Achi news desk-
As part of its promise to improve the Anglophone education system, the New Brunswick government launched a report on Tuesday outlining how it is going to get there.
The report stems from a steering committee prompted by consultations in the winter of 2022-23 when the province sought to change the system’s French immersion program.
That plan was scrapped, but the committee made short-term and long-term recommendations with the aim of finally tackling long-standing issues. On Tuesday, the co-chairs of the committees and Education Minister Bill Hogan released their road map on how to complete those long-term recommendations.
The first addresses chronic absenteeism. According to the department, in the 2022-2023 school year, slightly more than 37 percent of students in grades K-5 were considered chronically absent.
That number was more than 45 percent in middle and high schools.
Ardith Shirley, co-chair of the committee and executive director of the NB Teachers Association, says New Brunswick has historically seen a slightly higher absenteeism rate than the rest of the country.
However, since the pandemic, all states are struggling with the problem.
“For every missing child, there is a family behind them or with them who are going through something. And we have, at times, the highest poverty rates in Canada. Sometimes children are not in school because they are working to support their families. So I think we have to be very realistic in New Brunswick about the challenges we face,” said Shirley.
The government promises to develop an “absence intervention model” for all schools to adopt, with actions on how to curb the problem, but also what to do when a student becomes chronically absent. There will also be a public awareness campaign on why attending school is so important.
Some of the other promises include:
- develop a new school funding model
- ensure that all schools see 30 minutes of physical activity for grades K-8
- create a long-term teacher recruitment and retention plan
- expanding the offer of French courses, and tracking French spoken language proficiency
Finding a new classroom composition model
The committee also recommends researching, developing and implementing a new classroom composition model. They are going to launch pilot projects in different schools, encouraging new classroom and staff configurations and tracking their progress to see what works. Their aim is to develop a model by early 2026.
The province will also conduct a “system-wide review of the resources available to support student learning and ensure the right resources are available to respond to student needs.”
Minister Hogan acknowledged that this will mean reviewing collective agreements and working with unions to see if changes are needed to ensure that students’ needs are met.
“I think we’ve tried a number of things over the years, and it’s clear that when we keep putting money into the same thing and seeing the same results, it’s not working. So we need to look at a variety of different approaches,” said Hogan.
He said if a method works, but needs more funding, he will consider that.
Class composition has been a challenging subject for the education system for some time.
Last month, child, youth and older advocate Kelly Lamrock unveiled a report looking at the entire social system – and the bureaucracy that, she says, can prevent it from being successful.
He used one example of a family with children who needed extra resources at school. The school said it could not provide those resources on a daily basis, and the students could only attend part time.
“The parents had hourly shift work, so they had to give up their jobs because there was no way they could do both. And then they wound up on social assistance and then they lost their houses,” he said on March 11. “But then, of course, even when social development knew they were teetering on the brink of homelessness, they have to wait to lose their homes. house and move further and further into more and more unstable houses. Then they were further away. They lost their mobile phone. So the social workers, if they wanted to talk to them, had to drive an hour to the rural community.”
Hogan said there may be cases where students are assigned to be home part-time, but are on an educational plan meant to help find a way for them to return to school full-time.
“Our hope is that by looking at classroom composition through a more creative and different lens, we can meet the needs of more students,” he said. “Putting more bodies in the class does not necessarily mean that you will have more success. Providing the appropriate support when it’s needed, and as long as it’s needed, then that’s where we’ll see the most success.”
