Pursuant to Standing Order 87, Alvin Hewlett, M.H.A. Green Bay substitutes for Nick Careen, M.H.A. Placentia.

The Committee met at 7:00 p.m. in the House of Assembly.

Pursuant to Standing Order 87, Alvin Hewlett, MHA Green Bay substitutes for Nick Careen, MHA Placentia.

MR. CHAIRMAN (Oldford): Order, please!

Now that the members are here we will begin the meeting. I want to welcome everyone to this meeting of the Social Services Estimates Committee, and today we are looking at the Estimates for the Department of Education and Training. I will start off by asking the members of the Committee to introduce themselves. I am Doug Oldford, the Member for Trinity North, and Chair of the Committee. We will start with the Vice-Chair. I ask him to introduce himself, please.

MR. HODDER: Harvey Hodder, the Member for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. HEWLETT: Alvin Hewlett, the Member for Green Bay, replacing Nick Careen, the Member for Placentia.

MR. LANGDON: Oliver Langdon, the Member for Fortune - Hermitage.

MS. COWAN: Patricia Cowan, the Member for Conception Bay South.

MR. HARRIS: Jack Harris, the Member for St. John's East.

MR. BARRETT: Percy Barrett, the Member for Bellevue.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We will give the minister the opportunity to introduce his staff. We will allow for ten minutes for your opening remarks, then we will start with questioning from the Vice-Chairman, and we will alternate from the government side to the Opposition side. Having said that, I ask the minister to introduce his staff and make his opening remarks.

MR. DECKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have with me, Dr. Len Williams, the Deputy Minister; Florence Delaney, the Assistant Deputy Minister responsible for the finances of the department; next to her, Dr. Bob Crocker, Associate Deputy Minister, responsible for the implementation of the Royal Commission; and next to him, Dr. Wayne Oakley, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Education responsible for the K to XII section of the department.

As an opening few words, during the past year, the perception has been probably that we have been paying a lot of attention to the K to XII section, because we are in the process of implementing the Royal Commission. I would not want for members to think that we have been confined to the K to XII. In the post-secondary area, also, we have been paying a lot of attention to the community colleges. We are trying to address the problem we have there now where we are spending a lot of money in administration. It has been suggested that we should look at the problem - we have five sets of administrators, five sets of bursars, five sets of registrars, five sets of departmental heads. We approached the colleges about a year-and-a-half ago and asked them could they find some way to rationalize their services. To date, we have not had as much co-operation as we would have thought. We would like for them to act as if they were one college, but yet be, in theory at least, five separate colleges. We have not achieved the level of co-operation that we had wanted so we are looking now to see if we can do something about that.

A lot of the time has been taken up, as you know, with the implementation of the Royal Commission. We have acted upon or implemented - 50 per cent, Dr. Crocker? Would that be correct?

DR. CROCKER: We have acted upon a bit more than that.

MR. DECKER: We have acted upon -

DR. CROCKER: Not fully implemented, it is at various stages (inaudible).

MR. DECKER: That's right. So how much have we acted upon?

DR. CROCKER: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: Acted.

DR. CROCKER: We have acted on more than 50 per cent - maybe 75 per cent.

MR. DECKER: Yes. But we haven't fully implemented. For example, we have made modifications to the curriculum. The Professional Development Centre for teachers is pretty well up and going. We have hired the director responsible to set that up. One of the problems we have is where the governance issue is so high-profile, the media tends to focus on that. The rest of the implementation, which is going ahead quite smoothly, is not getting as much attention as we would like. I suppose we are going to have to work on that.

I don't think, Mr. Chairman, I will take my full ten minutes. Those are just a few opening remarks and I request that you allow the questions. I ask permission to have the officials answer some of the details. I will try to deal with the questions in general, but I don't have all the details in my head. When I was in Opposition, we used to always say a sign of a weak minister was when he would bring two people with him, if he brought in more than two he was exceptionally weak. Tonight, I have four with me so I must be exceptionally weak. Thank you, Sir.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Minister, because we are being recorded tonight I would like to remind the officials, if they answer questions, to identify themselves because the recording technician might not know their faces. Having said that, I go to Mr. Hodder, the Vice-Chairman.

MR. HODDER: Thank you. I had to change my location, the official reason being that I have a hearing deficiency and I can't hear on that side. The other point is, I am not used to being in the front benches. To the minister, I say there is some improvement over last year because last year he had six people with him. So that shows some significant improvement in the past year. It is nice to see the minister gaining confidence.

I have some issues that I want to bring forward and I would like to do it just back and forth rather than leave it to some other people in the Committee. The first thing I want to talk about is the issue of governance and what steps are being taken, particularly in the St. John's region. Could the minister tell us the success of his negotiations between the Avalon Consolidated School Board system and the Roman Catholic School Board system relative to co-ordination of purchasing, the co-ordination of - or the planning processes for a single school system in Pouch Cove and Bell Island?

MR. DECKER: I met with representatives from both the boards - how long ago was that Dr. Williams? Six months ago, I suppose it is -

DR. WILLIAMS: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: - probably about six months ago, when they presented a plan to us. They advised us because, as the member knows, we can't force them, under the present system. They advised us that they plan to essentially co-operate. I interpreted it as making a joint service out of the boards, whereas they already have some schools which are - one school with two or three denominations in it, or two systems. They are thinking in terms of joint boards but now they still have ten who have two superintendents and the two sets of assistant superintendents and so on and so forth. The Pouch Cove system - I am not aware, they have not advised us of any plans they have there. Hold on now, did they mention at that meeting that they were going to close out one elementary school or something?

AN HON. MEMBER: They were talking towards that but it is not done.

MR. DECKER: It is not done, but that is one area of the Province where we believe there are enough children to have one system. If they went into the one building with a K-12 they would have enough children to have one school and nobody would have to be bused out of Pouch Cove. I am not aware that they have proceeded any more than they told us they were talking about that - that is as far as I know about it.

MR. HODDER: I think the minister probably is not totally versed on what is happening at the local community level and there are some things happening there that the minister might find encouraging.

MR. DECKER: Dr. Oakley, have you been advised of that?

DR. OAKLEY: No.

MR. DECKER: No, okay.

MR. HODDER: I do know that some discussions are ongoing and that there is some willingness to have something happen. I think perhaps we will leave it at that because I don't want to say anything that would jeopardize any of the negotiations that are ongoing between the two boards and my understanding is that the ministry had been involved as well.

DR. WILLIAMS: I would like to respond in a way to what you said. At the community and district level around the Province, there are quite a number of initiatives that are talked about. I think I could say that many of them have been talked about for a decade - seriously - even Pouch Cove.

In the case of Gander, the Northern Integrated School Board, it has a proposal that is far-reaching, visionary, in conjunction with the Roman Catholic board in Gander and others, that would put that area of the Province... consolidated probably as far as one can expect, for the next ten, fifteen years. But the reality is, until we solve the overall governance of the system, it is being done within the narrow confines and thinking of the existing denominational system.

You mentioned busing. On Bell Island we will move with existing regulations, in conjunction with the two boards, to reduce the number of buses and the extent of busing. Because over the years there isn't any doubt we have had excessive busing due to the multi-nature of the denominational system. We are encouraging, where possible, and fitting within the parameters of what we would see for the Province, inter-board sharing, but I wouldn't like to believe, or have anyone to believe, that that will fit within the broad parameters of what should be.

The reality is, with declining resources and declining student populations, we have to bring together at the provincial and regional level sound planning mechanisms which will meld the system at the local level. Tinkering at a community level will not bring fundamental change to the system.

MR. HODDER: If we could just continue the dialogue back and forth until the Chair says that my time has elapsed. On the issue of busing, I fail to understand why the government doesn't move more unilaterally to take decisive action on busing. I subscribe to the policy that busing per se is not a constitutionally protected right and therefore the only impediments to change are political impediments. Therefore, I say to the minister, his reforms in busing should not be held up because of the dialogues that seem to be, shall we say, hindered or compromised by constitutionally guaranteed provisions. I wonder if the minister would comment on that.

MR. DECKER: Yes. I agree with you that busing is not protected by the Constitution. Now, all the churches will not agree with that, by the way. Some of the churches will suggest that in order to carry out their constitutional rights they require busing. So even though you and I both agree that busing is not protected by the Constitution, all the churches will not agree with that.

Busing has gotten out of hand, for whatever reason, there is no doubt about that. Over the past number of years what has happened to busing - and I gave some examples the other day and they keep coming up all the time, examples of busing. Maybe, if we were not into these delicate negotiations, we would have acted, taken unilateral action. Once we do that and cut out some bus routes, I mean, would we say we will bus to the nearest school, for example -if we were to make that an absolute policy we would see schools in parts of the Province which would become so small that they would be totally unviable.

I think about Summerford, for example. If we bus to the nearest school there would be a lot of children who would end up going to Integrated schools as opposed to the Pentecostal school in the area. There would probably still be enough children for the Pentecostals to keep that school going but it would even make the system worse because they wouldn't have enough children, from our point of view, to run a viable school, yet they would still attempt to do it because they could do it under the Constitution - they have the right to do it.

Maybe the simple answer to your question is, well, a year-and-a-half ago we were so close to having an agreement with the churches we didn't see the point in doing this by force when we were clearly confident that we could have done it by consensus. We still believe we can do it by consensus but we won't know for sure, of course, until Thursday night, when we should get a better indication of what we are doing. But I totally agree with you, busing is not protected by the Constitution and, as I said to the Member for St. John's East when he asked me about it, we do have a dozen people at the moment investigating, or looking at, busing in this Province, and some of the stories we are getting back are unreal. I still stand by my $10 million figure. I believe we can make these savings if we could bus to the nearest school. Taking out the cross-busing, taking out the duplications in busing, is one area where we could make a lot of savings.

MR. HODDER: I do believe, Mr. Minister, that the pubic is demanding that we do less talking and do something about it because the public have been hearing your pronouncements over the last several years. I think everybody can draw examples of where changing the busing system might negatively affect a particular school. That would mean, by rationalizing it. There are always going to be examples of where you are going to have to have some overlapping, some duplication, and you are not going to change the whole system overnight, you might say. There has to be a comprehensive plan developed for it. However, what we have had in the last two years is a lot of talk, a lot of sometimes threatening kind of thing, but we haven't had very much by way of concrete action.

Now, if I could just switch to one other topic and then I will leave it for somebody else. I want to go to the construction, the allocations. This year, they have been substantially reduced, however, a few days ago it became public knowledge that the DECs have $6.9 million, which became public knowledge, I say to the member. When the member had it he kept it private knowledge. I ask the minister: will he guarantee the taxpayers of this Province that that $6.9 million, which is taxpayers' money, will be spent for the purpose for which it was set, and that this will be spent on school construction right down to the interest gained over the past twenty-three years?

MR. DECKER: It is difficult to guarantee without any doubt whatsoever that it will be done. We are talking $6 million. Now, back in March 1994 there was $6.9 million there. We don't know what has happened since March 1994 because we only get the amount when they bring in their financial statements to us. We have met with them, and as far as we can ascertain, there is still about $6 million there. We maintain that is the same as coffee spilling into a saucer. It was money we gave them to build schools. They invested that money and the interest they collected is still the same money. All the DECs don't necessarily agree with that. Their argument is that really it is their money to do with as they like, and one of the arguments they use is the letter which was written by Bill Doody when he was Chairman of Treasury Board. In one particular year - what year was it?

AN OFFICIAL: 1976.

MR. DECKER: In 1976, the DECs claim, they did not have enough money for operations. They could not operate; they needed some money. At that time they had so many million dollars in the same fund, and Mr. Doody wrote them a letter giving them the authority to spend money in this account on their operations. The DECs have interpreted that letter to be in effect forever. We are saying that letter was a one-shot deal to deal with a specific problem. In the meantime, we have told the DECs that we will be writing them a letter explaining to them what our interpretation is, saying we don't accept the interpretation; in the event that we do, though, here is government's position.

The meeting we had with them last week was congenial, a good meeting. They have some concerns about their operations. They said: But what if we lose our $6 million? How will we operate? What about our current accounts? and all this sort of thing.

We told them that the constitution guarantees them adequate funding. Of course, what they mean by adequate and what we mean by adequate might not be the same thing. They also pointed out to us that they do use the money for some maintenance and other reasons, so we are going to have to assure them that in their vote there will be enough money for adequate operation, and there will be money to deal with their maintenance. Now, we pointed out to them that the maintenance money should also be part of the money that we allocate to them, and they should set aside so much for that. That is the normal way to do it.

I suppose the short answer is that I am confident we will get the $6 million spent on capital construction (inaudible).

MR. HODDER: It is very difficult for the public of this Province -I know that there are schools in Musgrave Town, and schools in Gander Bay, schools in Fortune Bay, that have been waiting for years and years and years for funding, and the disappointment is that $6 million has been sitting in some account somewhere, of the public's money, that has not been spent. Therefore, the sacrifices are being made by the children of the Province, not by the DECs.

Of course, you talk about adequate funding. You people allocated the $920,000 last year to operation of the DECs. I see that everything else has been cut back in terms of special education, in terms of transportation. In virtually every single category there is some reduction, in teachers' salaries, and you could go through the whole list, but there have not been any sacrifices made to the current account allocation for the DECs.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That is more of a commentary than a question, so I will go to Mr. Barrett.

MR. BARRETT: I have just one question. In the accounts centre, 2.1.09, I see $28,983,000 as a contribution to the Teachers' Pension Fund.

MR. DECKER: What page is that on, Sir?

MR. BARRETT: Page 189.

MR. DECKER: Page 189. Did you hear the question?

MS. DELANEY: Well, I heard the comment. Is there a question?

MR. BARRETT: I just want to know where the money came from. Is that because of the work stoppage because of the teachers, or was it savings within the department?

MS. DELANEY: No, no, it is because of the work stoppage during 1994-'95.

MR. DECKER: Remember the savings, we put them into the Teachers' Pension Fund. That was part of the agreement.

MR. BARRETT: The other comment I want to make is that despite a lot of the account centres being reduced, I want to compliment the minister on increasing the fund for Literacy Services; that is one vote that has been increased. Those are the only two comments that I have.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Harris.

MR. HARRIS: I always like to start off with the minister's - not the minister's salary so much, but the executive of the department.

I notice, Minister, that over the past few years - and I have with me the public accounts for 1993-1994, the year ending March 1994, and you are able to follow, I guess, for three or four years the estimates and the actuals and whatnot.

I see that in the minister's office the expenditures, although not humongous, have gone from - the original estimates for 1993-1994 of $241,000 to an actual expenditure in 1993-1994 of $276,000. I see the revised estimates here for 1994-1995 is $289,000 and then $288,000 again. So we see a substantial increase percentage-wise from $240,000 to $288,000, or almost $290,000, in just one office. At the same time, and notwithstanding Mr. Barrett's comments about literacy services which indeed are increased, I do see that the Public Libraries Board had their vote reduced from an actual expenditure in 1993-1994 of $6.8 million working its way down, 1994-1995, to $6.4 million, and now the estimates as shown on page 206 for the Public Library and Information Services being $6.15 million.

There is a significant decrease, around 10 per cent decrease, over that three-year period in the Public Libraries Board vote and, at the same time, the Minister's Office - and Executive Support is another example, I suppose - these two higher-up areas in the administration of the department and the political side of the department are having their budgets increased substantially. In the case of Executive Support, from the original estimates of 1993-1994 of $564,000 up to an actual - I'm sorry, an estimate for 1995-1996 of $765,000.

At the one end, at the high end of the scale where we are dealing with the minister and Executive Support and administration, we are seeing the costs go up, and on the service side where it counts out there in the public for something like library services, we see the budget being reduced by about 10 per cent. Is there an explanation for that, Mr. Minister? Is there a way that your executive - is the executive and the management of your department looking after itself at the expense of the services?

MR. DECKER: I don't think you can make a connection between the two. You will notice that in the transportation vote, that has gone up a little bit over the year. We try to keep transportation down but you get an invitation - I ended up going up to Labrador last year and to take a chopper and all this sort of thing. It ends up being expensive to get around. People expect you to go out and meet with them out in the area. Of course, you don't have to go, but I think the $69,000 was a little low.

The one big there - Supplies is up a wee bit and Purchased Services is up a bit - but the big thing is we have an extra secretary in the Department of Education and Training which most of the other departments don't have. I think Social Services has one, and I believe - I'm not sure if Industry, Trade and Technology does. The reason we have the extra secretary - one of the major problems we have in the Department of Education and Training is the student loans. Continually that phone is ringing. Everybody is tied up. So we made a conscious decision some time ago to take on a person who would be responsible to deal with the students when they phone in, someone who has the time to sit down and talk with them and try to take them through the red tape. She is still listed as a temporary position and I suppose if the need were to - if we could solve the student aid problems over there we would probably be able to let that position go. At the moment she is still temporary. That is one of the big factors.

The Libraries Board, what did we do with the Libraries Board, Florence?

MS. DELANEY: Can I try to answer Executive Support first before we move to the Libraries Board? In 1994 and 1995 you will see Professional Services there of $114,000.

MR. HARRIS: Yes, I was going to ask about that.

MS. DELANEY: We made a conscious decision in 1994-1995 to move pretty well all of our block funding for Professional Services into Executive Support. That is one of the reasons for the increase there over 1993-1994. Okay?

MR. HARRIS: What does that consist of? What kind of professional services, and what is the nature of them?

WITNESS: Consultants.

MS. DELANEY: Consultants, pretty well standardized testing. A lot of it is for testing. For example we are participating this year in TIMSS. National testing like SAIP. Most of it is for our participation in national testing for students in this Province.

WITNESS: They would have been under teacher payroll.

MS. DELANEY: They would have been in another division previously. We moved the money. We made a conscious decision to move the money from another vote in the department into Executive Support. That is the reason why you see Executive Support increasing.

MR. HARRIS: When you say Professional Services, is that hiring for someone on a contract to oversee this particular activity, or how does it work?

DR. WILLIAMS: No. In previous years people who were in the Department of Education were paid in the teacher's salary budget, but they were full-time people in the department. They were consultants who remained year after year but they were covered in the teacher's salary budget. We felt that they should come out of there. If they are going to be employees of the department then they should be employees of the department and come in under the expenditures of the department. These are consultants, as Florence said, full-time consultants in the research development section and in curriculum section. They are no longer obviously on teacher payroll.

MR. HARRIS: Okay.

MS. DELANEY: Can I try to answer the other part on Executive Support for 1995-1996?

MR. HARRIS: Please.

MS. DELANEY: Again with respect to student aid. We are currently undertaking initiatives with the federal government to harmonize the provincial student aid program with the Canada student aid program. Therefore that extra funding in 1995-1996 allows us to second the current director of student aid into the department to oversee those initiatives. That is the reason for the increase in 1995-1996 over 1994-1995.

MR. HARRIS: Okay.

MR. DECKER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: The drop in the funding to the libraries. I know there are other initiatives the department has along those lines but there still seems to be a significant drop of over $600,000, perhaps close to $700,000, in the Public Libraries Board funding.

MS. DELANEY: The Public Libraries Board was transferred to our department last fall. Prior to that the Public Libraries Board would be applied the same reductions as other government departments and agencies. In other words, their compensation reduction would be in there, the reduction of 3 per cent on operating accounts which government applied probably about three years ago to operating accounts of all funded agencies. To my knowledge those would be the major items that would have been applied to the provincial Public Libraries Board in the way of a reduction.

MR. HARRIS: There has been discussion of some school busing and the minister and I have had some comments and questions back and forth in the house. The figure of $10 million that was not mentioned in the House but was mentioned to the press afterwards did take me somewhat by surprise. I was certainly aware that there was overlap and perhaps wastage in the system, and the Auditor General has pointed out certain areas where they haven't followed the public tendering act. One example that the Auditor General pointed out was that there are some school bus contracts that are renewed annually since 1979, and nobody has tried to see, presumably, whether they can get a better price or what the arrangement is or who the deal is with.

Obviously there are problems in that aspect of the system and the Auditor General has been pointing it out for a couple of years. Where does the figure of $10 million come from? It is the first time I heard it. It certainly has to involve more than just looking for anomalies and small errors. Is that figure a figure that has been forthcoming as the result of a study or is that just your optimistic estimate of how much money you are going to be able to save?

MR. DECKER: That figure assumes that you would bus to the nearest school. Now maybe, what a year or a year and a half ago, when did we ask the boards? We sent out a feeler. We asked the boards the question, some of the boards: f you were busing to the nearest school how much of your contract would you save? The answer came back that they would save about one-third of their contract. So we applied that to the $30 million that we are spending on busing. So it is a very rough and dirty figure of $10 million. I have been challenged to substantiate that statement and as I told you in the House, we do have people looking at it. I don't think I will put my seat on the line but I will be surprised if we don't come up with a figure which is going to be pretty close to $10 million that we will save.

MR. HARRIS: Looking at some of the figures that the Auditor General did comment on and granted that the Auditor General was only dealing with seven boards, some of the figures I find absolutely astounding and I am inviting the minister's comments on it. For example, in the Auditor General's report she discloses a contract for $11,220 for one pupil travelling a total distance of 52 kilometres. Now that is a cost of - I am told there are 195 school days - that is about fifty-seven dollars per day for that one student to get back and forth to school.

There are other types of contracts, the Nova Consolidated Board takes two students back and forth to school at a cost of $13,526 a year, approximately thirty-four or thirty-six dollars per day for those two students. There is reference again in the Auditor General's report of five pupils who travel a total distance of 4 kilometres, that is about a mile and a half each way, $12,000 for five pupils, that is a cost per year of $2400 per pupil. Now I just wonder at what point does the department see that kind of cost as being justifiable? The minister well knows where I am coming from on this because I have approached him before. We have had meetings before with Ms. Delaney about students who, in St. John's, must walk from a mile and a half to two miles back and forth to school in all weather or purchase their own bus pass at a cost of twenty dollars, twenty-four dollars or whatever it is per month to travel back and forth to school. Yet on the other hand, the department is spending fifty-seven dollars per day to bring one student back and forth to school. Where is the justice in that?

MR. DECKER: That one case was probably a special needs child you are talking about there, I would think, looking at it.

MR. HARRIS: We checked on some of those. It was checked with Nova Consolidated, those two pupils for thirty-five dollars, they are not special needs. There are no special circumstances other than distance.

MR. DECKER: I am going to let Ms. Delaney address the issue but before she does - I know your argument about St. John's where they have to pay their own way and all that sort of thing and I appreciate that but one factor that you will find when you go out in some of the outports or many of the outports, you will go to a community which had a school for years and then as school boards begin to centralize - they have gone to Cormack and said: we are going to close your school and bus your children into Deer Lake, for example. Now, I suppose you would be giving them a double whammy if you said: we are going to close your school and make you pay to bus your children into Deer Lake, so what the board did do, and government paid for, was we bused them and hopefully are providing a better education into a bigger school, and all that sort of thing.

I find it difficult when I realize we are busing from Admiralty Woods and we are not busing from Quidi Vidi, and one of the things we are looking at as we try to do something with the busing - not guaranteeing you we will be busing from Quidi Vidi, but I am not sure we will be busing from Admiralty Woods either if we are not busing from Quidi Vidi. These are issues we are going to have to deal with.

MS. DELANEY: There was one point I wanted to make. Most of the students I think you referred to there would probably be special education students, and this year we have undertaken a review of our cost of busing special education students in St. John's and the surrounding areas. The total cost of special education busing in St. John's and the general area is about $1.l million and we have undertaken a review to determine how we can streamline that by having bulk contracts or maybe going out with one contract. We are now in the process of finalizing that review, I hope, with an objective to streamline the special education busing in St. John's and this area.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We have gone five minutes overtime on yours Mr. Harris so we will now get back to Ms Cowan.

MS. COWAN: I would be interested to know how the kindergarten program is coming along? I know there has been a delay of a year now in implementing the whole day, which is probably wise. I would like to know, and I do not know how many specifics you can give me, but having been a primary teacher for years, I would like to know how the kindergarten program is going to be changed to make it suitable for children this age to be in school for the entire day? I think it is appropriate for the children to be there if indeed there are excellent programs, and I am sure that when you were doing this you had that in mind. I would kind of like to have an idea as to what is taking place as far as program development is concerned?

MR. DECKER: I will just give you a general idea and ask Dr. Crocker to go into detail about the curriculum.

We had hoped to put in place some pilot projects this year. Now, as you know a pilot project in education isn't exactly the same as a pilot project in another sense of the word. We do pilots on curriculum all the time. Usually you just make a few little modifications and then the following year you go ahead with the full curriculum in all the schools. We had hoped to put some pilot projects in this year and we though it would cost about $350,000 to do that. We could have found the $350,000 but as soon as we started it would have been with the full intention of going into a full-fledged program next year which could have cost us about $10 or $12 million in some capital construction.

We hesitated about committing ourselves to that capital construction in the event we did not get an agreement with the churches. If we had an agreement with the churches we might not need as much capital construction because you might be able to come together in more buildings and that sort of thing, so reluctantly, we agreed not to go with the pilot project for that very reason. There is going to have to be a big hit in the first year for some capital even if we get consensus with the churches, just to rent the extra space. Also, we are going to have to commit to some extra teacher's salaries. Whether that is $3 million or $5 million or $1 million, that is to be determined in negotiation, but there is going to have to be. So to start it as a pilot project immediately would have committed us down the road to a program which would have cost some money.

Dr. Crocker, if you could go into the curriculum and that sort of thing because I think you've done a lot of exciting work on that issue.

DR. CROCKER: Thank you. Just briefly, yes. We had a committee made up of primary teachers and other people in that area. Starting last summer they developed a draft curriculum for kindergarten. It was essentially based on making the kindergarten program in the broad sense of the term an academic program rather than a kind of a pre-school play type program. That was based on where we were coming from generally at Education and Training, which is to try to solve the problem of student achievement, and from the evidence that in general early interventions on academic matters do help solve the problem of student achievement. You have to go on the general literature on that. We haven't had much experience locally, few small examples.

That program was developed in draft form last summer, was sent to the schools for reaction in the fall. The reaction came in over the fall and up until just after Christmas. The committee then set to work over the last little while to pull all that together and to produce a second draft. We believe the second draft will essentially be the definitive program. That will be available before the end of this school year and will be ready whenever we want to proceed. I can only say that in general, as I said, the thrust of the draft is academic. It is designed to give children who might not otherwise have had appropriate early childhood exposure to the sorts of things that prepare them for a school's academic program. It is interspersed, obviously, as you might expect, with appropriate activities for young children to ensure that they don't become overly tired and fatigued and all that sort of thing. It is designed to help line up the school day with the rest of the primary schooling so that you don't have anomalies and disruptions in the school because of kids leaving at different times and things like that. We believe in general the program will be quite good when it is done.

Given that we now have a delay, I suppose we could argue that there is time for another round of reaction if we need it, and I want to take advantage of that. But I believe it is fair to say that the committee certainly before the end of this school year, and I think well before the end of this school year, will have a final draft. We would certainly be pleased to let you have a copy, knowing that you would be particularly interested.

MS. COWAN: You may very well be asked to come to the children's interest committee -

DR. CROCKER: Most certainly.

MS. COWAN: - and talk to us about it there.

DR. CROCKER: More importantly, in light of what the minister said, I think we may even have a chance now with the delay to have another round of reaction in the school system. It will be interesting to see what that reaction is. I think in general the reaction we got was pretty supportive of the general thrust, but if anything, much of the reaction as I understand it - I haven't got the details in front of me - was that the program should make much more clear right up front what the goals and objectives and outcomes are. In the first draft it was kind of hidden fifty pages into the document, and so I hope these kinds of things are being changed in the second draft.

MS. COWAN: You know, I don't really see, unless we come to agreement with the churches and get some money saved, how we can ever have effective programs in early childhood development anyway. Because I've been in some kindergartens that were pretty sterile environments. To think of a youngster being in there all day long, it is pretty scary. I think with the way that we are moving with hopefully coming to an agreement with the churches which will lead to some money, hopefully that extra money can go into curriculum development.

It really interests me and I would like to ask a lot of other questions, as a teacher, so I think I will leave it at that. Perhaps you will be cross-examined later, Harvey, when we bring him before - bring him, I don't know if we will be bringing you - but when we have a presentation, probably you, from the department, we will certainly be asking a lot more questions. Good luck with implementing it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Cowan. Mr. Hewlett.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I noted in the estimates presentation there that there was a Royal Commission implementation of $418,000 this year versus $341,000 last year, not a really large or significant difference. Wouldn't there be a large expenditure anticipated if government anticipated cutting a deal with the churches over the next little while?

DR. CROCKER: I think the response is that any figures that might change as a result of any deal with the churches would not be reflected in the Royal Commission Implementation Secretariat. That is just a small amount designed to run the little operation that I am trying to run, which I assure you is temporary, and the amounts that might be reflected in changes in the system would appear elsewhere in the estimates.

All we are talking about there is the specific work that we are undertaking as a secretariat, three or four people, some of whom have been reassigned from elsewhere in the department so they are not really costing anything. The biggest expenditure this year in that, I might note, is the fact that we have initiated the study of special education services, which we expect to cost more than $100,000; so that has been built into the professional services side of that, but don't expect to find the expenditures or savings that are attached to restructuring the system in that part of the vote.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you.

Mr. Minister, I have heard it said over the last year or so that obviously a lot of people agree that significant reform is needed in education, certainly with regard to the governance, and that 75 per cent, maybe more, of what the government was looking for in terms of reforms, vis-à-vis governance, were achievable during the last set of negotiations with the churches, the negotiations that stalled in due course. I might ask, Mr. Minister, why did government not see fit to sort of take the 75 per cent or better that was achieved, and run with that at this stage of the game?

MR. DECKER: I don't buy that suggestion, 70 per cent or 80 per cent or whatever the figure is that has been tossed around. The big bucks in the governance are in the administration. For example, we could have had a deal which would have left Labrador as it is. We have 7,000 students in Labrador. We have two Roman Catholic boards up there. We have one Integrated board up there - no, we have one Integrated board up in Labrador West. We have the Vinland, or the Strait of Belle Isle, which goes up on Coastal Labrador. In addition to that, we have the Pentecostal, which is one board for all the Province, so we have five sets of boards.

Now in the changes that we could have gotten by consensus we still would have had the five sets of boards going into Labrador. The savings that we could have gotten by consensus would have given us a system that probably would have looked like we had done something. For example, they talked about the ten boards with the coterminous boundaries, and if you look at them it would look like you would have ten offices - there is no doubt about that, you would have ten offices; it would look like you had achieved it - but when you went into these offices you would have found each board would have had to have denominational education committees to represent each denomination, and most likely in most of them you would have three sets of denominational committees - councils they call them - denominational councils.

In the doctrine that the church put forward it said quite clearly that the councils are the successors to the boards. Then, as you looked at the duties of these councils you would have seen that all the denominational rights that are in the constitution plus some perceived denominational rights which we maintain are not even in the Constitution, the authority over them would rest with these denominational councils within the boards. So if you end up with an average of three councils on a board, the document itself said that the council is a successor of the board, we argued that instead of ten boards you would have had thirty boards. These councils would have had responsibility for example as to how capital dollars were spent. The money would still have to go from the province to the DEC. The DEC would put the money down to the council. So you have three councils in the Avalon West School Board or whatever, these councils would have to decide whether or not they are going to come together on a school and all of that sort of thing. I don't believe we could have achieved the efficiencies we wanted to. There is no way we could have gotten 70 per cent of the cost savings because the big bucks are in the administration. I don't know Dr. Williams if there is something else I left out that you would like to address on that.

DR. WILLIAMS: No, I think you have covered that aspect of it. In some respects the 75 per cent figure was always tied to those aspects of the Royal Commission Report that could be implemented in a system regardless of its nature and in many respects for me these are the fundamental changes that must come but they can only come if you remove the duplication that exists and this is the one point that you were making. We cannot do it unless we have a streamlined efficient system.

There are three fundamentals and if you look at the past year our successes have been fairly significant in these three areas. The first is a focusing of the curriculum leading to fewer public examinations but more focused in assessment. We have moved - just to follow the point that Ms. Cowan was raising - to identify attainment targets. What children should know by the end of primary, elementary, junior, senior and we are focusing the curriculum in that respect. The second significant is with respect to assessment or accountability of a system and we have established an indicator system that is probably among the best in Canada where we will not only be able to identify what a child should know but build a system for us to judge whether the child attains it or not. The third aspect is with respect to quality teaching. In that respect we are moving with respect to professional development initiatives and with pre-service teacher education but all of these will come together - from the Department of Education through the school board to the school - if there is a streamlined efficient system whereby we maximize use of the resources given. We have a much more accountable system out there in terms of meeting objectives established and I think that is where the progress will be made.

If we are going to see significant changes in student performance and student attainment it is because we have established clearly what it is we want young people to know, what our graduation outcomes for example should be. We have a curriculum that is of quality and teachers capable of teaching it - an accountability system which brings all of that in line and that is what we will have when this process is over.

MR. HEWLETT: What I am hearing, Mr. Minister, is that government seems determined to have some sort of interdenominational or whatever kind of system, as has been stated many times before. My local paper in my budget reaction this year, Mr. Minister, carried a front page headline and it basically said: Budget contains hint of election. Is your government going to force an election this year as to who runs the school system in this Province?

MR. DECKER: I am not in a position to answer that question, Mr. Chairman.

You say it seems like we are about to force interdenominational schools. I would like to word it by saying we would like to force schools to be viable, and the reality is that there are only two ways to force schools to be viable in this Province. One is to encourage them to amalgamate where there are two or three schools side by side or within a reasonable distance, or spend additional resources to make it viable. We could make a school with one student on the moon viable, we accept that, but I don't think we could afford to make that one child on the moon into a viable school.

The policy we would like to see is that we will attempt to make schools viable first by natural means. The reasonable place to start would be where two schools are side by side, both of which are unviable, you would bring them together. If schools are in adjacent communities two or three kilometres apart you would attempt to bring them together, and it is only after we have used up the natural means of bringing them together, and in many cases it is going to have to be across denominational lines because two schools in Roddickton are Pentecostal and Integrated. The two schools in Pouch Cove are Integrated and Roman Catholic. The two schools in St. Lunaire and Griquet are Integrated and Pentecostal.

You can go right around the Province and you will find out where there are viable schools existing, in many cases, not too far away from them is another unviable school. So we are not talking about forcing an interdenominational system. We are talking about forcing a system that comprises viable schools, and we recognize that in order to make these schools viable, in many cases you are going to have to amalgamate them along denominational lines. Where it is impossible to amalgamate a few schools to make them viable, where you then believe that the state is expected to put in extra resources, but I don't think the state can be forced to put extra resources in as long as there are natural means, and we don't consider the denominational component to be (inaudible). We don't think that is protection. We think there is no reason why.

If there were no cases in this Province where inter-denominations existed then maybe you would have an argument, but there are many cases where schools have come together voluntarily, so it has been proven that Catholics and Protestants can sit down together and can achieve a good education. Since we have proven that, then I don't see how the state can be expected to pay extra resources to make a school viable.

When you look at the system you would be surprised at the schools that are getting extra resources because they are not big enough to be viable. For example, the Pentecostal school in Deer Lake gets extra resources. It is considered a small school under the small schools formula. Yet, in Deer Lake there are two other system, as the hon. member knows, which are quite viable. Yet, that school gets extra teachers - four extra teachers - because it is not viable. Yet, across the Trans-Canada Highway there are two exceptionally viable schools, and that is not just Deer Lake; you will find the same thing all over the Province.

MR. HEWLETT: So are you saying, Mr. Minister, that given the fact that we have what you might call a level budget this year, a difficult time with the feds coming next year, resources being short, the state will seek a mandate for its viability? Will the state seek a mandate for its viability?

MR. DECKER: Not to my knowledge. I read your article in The Nor'Wester, by the way. I was driving across the Province yesterday and I saw it. It was staring me in the face at the service station when I went to gas up. It would not be my decision to call an election on it. I will say this, though, that I would love to fight an election on it if we were on the side of saying we are going to force it, because there is an awful lot of support. The most criticism we get now is one that came up earlier, that it is all talk and no do, and the other one is the perception that we have probably gone too far in our compromises with the churches, so we are getting a lot of criticism. To be quite honest with you I would love to fight an election on it. I believe I might even be back sitting over there where you are sitting.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langdon, would you like to continue on with the same line of questioning?

MR. LANGDON: Not, on an election, no, but I would not mind fighting one though.

Going back to the capital funding this year, obviously one of the schools that needs to be replaced, and is already dilapidated, is the one in English Harbour West. If in fact the DECs do take their $6 million to do some work within the schools then I think we can be assured that they will take the $4 million that has been allocated to them to at least do the first stage of the school in English Harbour West. That is our hope right now and we have fingers crossed on that, so we are hoping we will probably get a new school out of it.

On the busing situation, would the fact that you are having a committee of people to study busing as such, and once the committee is in place, or the recommendations are in place, is it your intention to make the adjustments in September 1995 or September 1996?

MR. DECKER: For the busing, you mean?

MR. LANGDON: Yes.

MR. DECKER: If we could just do everything immediately, if we had the authority to do it, there has to be some cases where you would have contracts expire, or buy them out, for example. You just could not do that. Also, you would have to consider the impact on the school. If you are going to bus to a near school that is great in probably 80 per cent of the schools, especially outside the St. John's area or outside the Avalon area, where there is probably room in the school, but in many cases, in Conception Bay South, for example, there is just not room if you were to bus to a near school, in some cases, so there would have to be some capital construction. It is not something you could do, in most cases, instantly. It would probably take three years before you finally got into it.

Unless we get the consensus we cannot address the capital thing because we are bound by the non-discriminatory funding. It could turn out that all the schools that we would need to do extensions on would be integrated, for example, and we would have to then turn right around and give proportionate shares to the Pentecostal and Roman Catholic who might not need it, so that is the bind we are in. You know that with the Gander Bay school we had to build three schools in order to address one problem, so unless we get an agreement with the churches, if we made a decision to force it, we would end up having to pay - for every school we built we would have to build two more, for every extension we put on we would have to put on two more extensions. That is the reality so we cannot afford to do it without a consensus. Even if we get a consensus, I would suggest, some of the duplication would be around for two or three years afterwards.

MR. LANGDON: My question still, and I do not know if you read it correctly or not, providing there is no agreement with churches.

MR. DECKER: There is no agreement with churches?

MR. LANGDON: No, providing there will not be, will you still be making changes in busing?

MR. DECKER: We maintain that we have control with the busing, and I suppose if there is no agreement, yes, we would do it, but we will not be able to do it all over the Island. We would not want to force ourselves into where we would have to provide buildings at three for one, so that would be a deterrent of course in doing it.

English Harbour West, my understanding is they would need $1.5 million for the first year. That could have been provided last year -

MR. LANGDON: I know that.

MR. DECKER: - or the year before -

MR. LANGDON: They know that.

MR. DECKER: - or the year before.

MR. LANGDON: They've already been talking to DECs about it and have told them that they have indeed concocted ways probably not to do it. You know, it was within their means to do it. Again, as Harvey I think said earlier, it is the fact that it is these children who live in English Harbour West who are suffering because of the situation of withholding the money. It is in a dilapidated condition. If I were a parent in English Harbour West I certainly wouldn't send my kid back to school in September. I don't think you will see any kid go back into school in September if there is not something done. I think they will put the padlocks on it because really - Minister, you were in a it a couple of years ago -there is no accessibility, fire corridors are not existent there and the roof leaks. Emergency after emergency. So you could look at the board spending their money just on emergencies.

I think I will leave it at that. We realize that, but I kind of think that there is going to be some movement on that. We certainly hope so.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Hodder.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Minister, in terms of the initiatives that you are undertaking, there is so much in the royal commission report, and I agree with you that we have had too much of public focus, too much probably of certainly school board focus - and by public I mean public in terms of the political public - on the governance. What are the initiatives that you have undertaken relative to the length of the school year and the length of the school day?

MR. DECKER: You say what are the initiatives?

MR. HODDER: Yes, what initiatives have you undertaken and when will these initiatives be implemented?

MR. DECKER: The length of the year as you know is going to involve - we have to negotiate that with the NLTA.

MR. HODDER: You had a meeting last week on that.

MR. DECKER: With the...?

MR. HODDER: With the NLTA?

MR. DECKER: It would be Treasury Board which would have to meet with the NLTA to discuss the length. The Department of Education and Training would recommend to government that we lengthen the school year to 200 days or whatever the recommendation was. Then it is Treasury Board which would have to negotiate with the teachers. Obviously it is ten extra days, so we don't expect them to work for nothing. I don't know. It depends on what kind of a deal we could make with them. We have not gone ahead with that recommendation yet. It is still in the royal commission, it is still a recommendation, and we have accepted it in principle.

MR. HODDER: Has your Ministry set the date for the 1996 school year -

MR. DECKER: Nineteen ninety-six school year, June 28.

MR. HODDER: - to start early September and to finish very late in June?

MR. DECKER: Yes, but there still will be 187 teaching days.

MR. HODDER: Yes.

MR. DECKER: That is correct, yes.

MR. HODDER: But integrated in there would be some of the days that we now would refer to as workshop days. Shall we say there will still be 180 days of instruction?

MR. DECKER: That is right, yes. There was some misunderstanding on that and we have been accused of trying to do through the back door what we can't do through the front door. We've been accused of everything. Actually it is a very simple explanation. My predecessor decided to put in place a five-year plan and in that five-year plan they decided that the school year would end the last Monday of the month? Was that the -

DR. WILLIAMS: Last Friday of the full week.

MR. DECKER: The last Friday of the full week. It was sent out and this was made public four years ago or three years ago and nobody picked up on it. So every year as we do we write to the boards to advise them when the opening and closing would be. This year I quite innocently wrote out and advised them that it would be closing on June 28 in 1996 and didn't give it a second thought. The next thing I begin to get some letters from various teachers. Some of them were quite blatant actually, and accusing us of all kinds of things that we didn't have in our mind whatsoever.

Finally Mr. Sutherland did come in and I explained to him: Look, there is no intent of anything here. When we lengthen the school year you will be the first to know. Then you will negotiate what it is going to cost us. What I told him was: Go back and think about it, and if you think it should be changed you write me and I will discuss it with my colleagues in government. Within the last little while I did receive a letter from Mr. Sutherland asking that we would put it back to June 21 with the full understanding that there would be 187 days teaching - or is it 180 instruction, is it Dr. Williams? How does it go? How many?

DR. WILLIAMS: One hundred and ninety days must be built in, 187 teaching.

MR. DECKER: That is right, yes. I'm not really concerned how these hundred -

MR. HODDER: One hundred and eighty-seven plus three, in other words.

MR. DECKER: Yes.

WITNESS: Standard practice.

MR. DECKER: I've undertaken I will be discussing that with my colleagues. I don't know whether we would end up agreeing with it or not, but there is no reason to go to June 28 in my opinion. So we will be dealing with that issue. It was just an innocent thing that slipped through without anyone giving any thought to it. It was just with the formula that says the last Friday of the last full week in June. It so happens in 1996 that the last Friday of the last full week in June is June 28, which we are trying to deal with.

MR. HODDER: Since there is direct connection between the amount of time on tasks and achievement, we seem to have about a year ago or thereabouts had a tremendous amount of consciousness, awareness, of that particular principle. It seems to me from my connections with the school system that that particular awareness has been wearing a little thin and that we are not now as conscious of the time spent on tasks. I say that because I'm aware of certain activities that have been carried on in certain of the schools locally that would not have been carried on a year or year and a half ago. As time passes there is always a reaction. My perception is that there has been some slippage in the amount of time on tasks. I'm wondering if the Ministry would like to comment on that.

MR. DECKER: Dr. Williams is just burning to comment. Before he does I will say that is not my perception. I wrote all the school boards last year as you know and there was a vocal minority who made some noise about it and accused me of interfering and all this sort of thing, and saying that they can't go on field trips and that they should not take the geology class to look at rocks, all kinds of things. The way the letter was described I could hardly think that the people making the noise had read the same letter which I had wrote out. A lot of the boards - most of the boards - have written back and explained what they are doing. I think you will find that there is less time spent on non-productive things than there ever was before.

MR. HODDER: I'm not saying that we are back to where we were three years ago. I'm saying that as time goes on unless we continue to reinforce the principle -

MR. DECKER: I think you are saying it is time for another letter. Would you want to sign this one? Maybe we can both sign it?

MR. HODDER: If we get on this side, yes.

MR. DECKER: I think it is time for another letter. Dr. Williams, maybe you would want to address that. My perception is not that they are slipping. I thought they were very -

DR. WILLIAMS: Like Mr. Hodder, when I reflect back to my time as a teacher and high school principal I always thought we were more focused than they are today as well, but then I think that age has something to do with that and being removed from the scene.

When we did the commission there were three studies ongoing with respect to this business of the use of time. It was very clear, very obvious to everyone who looked at the school system, that the most significant thing was the way you utilized those days that were currently allocated. While we had a short year in comparison to others - whether you think of Japan or certain provinces within Canada, although we are not that far behind the majority - or a longer day, the most significant way to bring about an increase in performance in relation to time was to utilize fully the number of days allocated, 187: 190 with three statutory holidays, but 187.

Three studies showed that we lost anywhere from thirty-five to fifty days. That didn't go into the business of young people coming into classrooms and not ready to begin. You know, in a forty-five minute period, coming in and shuffling and wasting, five, seven minutes wasted before the teacher can settle them down. All these kinds of things were very difficult to calculate. But when you looked at the actual number of days lost and then moved it down to a second plane of even when children were in school the kind of interruptions and disruptions and all sorts of non-teaching things that went on, it was fairly mind-boggling with respect to how much time was actually left to teach. We knew that we had to focus on a wise use of time allocated.

As the minister said, with a great deal of vision and courage we sent the letter to - or he sent the letter -

AN OFFICIAL: He wrote it.

DR. WILLIAMS: - to the school system, and it drew forth a reaction like one would never expect. You wouldn't know but the suggestion was to cut out all extra-curricular activities from theatre to arts to physical education. Of course nothing of the sort was intended.

Just to give an illustration of the use. One day while we were discussing in the office and just looking out the window there were as many as seven yellow school buses parked over by the hill opposite West Block. Children from schools in the area were over there sliding on an afternoon when they should have been in school. No justifiable reason why children would be sliding during school hours.

We sent out the memo and in spite of the negative reaction from some there was a very positive reaction from those within the system, teachers, principals and school boards. I found it encouraging after in discussing with superintendents and with teachers, and then letters coming to the department, to indicate - albeit with mild indignation on the part of some - what efforts they had made to bring about a change. Some of them were fairly forthright in saying: This is what we are now doing. As I say, they did it with a sense of righteous indignation that they were called to task and forced to do it, but do it they did. I think there is a much greater awareness.

Let me put it in the context of what I've said earlier. You will only bring about significant change when people want to change. When parents and a society say: This is no longer tolerable, or, there are standards that should be established and understood and we are not achieving. Why are we not achieving? There isn't anyone in Newfoundland who doesn't recognize that given the financial state and the resources that we are in that we are doing as well as we can. So where do we change? We change from within and real change comes from within the system when people know what they have to do and they do it. We hold them accountable for doing it and I think that is what is happening.

The biggest change of all is on the part of young people themselves who are looking to preparation for a job market that is very demanding, if it is there at all for them. What they are saying is that: I can no longer drift through. I want the best curriculum, I want a quality certificate at the end of it. I have to be prepared and I am going to have to put something into it. Those of us who have children see this and I think that will bring about a significant change. We can no longer tolerate school days being wasted, school time being wasted or class time being wasted. If I sound like a martinet it is because I believe we have to be if we are going to change things in education.

MR. HODDER: Yes, I would tend to agree obviously because what you are saying is self evident truths. However, I do believe that we probably should be giving feedback to the system. Not another letter but feedback to the system to let them know what is occurring, that there has been some changes. You are always going to have examples where you are going to say well I would not have done that or I would not let that happen. I am not sure whether or not we are still getting the maximum out of time on task. I know examples of where things that I would not have agreed with are still occurring. I wanted to get on to achievement and again there are so many things I have listed here that we will be here until 10 o'clock if we get through them all.

In the stats which we were privy to - particularly in the high school, even in the junior high school and sometimes the elementary, there is a tremendous disparity between male achievement and female achievement. The fact that males per group take the easier courses, the easier way out in many of the high school courses. What initiatives are we taking to assure that the achievement standards are somewhat commensurate with each other, as relative to boys and girls because the stats are alarming and you cannot say any more that females are not taking many science courses, the truth of the matter is where they are taking them they are doing a lot better. Are we doing anything about it? Have we done any research as to why that is occurring?

MS. COWAN: They're smarter.

MR. HODDER: Other than the fact that - Ms. Cowan thinks that females are smarter.

MR. DECKER: Yes, part of the implementation committees job is to prepare our new curriculum and I am going to ask Dr. Crocker to deal with the concept of the core curriculum and all of this sort of thing. It is going to be difficult to breeze through with just a few courses in the curriculum when we are finished with it.

DR. CROCKER: Thank you. To make a half facetious comment first I suppose, if our achievement in this Province was generally high we might rejoice in the fact that female achievement is higher because that is not generally the pattern across the world, particularly in the mathematics and science areas. Now in some other areas, the language areas in particular, but in general the figures show across the world that males outperform females in the mathematics and sciences and that is a worrisome thing throughout the world. Now we have the reverse of that, and in some ways that is fortunate, but it is not terribly fortunate in the context of a Province that is not performing terribly highly anyway. But more to your point, we believe that in general the establishment of a more focused curriculum, the establishment of clear-cut standards and outcomes, the encouragement of most students to take the highest possible level of courses, not the lowest possible level, the pressures that will occur in the system for that to happen, including things like the pressures on post-secondary entrants, and the pressures on a job market that is becoming increasingly competitive, we believe that all of these will have salutary effects on everyone.

Whether they will have differential effects on males in ways that would overcome the differences that are observable may be a debatable point, but in many areas, for example, I think it is fairly clear, that the effect of students moving into more challenging courses is not that their marks decline but in fact that their marks improve. We can illustrate that very clearly by students in advanced mathematics in the high school. As a result, we believe that anything we do that would encourage students to take more challenging programs will generally improve achievement. Now, whether it will actually overcome the differential may be a debatable point, and we can speculate as to why, in this Province, males have tended not to perform terribly well. You might argue that, for example, our largest job market has been in areas where education was not at a high premium and has been highly male oriented, namely the fishing industry, with the exception perhaps of fish plants. That is pure speculation, we don't know for sure. I understand that the Division of Evaluation and Research is being asked to look into this whole thing much more closely, because we have, what I perceive, is a more serious problem in that area in this Province than you would find elsewhere. I am hoping that in general all the initiatives we are taking will help that, but you can't be sure, and I think it is fair to say, we have nothing specifically focused just on that problem right at the moment.

MR. HODDER: Thank you.

I raise it because I am aware of the fact that it is inconsistent with the performance in other provinces and in other jurisdictions. We are out of sync.

MR. DECKER: I don't know if you heard or not, the last two reports we had done did say that females perform better in science and math than males. Now, we have gone back to the director responsible for that and said: That's great, it is nice you tell us, but now we want to know why? Ideally, we would like for both to be performing equally; we want to balance it out. So hopefully we are trying to get some indication as to why there is that problem so we can address it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: It was a suggestion from one of the members of the Committee that we take a ten-minute break now. Is that okay with the Committee? Coffee is in our caucus room in back.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

We will now get back to our meeting. I think Mr. Barrett indicated he had no questions, so we will go to Mr. Harris.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Chair.

I would like to follow up with at least one question on a matter being discussed by Mr. Hodder with the ministry, and I think Mr. Hodder, being an educationalist, if there is such a word, an educator, I use the word time on task as the technical thing. I have a question relating to a personal experience that I have, or am aware of, with a student who is close to me, a high school student at a school in St. John's. The experience that she had as a Grade 11 student last June was that she wasn't getting any teaching, that there were almost no students in the class, maybe 10 per cent or less, that this was tolerated by the teachers and the principal, that she would go to school every day and there would be nobody there. So she was wanting not to go to school because there was nobody there and she was going to stay home like everybody else. She was told she had to go school because it was a school day - and this is here in St. John's. If anyone wants to know the name of the school I will tell them, but I wasn't attacking a particular school.

But it seems that there is an attitude in the system that in June you don't have study or you don't have to go to class. There is no instruction going on. And I'm talking about a student who needed every hour of instruction that she could get, a student who was given a 50 in math, because they couldn't fail her, I suppose, having missed so many days from the strike. She went to summer school to try to catch up and ended up with a lower mark in summer school. So that is the kind of need that student had for instructional time.

I find it very bothersome, with our education system costing $800 million per year, with students with achievement records on a national level that certainly need improvement, that there seems to be a major problem that the system doesn't seem to be able to operate in the month of June. Is there anybody who can tell us whether that is a single school experience, is it something that is wide across the system, and what has been done about it, what can be done about it?

MR. DECKER: Last year was worse than normal because of the strike but there is a degree of that in all schools. I think Dr. Williams might be familiar with that issue moreso than anyone else.

DR. WILLIAMS: Yes, Chairman. I probably would respond in a philosophical way, and then to the specific. I say, as one who has been involved now for thirty-five years, this is a major problem. There are periods in a school - prior to Christmas -

MS. COWAN: In high school now, remember, this isn't a primary problem.

DR. WILLIAMS: Yes, I had better qualify that. I suppose the reason I'm more concerned with the high school is because public examinations immediately follow, in other words, direct accountability for what students did or do. The problem time is Eastertime, and then after the May 24 weekend. I think we face a cultural problem within the system and within society. Because in fairness to the schools - and last year we had direct contact with superintendents first and then with principals - and principals will tell you that they can't teach those who will not come. And they can't teach those who come and don't want to be taught, particularly in the high school.

Now, one of the initiatives that flowed from the Royal Commission that we are well into, is the formation of school councils. The school council concept is really an attempt to bring a sense of responsibility from the school to the community, from the community to the school. In other words, schooling is a community responsibility. It is the responsibility of parents and members of the community to set standards, to give encouragement, and to see that young people hold education with a proper respect. I remember as a youth myself where people made sure that if you weren't in school you gave an explanation. Sometimes you were taken by the collar and carried to the school. Today, we excuse all too readily.

Philosophically, there is another concern of mine in this. I believe that most educators were trained or prepared for a period of expansion and not constriction, not decline, decline of resources, decline of population. I would love to see an engineer superintendent or principal of a school. I would love to see an accountant. I think we need to break the mould of what we have in education. We need to change the mind-set. We need to bring a sense of accountability for resources given, and it is not there, to my satisfaction. It is not there on the part of the community, on the part of the school boards, on the part of the school or on the part of teachers, and we are going to have to change it. Let me say most importantly, it is not there on the part of students. Teachers cannot teach young people who are not there and, as one high school principal said to me rather forcibly last June, `I can't go home and drag them to school, and if I do, I can't keep them there, particularly when you are now talking about seventeen-and eighteen-year-olds.' We have a community problem, a problem of low expectation with respect to performance, and until we change that, and until young people see that `it is absolutely essential that I take responsibility for my own education', and it is encouraged by everyone in society, this won't change. Having said that, we have to do far more than we have done in the past with respect to superintendents, school principals and teachers in holding them accountable. If a school is supposed to be open on a certain day, then it should be open and children should be there. I hesitate to go so far as to say that people shouldn't be paid if children are not there.

It was only a few years ago that we had truant officers in the Province - you remember that - and, well, they went by-the-by. We have a number of settings in the Province where we have social workers, students from the school of social work, working with schools. There isn't any doubt that we have more social problems today reflected in schools and the traditional means of dealing with them are not sufficient. I believe we are going to have to rethink who should be involved in school systems and what kinds of roles and responsibility should be allocated. More importantly, I see these school councils saying, in this community each child is very important and the child's education is important, and we should not let anything, including absence from school for whatever reason - unless they are absolutely legitimate - interfere with what is going on. And when you can get parents working with schools, I believe we will change it.

MR. HARRIS: I understand from your response, this is something that obviously has struck a cord with you, Dr. Williams, in particular. I find that those parents, sometimes in extreme circumstances, family circumstances, financial or difficult family situations, who are doing their best to encourage their child to do his or her best to achieve, and have high expectations of them, find that system and that tolerance for slackness very, very discouraging. It runs totally against the grain of what they are trying to accomplish for their own children and I, for one, would support any effort that could try to address that. I am not sure whether accountants are the answer, although certain management techniques certainly might help, not that I have anything in particular against accountants, but I think your point is well taken. I would like to ask a couple of questions - go ahead.

MR. DECKER: Would you mind if Dr. Oakley were to speak on that issue? Because he is involved on the day-to-day basis moreso than Dr. Williams or myself.

MR. HARRIS: I would be happy to hear any comments, particularly with any practical things that are perhaps being done or contemplated that might address that.

DR. OAKLEY: I share the concern as a parent and am one of those who constantly face kids during exam time saying there is nothing going on in school and I hold fast to saying, `School is open and you should be there.' I am a very unpopular father. But just to indicate some of the initiatives that we have undertaken to try to improve the situation - and I believe we have improved it somewhat, even though we may feel and it may seem that there is no improvement there at all come June time.

At one time not too long ago, we had thirty-six public examinations; that has been reduced to eighteen, and we are studying further to see if we would reduce the number of public examinations. We have a study presently for the senior high program and are looking at what are essential courses that students should do. Right now, depending on the school, the larger schools in the city could be offering anywhere between seventy and ninety course offerings, many of these at Level III and requiring examination, and trying to fit all of these courses into exam schedules of more than a regular class period is what is causing some of this problem. So we have that under review and I will be surprised if we don't reduce the number of course offerings and curriculum at the senior high level in any case.

MR. HARRIS: Is there some consideration given to - I think Dr. Williams and I discussed it briefly privately - that you don't need teachers to invigilate examinations. If public exams were held outside the school year you would have a definite distinction between the instruction and the evaluation at another time. Has any thought been given to that?

DR. OAKLEY: There has been thought given to it, but that really wouldn't help in a significant way because there is no longer a pure Grade XII or a pure Grade XI. Students in Level II now are taking courses that are at Level III and Level I, and you have this mix, so there would certainly be a number of subjects that would need to be evaluated even within the school year.

The other thing that we have done over the course of a number of years, actually, is we have held meetings with superintendents, drawing this to their attention. I think the minister has written superintendents at one point in time, and I am aware of some boards that actually now have in their by-laws the stipulation that schools will not be able to conduct public examinations for greater than x number of days, and in the city schools right now I believe eight to nine days is the limit. What they can do within that eight- or nine-day period they do. What they can, they evaluate within class time. So these are some initiatives that we try to implement to improve that situation. Nonetheless, it is still a serious problem; there is no question about that.

MR. HARRIS: Moving on to some of the other aspects of the department's budget in post-secondary education, I note that the Province still grants slightly in excess of $500,000 to the Atlantic Veterinary College, and there is a certain number of seats guaranteed for students from this Province. With our commitment to end in the 1995-1996 year, how many seats are allocated to Newfoundland and Labrador students, and is our quota ending when our commitment ends? What is the situation with respect to veterinary services coming out of that?

MR. DECKER: As I understand it, when that school was built, the Atlantic region, all the four provinces, went together and co-operated on it. The previous administration of the day entered into a contract which was costing us a lot of money, and I believe we are only guaranteed two seats?

AN OFFICIAL: (Inaudible) eight places, two seats.

MR. DECKER: Yes, we are guaranteed two seats, so it is extremely expensive. I should tell you, just in passing, that the medical school guaranteed ten places to New Brunswick for $10,000 a shot. That one is going to expire in 1995-1996, at which time we will be re-evaluating and trying to decide whether we are going to go on.

It gets worse. The last two graduates, I believe both of them - one had to go to British Columbia for work and the other had to go to another province. It is not a rosy story but we are tied into a contract.

AN OFFICIAL: It was a ten-year agreement.

MR. DECKER: It was a ten-year agreement, yes.

AN HON. MEMBER: When will the ten years be up?

MR. DECKER: Pardon?

AN OFFICIAL: When will the ten years be up?

MR. DECKER: It will be up in 1995 - August. Then we will meet with the P.E.I. Government to decide whether or not we are going to have any - or what we are going to have.

MR. HARRIS: I am told my time is up, so I will wait for another chance.

MR. CHAIRMAN: No questions?

Mr. Hewlett.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have one issue. Having been assured by the minister, of course, that we won't have an education-based election call this year, I will move on to another hat that I wear. I'm a temporary member of this Committee tonight but I've been a member of the Public Accounts Committee since I was first elected in 1989.

The Budget allocates roughly $120 million to Memorial University this year versus, I think, $55 million roughly for provincial colleges. The University, by statute has been exempted from certain reporting procedures, certainly exempted from appearing before the Public Accounts Committee. Of course, the given rationale has to do with preservation of academic freedom. When we have had educational institutions before the Committee, either colleges or school boards as such, generally the kinds of things we are after in the Public Accounts Committee have to do with whether or not the Public Tender Act was followed in the provision of carpet for the library, whether or not enough carpet to do a football field was done in discreet $4,999 units so that it would come in under the tender act, that sort of thing. I put it to the minister: Why can't we, as the Public Accounts Committee, demand of the University that sort of accountability as we would, say, with the colleges or the day school system?

MR. DECKER: We treat the University differently from the other sectors of education, I suppose, the other branches of government. We treat the University, I suppose, as unique. If you were to go back into the history of this Province and, I suppose, all provinces, you would find it is an absolute no-no that government would interfere into the teaching of a university. If you want to destroy Memorial University, I think the way to do it would be for the Minister of Education and Training to take responsibility for admissions so that I can get all the Liberals in and keep all the Tories out, or that we could teach economics which would say that the NDP approach to economics is nonsense.

Just think of the implications if you were to poke the nose of any government, no matter how well-intentioned, into a university. The past administration, the previous administration, and the one before that has never ever poked its nose into the day-to-day running of it.

The University is required to come under the Public Tendering Act and if there are any exceptions they have to be tabled in this House and I have to answer for them. The University is spending taxpayers' money, therefore, they have to be accountable. They have to prepare their audited statement every year, which has to be presented to government every year, and that has been done every year since I've been there, and I suppose, right on back from the beginning. The day-to-day accountability which an ADM would be responsible for in the college system, we maintain that accountability is being done by the Board of Regents. The Board of Regents is appointed to oversee the spending of that $110 million, $112 million, or whatever it is.

The Board is appointed by government, so the Board is really, I suppose, indirectly appointed by the people. The people elect government and the government delegates some of its authority. This government and previous administrations have delegated the authority to the Board of Regents. Some might argue that is not the way to do it but I think it is a system that has stood the test of time and we have really no intention of changing that.

Where would you draw the line? I don't know. We have a $2.5 million reduction this year with the University. I suppose they could turn around and put on a 50 per cent increase in tuitions. If that were to happen, should we intervene? I don't know. We would have to deal with that. I am confident, though, that the Board of Regents would not allow that to happen. I think the accountability is there. They would not allow the University to try to put tuition up to the extent where it would be totally unreasonable, considering they've only taken $2.5 million out.

My argument is that the Board of Regents to date has been there as a watchdog. They are appointed by government, they represent government, and they determine how every dollar and they are responsible for how every dollar is spent. They report to - in this case it happened to me, but whoever the minister is, they report every month. Their Minutes are made available. The Chairman of the Board is available for any questions that should be asked about the spending of money and what have you. Notwithstanding some of the statements which have been made by the Opposition, as well as by the Auditor General, I do maintain that we have an accountability built in there which has stood the test of time and we don't intend to change it, not tonight, anyway.

MR. HEWLETT: So what you are saying, Mr. Minister, is that if the President wishes to give a contract for a $2 million extension to the music department to his cousin, it is entirely up to the Board of Regents to detect that, stop it or report it or take remedial action. It is almost as though the University is - in the House of Assembly we are incapable of lying because by definition we are honourable. A similar circumstance applies to the University, is that what you are saying essentially?

MR. DECKER: No. If the University wants supplies they would call tenders on them, or if they want to put an extension on. If the President's cousin came in with a price which is more than the lowest tender, I would expect that the Board of Regents would not allow that to happen. If the President's brother or cousin came in with the lowest tender, I would suspect he would get it. But it would not be - I don't think the fact that he is a relative would really enter into the equation.

MR. HEWLETT: What about whether or not there is a tender at all?

MR. DECKER: Oh, they are required. Aren't they required, Florence?

MS. DELANEY: Yes they are. They are required to report to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation any contracts that they would enter into in excess of $5,000 that do not comply with the Public Tender Act. We receive regular reports from Memorial that we forward to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation to table in the House.

MR. HEWLETT: That is fine, but what we find with regard to government departments and agencies other than the University is that they are required to so do as well, but until such time as we have what we call a compliance audit, quite often these things go unnoticed or unaccounted for. Certainly, that is the circumstance that I, as one member of the Committee, would like to express. Somehow, compliance is based, it would appear, on an honour system here, and what we have found in line departments and agencies of government is that compliance is only often obtained under threat of constant and periodic audit.

MR. DECKER: You understand that if people are not complying with The Public Tendering Act they are breaking the law of the land, and all of the penalties which are attached to that, so whether you are the university or school board or a department of government, people are taking risks.

I suppose you could also state that it is illegal to drive 150 miles an hour but people do it, and not all of them get caught, but you do it at your own peril. When people break the law, they get caught. Some get caught and some don't, but I would think the compliance within the university is as good as the compliance anywhere else in the system, and I have no reason to believe that they are not complying with the requirement to call tenders. Now, if you have some concrete evidence that is not so, a discreet letter to me and I would certainly investigate whether or not that is the case, but I would be extremely surprised if I were to learn that some relative or someone of the president or any other person is getting preferential treatment. I would be more than surprised to learn that.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman; that is it for me.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Cowan, do you have any more questions?

MS. COWAN: No, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hodder.

MR. HODDER: I am finally becoming convinced that now I understand why brick for the school in Corner Brook was ordered out of Province for the extension to the university and the colour was so important. You could not intervene, it was such a threat to academic freedom. I am really convinced by your argument. It makes some sense.

Now, to get back to my real questions here; I have so many things. I wanted to go back to a couple of things that we have already touched on. My colleague mentioned the public examinations and the time on task in the school system. One of the real problems we have with our performance is that there was some indication that the public has low expectations, that there is a cultural thing, and I agree with all of that, as Dr. Williams has said.

One of the real difficulties we have sometimes is that even the department itself over the years has tended to go and use the bell curve when they do assessments. They simply put everybody in. The department itself, in its testing policies, has been part of the problem and not part of the solution, because my experience as an educator is the parents are saying: Keep your standards up. I had many a parent say to me, when I was Principal of Mount Pearl Junior High School: My child has failed, but please do not change your standard. Parents are demanding higher standards. Yet, when we have public examinations we say: Well, they all have to fit on some kind of magical bell curve.

I was a chief examiner for many years, and I know exactly what it is like to send in marks and have them totally distorted, and I want to see if that kind of skewing of the marks - in other words, it could use what you do to the students and the system, but is that still practised?

MR. DECKER: I am going to let one of the educators address this technical stuff, because you are getting out of my realm now.

DR. OAKLEY: We share the same concern you do with respect to scaling, as it has been known. In the past it has happened. We have had public examinations that have been set in the earlier days by two individuals. In effect, the basic premise that was made was that the population of students from one year to the next would not vary. If you get wild swings in the results of the public examination then it must have been a factor of the validity of the public exam and that basically has been the reason historically why scaling has taken place. It is a lack of confidence in public examinations. We are attempting, through a number of efforts actually, to build the confidence with respect to public examinations. We have moved to something known as an item banking process whereby we will have a bank of items for the various public examinations. They would have been developed by standards that are acceptable throughout the country. From that item bank we will be able to develop the public examinations and it would be our hope that we will let the results stand as they are once we have the confidence with the public examinations.

In addition to that we are linking more and more on a regional basis through the Maritime Provinces Education Foundation, for those courses at the high school level that are developed regionally, there will also be examinations developed at the regional level. We are still working out the details as to how provinces would use them because some use public examinations and others do not. They use them more in other ways other than public examinations but these initiatives we hope will negate the need for the scaling process.

MR. HODDER: What is the progress being made on the commonality of curriculum - you just referred to it now - and the mobility of standards and programs throughout Atlantic Canada and across the nation for that matter, particularly in those provinces where we have a fair high level of mobility, for example like Alberta? I guess the question is: what initiatives are to taken to assure that standards are consistent and that they are very portable?

DR. OAKLEY: There are a number of initiatives in this area. The maritime provinces for about four to five years have been working on the common curriculum in mathematics, science and language arts at the high school level. We have linked with these projects where we were at the junction of needing a new course. It might interest you to know that next year in chemistry for instance, the course that we will use in our high schools will be used in the other three maritime provinces and is basically the same chemistry course that is used in Alberta. The Province - as I have indicated - has linked on a number of these and is considering joining the MPEF in which case we would have common curriculum in mathematics, science and language arts from Grades 1-12 eventually. In addition to that, there is some national initiatives now through the Council of Ministers of Education where the ministers are looking at joint projects which most, if not all provinces - probably with the exception of Quebec - would be involved in joint curriculum development projects.

Pertinent to the earlier question, is that for the high school level we would have common assessment instruments as well, as well as looking at assessment of what students should be able to do say at the end of Grade 3, Grade 6, Grade 9 and Grade 12.

MR. HODDER: When will the criterion reference test be ready for Grades 3, 6 and 8?

DR. OAKLEY: There are various tests right now, criterion reference tests, some of which are at III, VI and IX, others are at different junctions. What we are trying to do is harmonize it all so that we will have common curriculum at the various levels. Therefore the outcomes would have been the same. Then we will be able to assess what students should be able to demonstrate that they know at the end of grades III, VI and IX, and there are discussions taking place right now with the other Maritime provinces to see if we can do that jointly.

MR. HODDER: As you know, of course, the minister has made a great deal of use of CTVS as a mandated test. The truth is of course that only Newfoundland and Yukon use CTVS as a mandated test. The rest use CTVS in conjunction with other testing. As we know what happened in Grand Falls when they changed superintendents - the prior superintendent didn't have any time for CTVS and the present superintendent believes that this is a valuable instrument. When he sent the message out to his schools that: You better focus on this, folks, this is important stuff, this is going to determine where we stand and all that kind of thing, then Grand Falls Integrated School Board shot ahead of everybody. Which goes to show very simply, if you want to improve performance in CTVS give me any Grade VIII class in this Province, give me three weeks, and I can improve your performance on that test by six to eight points. So can any other educator.

That is the truth. Therefore these great pronouncements about: We are doing so beautifully well and everything else, are really hogwash and garbage. They have to be used in conjunction with all other assessments, and then you will get a comprehensive view of where your school is really standing.

Some of the literature I read talked about parenting. Very interesting thing happening, and I believe it is in either New Zealand or Australia. Where they've gone to the radical point of saying: We are going to turn off the t.v. I think it is from 6:00 to 8:00 in the evening. The signal will not come in. It is child focused. It is saying: This is time for children to be able to do their school assignments without having to be interfered with or bothered by the t.v. and the competition. When we reflect on the glitter storm there a few months ago, one of the things that people said over and over again: It wasn't so bad, we had time to talk to each other, we had time to do things that were creative, we jelled together.

What I'm saying is that maybe - and I know that people would smile at it - it is time that we as a people, talking about culture, we really say it over and over again, and if you want to be radical about it I think you have to look at what is happening in some other jurisdictions where they are saying: We are going to do something about it.

The other thing I want to mention - I'm going to quit then - is a very interesting study that I came across relative to parent councils and schools. We evaluate children. One of the studies that came out of Chicago indicated that the schools would also evaluate parents in terms of parent participation, parent involvement. Their performance in that school system shot up dramatically because of the fact that schools were putting the onus directly back on the parents to show that they themselves were involved in education. There is some literature on that that is very interesting and I am sure the deputy minister is familiar with it. In terms of the radical we have a long way to go in this Province before we can get, I suppose, to the point, where we have the cultural shock that the deputy talked about just there a little while ago, but we are headed in the right direction I do believe.

That's it, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Mr. Decker.

MR. DECKER: In introducing freezing rain and setting exams for parents, I think the rest of it was meant to be comments. I do not think there is a question there. We do not have the authority to test parents, but maybe the school counsellor would involve the parents a lot more. It seems like where the experiment is taking place it is having real good reception. We only know, of course, that after a year or so, perhaps, we can evaluate just what has happened there.

MR. HODDER: Are we going to get some feedback to the public on the counsels, where they are working. I know you have had the in-services, and I am familiar with the trip that you arranged to go down to Kentucky, was it? The group went somewhere down in one of the states.

MR. DECKER: Dr. Crocker can explain that. We have a consultant who is implementing - Dr. Crocker can explain that better than I can.

DR. CROCKER: Yes, indeed.

We do have underway a very substantial pilot project in school counsels this year. The so-called Kentucky trip was a small part of what it is being done there, designed to familiarize people with what I think is being widely seen as one of the most radical, if you like, and most successful reform movements in the US of which school counsels, or some bodies similar to school counsels, are a major part.

These pilot projects are just about ended this year. We are expecting a report on these and we expect to use the report to create a second draft of a document that was drafted last fall, first, on school counsels. Yes, we will have a report of that pilot project. We expect that to be public, we expect it to be used in redrafting up a handbook for school counsels that will be in the hands of all schools next year, and we certainly will encourage a strong further movement toward school counsels next year.

The degree of support we will be able to give that will be interesting because we have put many hundreds of thousands of dollars this year, thanks largely to the HRD initiative, into the pilot projects. Obviously, we cannot support all school counsels in the Province on that level but we do hope to learn enough from the pilots to be able to run the school counsels effectively and go beyond just setting them up and hope for the best, because that maybe is asking for failure.

We believe the school counsels are being well looked after at this point. The pilot has been very successful. I had a meeting on Friday, in fact, with the chairs of all the pilot school counsels and the principals in those schools and I think there is almost unanimous agreement about the success of the pilot, not totally unanimous agreement about exactly what the school counsels should be doing, I might note, but we believe this is a very successful initiative and we will certainly want to encourage it to expand starting next year.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Dr. Crocker.

Time is up.

MR. HODDER: Could I have one final one?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we will give you one final one.

MR. HODDER: Well, I will put it in two parts. Back to the child -my last question has to do with the child. Monkstown - three children. What are we doing to assure that the three children in Monkstown, one in Grade 111, two in Grade V111, are getting a quality education? That's all that is there.

MR. DECKER: I am not sure I understand the question.

MR. HODDER: I am talking about smaller schools, obviously.

MR. DECKER: Oh, the small schools, okay.

MR. HODDER: The school in Monkstown has a total of three children.

MR. DECKER: You are saying that there are only three children?

MR. HODDER: Yes, only three children.

MR. DECKER: In Monkstown?

MR. HODDER: In Monkstown.

MR. DECKER: Yes, okay.

MR. HODDER: There is a child in Grade III, and two children in Grade VIII. Next year it will be a school of one child - or, I am sorry, the year after next. There are no Kindergarten children in the community. It is too far away to bus and all the rest of it, and I use it as you always use your examples on the Great Northern Peninsula on the bussing; I am using the outlandish one here to say: What are we doing for these little tiny schools? Monkstown is an example?

MR. DECKER: As I said earlier to a question from the Member for Green Bay, we will try to use every natural means at our disposal to make a school viable, bring them together or what have you. Now, we recognize that there are going to be places where there are no schools to amalgamate, Little Bay Islands, Great Harbour Deep, Red Bay - there are a whole lot of places - and they are declining and declining and declining. What we have been doing is putting in distance education, putting in extra resources and what have you. Now where do you draw the line? Do you draw the line and say if there is only one student we are going to have to take that student out on a bursary? Then you ask: Will you treat a Kindergarten different than the way you would treat a Level I? So all of these issues you would have to discuss.

Specifically in the Monkstown issue, I am not sure what we are doing there. Maybe, Wayne, you could tell me what is going on.

DR. OAKLEY: The only thing I could say is that we would not, at the departmental level, get right down to how we administer that particular school. That is left with a school board. The school avails of whatever is provided for small schools through the small school formula. The board would look much like, I guess, we would do in making adjustments for small schools. The board would also look and see what it can do by way of its resources, and obviously it would give it more than what it receives for three students for instructional purposes and so on, so there has to be an adjustment from its larger schools to some of their smaller schools. We provide to the level that we are able to for any small school in the Province.

MR. HODDER: I do believe Monkstown would be the smallest school you have.

AN HON. MEMBER: It probably is.

MR. DECKER: Dr. Crocker will want to speak to that, and I would like to be able to say something about it as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me. Mr. Hodder has been on since 9:17 p.m., and I -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ten minutes, but I think Mr. Harris wants to ask some questions, so in all fairness to Mr. Harris I think we should give him ten minutes.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I listened with interest to the interchange between Mr. Hodder and Dr. Oakley, I believe, and Dr. Crocker about what was referred to as progress in having our curriculum the same as curriculum in other provinces. While I can understand - particularly in the Maths and Sciences area - the common curriculum as being very favourable to standards across the country, my question is, really, are we getting away from... Fifteen or twenty years ago we were very concerned about having curriculum that people could relate to, and that we were not sort of educating people out of their environment, and that the curriculum was something that you were taught to appreciate your own culture and that your self-esteem wasn't constantly being battered by treating you as if you lived in Detroit or Chicago, or some other place other than Newfoundland. My own experience in school was the Dick and Jane who lived somewhere else, and the cultural issues I am talking about.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Exactly. People were going to the store to buy things because that was where their fishing nets were - that cultural difficulty. I know we spent a lot of money on curriculum development and all of that. Are we now giving up on having any of our own curriculum and our own stuff, and throwing it in with some sort of common curriculum in Canada? I was almost thinking about Napoléon having everybody in France learn the same thing at the same hour and the same day. It seems to be a trend away from us having understanding of our own way of life and our own interpretation of that reflected in the school system. Is this a philosophical change that we are now seeing with the Maritime counsel and with the national counsel, or what?

MR. DECKER: We might not have made ourselves clear. What we are talking about across the country is a common core which would be the English, science, and the math. As Dr. Oakley pointed out, chemistry, for example, I do not think the culture would make much difference when dealing with chemistry or hard math, or something. That does not mean that there will not be a course in culture.

MR. HARRIS: Some of the educators will disagree with you on that. We hear those arguments about there being a particular religious way to teach mathematics.

MR. DECKER: That is correct and I would not want to argue that one, but it is the common core which we are looking at. The four western provinces are going along the same route we are, and as Dr. Oakley pointed out the Canadian Counsel of Ministers of Education are also looking at it, and it is not unrealistic to think that within a few years we could have a common core curriculum right across the country, except for maybe Quebec, who have a little different system from what the rest of us do, but that will not be at the expense of doing away with the local input.

As a matter of fact as the new curriculum is being developed we would even see that local involvement to the extent that even a school board would have a different part of a curriculum which would relate specifically to that school board. Cases which come most readily to mind is what is happening up on coastal Labrador where the LIA have developed parts of the curriculum where they teach about the Inuit way of life, and not only just the Inuit but also the Europeans who have adopted the Inuit ways. Some excellent books have been done, so we are not thinking about putting everybody into one neat little box. That would not be the intent, but it is the common core we are looking at across the country.

MR. HARRIS: Just one final question, Mr. Minister.

I am looking here at the advanced studies section of your budget, the skills training initiative, the Hibernia training offshore fund, the human resource development agreement, and Atlantic groundfish strategy, a lot of money directed towards skill development and particularly related to, in some cases, the $800,000 in the offshore Hibernia training. In all of this we still seem to be coming up with stark examples of problems in training people with skills that are needed immediately. We have seen it in the movement of one of the Hibernia projects out of Marystown, you see it at the St. John's Dockyard, the CN dockyard there, bringing people in from Nova Scotia to do welding. Welding seems to be the one coming up again and again, yet people call me saying: I worked as a welder for eighteen years for Lundrigans and now I cannot get a job as a welder. I cannot get this course that you need to get, which only takes six weeks but nobody will let me do it so I cannot get the qualifications.

These gaps seem to be there. I understand Cabot has now the right to give that Canadian Welding Board certificate but that is only after several years of trying to identify the problem and coming up with the solution. How are these funds and programs co-ordinated? What is the problem with it if these things are not identified and dealt with, where people who have most of the skills just need some little top-up and they don't seem to be able to get access to these programs. These programs don't seem to exist and the need doesn't seem to be addressed.

MR. DECKER: Do you want to respond, Dr. Williams?

DR. WILLIAMS: When you look closely at this one and consider the world class project, Hibernia, and the over 7,000 people employed, and look at the number of Newfoundlanders who did get training and got employed, it has been a marvellous success story. Where we've run into problems is with respect to what I might call training for experience which you can't do. I mean, titanium welding, for example, has been a problem. We put on a course but the cost of doing that raises major concerns for us, and even when you do you have novices trained for what is required as a very high-class skill. It is better to go to Korea and bring them in. That is just a personal observation. You cannot train someone for ten years of experience. When you are talking about a world-class project they just don't want trained novices. They want trained, experienced welders. That has been some of the problem.

Having said that, when you look at the sheer number and range of training courses that we've put on and our people have gone through I think we've had a marvellous success story.

MR. HARRIS: Okay, I will leave it at that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. There are no more questions?

MR. HODDER: We were going to move a motion to the effect that providing amply for inflation the minister's salary be reduced to a dollar.

OFFICIALS: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: First of all I want to clear up something from this morning.

AN OFFICIAL: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: If there are no errors or omissions I want someone to move the minutes from this morning's meeting.

On motion, minutes adopted as circulated.

On motion, subheads 1.1.01 through 4.2.02, carried.

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

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr. Minister and your officials.

The Committee adjourned.