate busing up until now because they've been there for a half-day. For example, there are the implications for supervision and that sort of thing, you have these younger children now staying through lunch period. For teachers within the system and anybody who has been in the system and teaching can certainly relate to the supervision and demands it makes on teachers and the onerous task that it's perceived to be by teachers, those kinds of concerns I see coming through.

MR. DECKER: But these details, though, will be worked out at the board level. For example, the numbers of Kindergartens are so small in each school that - you talk about the lunch - I would say it would be quite conceivable that you would bus Kindergartens home for lunch. These are details which you will work out as you go and common sense has got to prevail. In some cases there's going to be a rest period for Kindergarten but these are details which - I won't be getting involved in every one but I wouldn't become too concerned over details. Our concern is that we have this early intervention. As Dr. Crocker pointed out, there is literature which will show the advantages. My concern is what's happening in the world. The whole world is making educational reforms. This country is going ahead in leaps and bounds and we're aiming at a moving target. I mean, we are behind, but yet the target that we're trying to catch up with is moving so we have to put her in high gear to try to catch up. That's why I was so impatient when we didn't get a full-day Kindergarten. One of the most disappointing things in my life is that we were not able to get the full-day Kindergarten in September coming.

MR. SMITH: You don't have to sell me on the idea of chasing that elusive target, I've been doing it for twenty-seven years and I can certainly relate to that.

Just to move from that, I would like, if I could just for a minute, to focus on the library boards. I must say, I was really pleased to see - I think it's a very positive move that the responsibility for the libraries has been shifted to the Department of Education. Because again, one of the things that I have advocated for a number of years and been a strong proponent of is the idea of the joint services, and Dr. Williams referred to that.

In the rural areas of the Province - as a matter of fact, in my school system we implemented a joint service. The first year I took over as Principal of the school, we didn't have a library so we set up a library in the school and subsequently had a hard sell to the Public Libraries Board to do it. I would suggest to you, Mr. Minister, that even right now with the Public Libraries Board at the administrative level, there is not a lot of support for the concept of joint services. So it's something that I would certainly encourage because I think it's a step in the right direction. I must say that when the Royal Commission report was released, I was disappointed that that matter was not included in the recommendations of the report. Because in the brief that I submitted - and it wasn't because it was one of the suggestions that I made but because I really believe in it. I really think it's something that we should be moving towards and, to my thinking, if it were referenced within the Royal Commission, then that would certainly guarantee that it would be addressed. I am really pleased now to see that we are moving in that direction because I really think it is the way we have to go. Anyway, I just wanted to make a comment on that.

One final question. I'm trying to be as quick as I can, Mr. Chairman. He is giving me the eye there. Just in terms of the figures overall, Mr. Minister, within the budget for your department we are looking at, I think, an overall reduction in the area of $26 million, from my calculations. I think about $18 million of that comes out of the teaching services, which I guess basically would be the teaching units. Is it fair to say that primarily the major portion of this would be units that would be coming out of the system?

MS. DELANEY: (Inaudible). The major difference is the extra payday in 1993-1994 for teachers. There were twenty-seven in 1993-1994, twenty-six in 1994-1995.

MR. SMITH: What would the figure be on that?

MS. DELANEY: About $16 million for the extra payday.

MR. SIMMS: So that is the major figure in here? Okay, thank you. That's it for me, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: (Inaudible).

MS. VERGE: I share the concerns of the Member for Port au Port about the government plans regarding early childhood education. I'm the same as the Member for Port au Port, a very strong believer in the value of early intervention. What I'm seeing is a lessening of the early intervention carried out or funded by the Department of Social Services and the mounting by the Department of Education of an initiative that to be done properly will be quite expensive. If it is to be discretionary on the part of parents then I'm afraid that some of the children who might need it most won't get it.

To have a full-day Kindergarten program delivered properly there will have to be more teachers or else we will have too high pupil-teacher ratios. Our Social Services day care regulations now insist upon low ratios of children to day care workers. I think that the very scarce resources available to the government would be much better directed at targeted programs for children with identified needs.

What has happened in the past year - well, first of all there is the age-old problem of a lack of co-ordination and co-operation among government departments with responsibility for young children: Social Services, Health, and Education. That was a problem when I was minister. In my eyes, the problem is worse now than it was then. The three departments are doing their own thing without properly integrating. Social Services subsidies for children identified by public health personnel and social workers as needing daycare have been frozen, so now there are children identified by public health nurses and medical health officers as being high-risk children badly in need of day care who aren't getting into day care. That is happening within one part of the government when the other part of the government is embarking on this expensive program of lengthening the Kindergarten day for everyone, even though it isn't going to be compulsory. To me, that is crazy.

Why isn't there some effort to spend whatever money is available for young children for their education and socialization where it is needed most? Why are we risking losing the good early intervention pre-Kindergarten program in Lourdes or in Cox's Cove in the Bay of Islands and instead moving to a full-day Kindergarten program that a lot of parents are adamantly opposed to? I'm thinking of parents in Pasadena, for example, who are organizing and who've circulated a petition, and who will not send their children to a full-day Kindergarten program. Those children aren't going to get anything in the way of schooling at age four or five. Now they won't go to school until Grade I. To me, that's nuts. What is the explanation for that? Why not target the funding where it is needed most?

MR. DECKER: It is not either/or, it is both/and. And I can't get into the social services, the way that -

With reference to the Pasadena parents not sending their children, that is their own choice. They don't have to. But they can do that now. No parent in this Province is required by law to send his or her child to school until that child reaches five-and-a-half.

AN HON. MEMBER: Six.

MR. DECKER: Six years. It is not happening now. My assumption is that once full-day Kindergarten becomes available, just as it is taken up by 99.9 per cent of the parents today, the full day will be taken up by 99 per cent.

MS. VERGE: How much is full-day going to cost over and above what is being spent on half-day Kindergarten?

MR. DECKER: Dr. Crocker.

DR. CROCKER: We don't have an exact cost, but it is not going to cost very much, for a great variety of reasons, certainly not as much as a comparable early intervention program if we were to mount it through the schools. Now, we can't speak to the Social Services agenda, but if an early intervention program were mounted through the schools in the way that we are attempting to mount a full-day Kindergarten through the schools, the cost would not be great.

MS. VERGE: But that is not the only choice, and Social Services funded day care workers earn salaries way below the teachers' salary scale. You can do a lot more with the same amount of money through Social Services and day care than you can through Education and teachers' salaries. The two shouldn't exist in isolation. Already, as in the case of Lourdes and in the case of Cox's Cove, to name two, we have Social Services funded pre-Kindergarten or early intervention programs operating, and these are being done co-operatively with parents and communities, which is the recommended way in those documents that you find in the department dating back to the early 1980s.

DR. CROCKER: Certainly, the full-day Kindergarten and junior Kindergarten or whatever other early intervention you might think about are not by any means mutually exclusive. They could be both done, one could be done; neither could be done, I suppose, for that matter. In our estimation, the full-day Kindergarten was relatively easy to implement, given a number of factors. One is declining enrolment.

MS. VERGE: How much is it going to cost? was my question.

DR. CROCKER: I said we don't know how much it is going to cost, because it depends entirely -

MS. VERGE: But this is the (inaudible) -

DR. CROCKER: Well, the cost is largely a function of teachers' salaries.

MS. VERGE: Exactly.

DR. CROCKER: It is by far the largest cost.

MS. VERGE: That is the bulk of the cost in education, period.

DR. CROCKER: Right now, teachers are allocated to school boards as if Kindergarten students were full-day. The question is: Do we require the school boards to use these teachers for full-day Kindergarten? The cost estimates would depend entirely on whether the school board did that or not.

Now, our view is this, that with a revision of the high school program - and this may look like it is way off base - some of the marginal things that exist in high schools and some of the things that are being done for very low enrolment students that are tying up teachers could be freed up to the point where school boards with the same teacher allocations could reallocate teachers.

MS. VERGE: But you are putting the squeeze on school boards by taking out the 2 per cent clause. School boards are going to - are you going to have a pupil-teacher ratio for Kindergarten the same way Social Services has a ratio for day cares, or similar to that?

DR. CROCKER: That is up to the school boards. I would argue that indeed, in Kindergarten, school boards ought to be in the business of making the classes as small as possible and would argue that they ought to be considerably smaller than (inaudible).

MS. VERGE: But since you are taking unto the government more control of education overall, are you going to or would you want to have the government dictating a maximum child-adult ratio for your full-day Kindergarten?

DR. CROCKER: There is no intention in the plans at the moment to have government dictate class sizes at any level of the system. It's still intended to be left to school boards. It's not far-fetched to do that, but it's not part of the existing plans.

MS. VERGE: Okay, I have other questions about the review, I understand, that's under way, of post-secondary education. What are the terms of reference? What are the objectives? Who is doing the review, and what is the time frame?

MR. DECKER: Dr. Marsh, if you could answer.

DR. MARSH: The current review that is ongoing was conducted by the Department of Education in conjunction with the college presidents. The review is to look at ways and means that we can consolidate some of our efforts in the system and provide more efficient services to the region, particularly in the area of administrative structures and administration.

The terms of reference are under discussion. Drafts have been forwarded between the college presidents and the Department of Education, and we expect that it would be done within a three-month period.

MS. VERGE: Okay, thanks.

I don't have any other questions now, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Verge.

Mr. Hodder.

MR. HODDER: I have three very quick questions which will take you the rest of the afternoon to answer. My book is falling apart over here as well, that's from use, you see.

On the parent or school councils, when will the criteria be ready for - these require some legislation, I understand, in the report. What is the status of the development process at this stage - in view of the fact that I strongly support these initiatives? Because the more involvement that parents have in the school system and in children's education, all the research points to a very positive relationship, and if we're going to improve our performance that's one area where we have some growing to do and where we can really, really make a difference with regard to what happens to restructuring.

MR. DECKER: That, Mr. Hodder, is part of the new Schools Act; there's a section on school councils.

MR. HODDER: The second question is on time on task, the direct relationship between not just the number of days that children spend in school, but the time on task when they are in school, setting out precise curriculum objectives, assuring that these objectives are going to be followed and so on - two aspects. One is dealing with the number of days which are really non-academic pursuits, you might say; however valuable they might be, the essential job of the school is still an academic focus, that aspect of it, and also the aspect from within the classroom itself, making sure that time is spent in the period assigned on the task at hand.

DR. CROCKER: Two things, Mr. Hodder, will be included in the legislation. One will be the provision for the modest increase in the school year, and that's primarily designed to allow us to get professional development and other extracurricular activities and so on outside of the teaching year. The second thing that will be done in the legislation will be a redefinition of the instructional day so as to focus on the prescribed curriculum.

Beyond that, better use of time in the schools and so on is a matter of a more clear definition of objectives, a clear definition of standards and things like that. That, of course, wouldn't be included in legislation but would be included in the curriculum where that is proceeding.

MR. HODDER: Also, I wanted to have just one little comment on what we're doing about the early identification of students with academic and social dysfunctions, and pointing out the research which would indicate that we can identify children who are going to have difficulties later in life as early as Grades II and III, and to change the focus that we now have, which is that we're pumping millions and millions of dollars into the `Stay in School' initiatives. These are very valuable initiatives, however, they are essentially closing the barn door after the horse has gotten away kind of thing. The real objective is to keep that sort of thing - what are we really doing about trying to target the intervention at an early age in co-operation with, I guess, the Department of Social Services and other government agencies?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Dr. Williams.

DR. WILLIAMS: Yes, and I don't know how to do it briefly but I shall try.

MR. HODDER: That's my last question, Mr. Chairman, so at your discretion we (inaudible).

DR. WILLIAMS: Yes, that one really intrigues me from many perspectives. Succinctly, we have a study that will take a major look at the social context in which classrooms find themselves and the make-up of students. Having said that, we have some major problems. We've expended a good deal of our resources in education on the so-called special dimension. As you know, from the last Royal Commission, the Warren Commission, which recommended a particular focus on special education, not only with respect to the definition but with respect to the establishing of special classrooms where there were segregated units built, to the point where we are today, where that philosophy has been discarded, we've moved to an integration of children, regardless of disability, into classrooms. It raises some interesting perspectives. There are those who would argue that the complete integration of children with disabilities is not at all compatible with academic performance. We're trying to raise academic performance. There are so many problems brought into the mix in classrooms that you can't possibly achieve higher performance, given the composition of classrooms today.

We are going to have to look at what sorts of problems are reflected in schools, and how best to address. It may not mean going back to build Exon houses because, as you know, just a few years ago we had separate institutions for children with certain disabilities. Having said that, it doesn't mean that all children necessarily be housed and taught in the same classroom at all times. It does come back to my earlier comment about what kinds of resources do we need, and what kinds of facilities. So this study is going to have to deal with that mix.

Every parent wants each child to be educated to the fullest possible potential, and that we have to strive for. What is the best setting for that, and what is the best program, and what is the best resource personnel to put there? How can we integrate it together? It is not as simple as simply saying that all children should be housed and taught in the same classroom. That's the dilemma we are running into. It does mean going back to look at each child, where you find that child, and try to develop appropriate programs in the most appropriate setting. If that means they can all come together for certain periods of time, good. If not, then we have to separate out in some sort of an umbrella fashion where children should be at certain points in time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Sir.

As there is no one else wishing to speak, I will now ask the Clerk if she would call the subheads, please, inclusively from 1.1.01.

On motion, Department of Education, total heads, carried.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I thank the committee for the way they behaved themselves. They're all experts in this field, I understand. I thank the minister and his staff for coming and enlightening us this morning. We can now say that you're safe for another year, Mr. Minister.

On motion, the committee adjourned at 12:00 noon.