Education Minister Addresses Parents

The Honourable Dave Hancock addressed a gathering of parents at a meeting hosted by CAPSC and Western Canada High School last night. The meeting was well attended by about 125 parents and a handful of MLAs from the Calgary districts.

Mr. Hancock talked at length about the Education system in Alberta saying he sees himself in the role of explorer in that Alberta Education will be going through large changes in the near and long term future. Here is a paraphrase of a number of the points he made:

• he is fully aware of the importance of education and sees it as an investment in the future of Alberta.
• path to future success is dependent on the harmony of family, schools, community and province, and that the primary key to that success lies with teachers
• needs to improve the churn rate of new teachers, saying that 25% of teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years
  
• needs to engage teachers more with PD days that feed their ongoing professionalism
• needs to support them more in areas involving troubled students and help them engage more parents to support literacy and community engagement
• wants to invest larger proportions of the 6 billion dollar budget with first nations and children in care
• wants to re-assess testing practices province wide
• intends to re-evaluate fine arts programs and determine the need for all students by giving them more choices
• the new education act will engage Alberta's parents at all stages
• warns that a new fiscal reality is on the horizon
  

In response to a number of questions he made these points:

• Alberta Education engages students in decision making at conferences, student advisory councils and 'speak-out' web based forums
• he believes in early education and supports mandatory full time kindergarten
• admits a struggle with class size initiative as a baby boom of sorts has occurred but that it remains a priority
  
• responding to a complaint about the small size of funding that home care receives, he said that his primary goal is the education of children in the public school system
• he is looking at removing the PAT's for grade 3 and if he had his druthers would remove them this year
• when asked why private school boards get funding he responded that they are still teaching Alberta's students and that there is still a large savings as they are only partially funded

He didn't get to all the questions that were posted but did say that he would be happy to respond to inquiries via email - dave.hancock@gov.ab.ca. For clarification of any of the above please send him an email - if you get a response, let us know.