EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This morning this section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255 will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training. When the committee last sat it had been considering item 2. School Programs (b) Education Renewal (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits on page 39 of the Estimates book.

Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): I think at the end last time we were in the middle of discussing the government's proposals for Canadian history and Canadian social studies in the new curriculum. I was suggesting that social studies and history were different and that there had been in the past good arguments for teaching social studies at the Grade 6 and the Grade 9 level. Both of those programs had different goals and expectations. In the Grade 11 history program, students were in senior years coming close to citizenship, and it played a very valuable role in deepening their understanding of the history of their own country, its relationship to the rest of the world, and the reasons and arguments for the kinds of institutions that have grown up in Canada.

I am suggesting to the minister that I am sure she has seen many of the petitions and letters that came in in the last session of the Legislature arguing for the retention of a compulsory Canadian history course at the senior levels. I was asking what the government's plans were for this. They have often said that they want to increase the Canadian content below the Grade 10 level, and I applaud that, but I was arguing that it was not the same as having also a senior-level history course. History as a discipline and the analytical concepts that one can teach at a grade level are different than the ones that you can usually teach to the majority of students at a Grade 9 or a Grade 6 level. I wondered if the minister had any further comments on that and if she could give us, as well, some indications of how and where the Canadian content in the grades below Grade 10 will be expanded.

Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Just before I respond to the question, there were a couple of requests for some tablings the other day and I have those here now if I may table them.

One is the request that the member from Wolseley made regarding graduation requirements in New Directions. I have that information here which I would like to table. The other question was, I believe, from one of the members of the committee, I cannot recall which one at the moment, asking for the membership on the Advisory Committee on Education Finance.

We have Caroline Duhamel, the president of MAST; Gerry MacNeil, the executive director of MAST; Greg Giesbrecht from the Manitoba Teachers' Society; Art Reimer from the Manitoba Teachers' Society. From the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents we have George Buchholtz, Don Wiebe and Daniel Reagan, who are all superintendents in divisions in Manitoba. From the Manitoba Association of School Business Officials we have David Bell and Gord Olmstead, who are both secretary-treasurers. Citizen members, we have Vi Prowse of the Home and School Parent/Teacher Federation which has changed its name to Manitoba Parent Councils, and she is the president of that association. From the Department of Education we have Jim Glen, Carolyn Loeppky and Gerald Farthing, who are all senior staff, directors or ADMs in the Department of Education. I will just table that for the member's information, and, as I indicated before, at this time of the year, those names will all come up for renewal. The organizations will all be asked to submit, again, their names.

In terms of the answer to her question, yes, indeed, I do know the difference between history and social studies. I understand that history is a component of social studies, and I also understand what is being said in terms of best practices research which, I believe, the opposition party supports, at least I hope they do.

But based on best practices research in terms of the whole social studies, which includes a wide variety of understandings about our country, its peoples, geography and customs, and so on, we will be looking for richer content in elementary grades, building on the prior knowledge that children bring to the social studies topics. This will include studies of concepts from psychology, sociology, economics, political science, history, geography. Students of all ages can understand, within their experience, Canadian social institutions, issues for social groups and problems of everyday living.

As I indicated to the member before, our focus on Canadian history will be to strengthen the Canadian history content so that students will have a deeper understanding of how history affects the nation in which they dwell. The exact curriculum will be developed, as I have already indicated to the member within the western consortium and so, at this stage, I am not able to provide the exact answer to exactly what will it say and exactly when will it be introduced.

But I do draw to the member's attention something that is fundamentally important, that I think those who are looking at the new curricula need to understand; it is extremely important that we no longer see areas of study being isolated one from the other. We believe, for example, in the teaching of language arts skills, that effective communication in terms of receiving and transmitting information, whether it be through the written word or through verbal communications or electronic communications, or through sign language, ASL, whatever the line of communication is--that effective use of communication should permeate all subject areas. We would like to see, for example, in science, that communication skills also be taught. Our four foundation skills will permeate all areas of learning.

Similarly, within the social studies area, history, which will be strengthened and emphasized and given more opportunity for additional learning in Senior 3 and 4 over and above the number of hours and the attention that is given to it right now, does not stand alone, and I used the example the other day which I will use again because it is a very simple, straightforward example, I believe, and that was the example of the voyageur.

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The voyageurs, when you talk about their part of the Canadian experience, encompass history, economics, geography, an understanding of natural resources, an understanding of supply and demand and the changes in that supply and demand--an understanding of a whole wide range of topics. We do not see them as being isolated one from the other.

So the member has several times indicated that history and social studies are not one and the same thing, and while I acknowledge that history and social studies are not one and the same thing, I also think it is important to emphasize that history is a very important part of social studies, and that social studies can no longer, as she implies in her questioning by saying, history and social studies are different, implying that, somehow, history does not permeate every aspect of social studies, showing a lack of understanding for what we are attempting to do. We feel that history does impact on more than just a straight historical statement of, in 19 such-and-such this happened, and in 17 such-and-such that happened.

You have to understand, in the example that I used, how the existence of the rivers, which was geography, and the flow of the current and the climate and all of the things that happened with the voyageur, in part, were influenced by geography, by trade, by economics, by natural resources. So I hope that we will not be seeing history as devoid of being mentioned in other subject areas, and I guess that is my point.

I have just been handed a note by staff which indicates the research that is currently being done is being conducted relative to the preparation of a report dealing with the western curriculum congruence, in both French and English, in social studies' issues and trends in western Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, broad policy issues related to social studies education in western Canada. Those principles that I outlined are based upon the best research, and we do hope that the member will support that research as valid.

Ms. Friesen: We obviously have a fundamental disagreement. I do believe that history is important, and that it can and should be taught at the senior high levels to all of our students.

I think what the minister is doing is probably looking at social studies content. As I said, I have no problem with expanding and would fully support the expansion of Canadian content in the social studies area.

History is more than that, and I suppose we are getting off on to perhaps more technical areas. History is about ideas, and it is about ideology.

The minister is suggesting, really, very many descriptive aspects of voyageur life, whereas what one might be able to discuss with students at a senior level is why in fact we have idealized the voyageur, how the idea of the voyageur has come to be, how historical knowledge, the theory of knowledge that is taught in the International Baccalaureate program, that is the level of conceptualization which you can begin to deal with at the Grade 11 level. You can begin to get students to understand the origin of ideas, enable them to be critical of documents, to be critical of how knowledge is arrived at.

That is why, I believe, that history is different from social studies and that history is an important, both as a discipline and as a deeper and more critical, and I do not mean in the sense of carping or negative which is often the way people understand critical, but evaluative, a critical thinking, I think, is one of the very basic fundamental skills that one develops with history.

I am reluctant to see students being possibly, through no fault of the school boards' own desires, but through financial reasons, through reasons of retirement, through reasons of scale of a school that that not be available to them. I know that many school boards will want to continue to teach Canadian history, and I fully support them in that.

When the department takes it away from a core compulsory subject, then it does alter the decision making of a particular school division. That gives me great cause for concern.

The minister talks about teaching across the curriculum and all the skills that they are--emphasizing the four skill areas. She used, for example, the issue of communication and literacy, and I suppose it is a truism in education that many of the new ideas are really old ideas cast in new language, as perhaps some elements of the government's plan for benchmarks and standards are really old ideas in a new language.

Similarly, teaching across the curriculum--I remember my father saying to me when he began teaching in the 1930s, the handbook that he was offered had rule No. 1, all teachers are teachers of English.

An Honourable Member: It is not in the handbook now.

Ms. Friesen: Well, it is an old idea, and it is a good idea, and it is something I think which is important to all Manitoba children. That kind of teaching across the curriculum, of course, is the responsibility and has always been taken very seriously by teachers, whether it has been specifically in the handbook or not.

In the sense of supporting interdisciplinary studies, of course there is support from that, but why must it be at the expense of a loss of a subject which I believe is fundamental to citizenship and fundamental to the critical thinking skills and to the literacy skills of senior high school students?

To move this along with a question, I wonder if the minister could tell us, I know that she cannot give us the exact curriculum now, but could she tell us exactly which levels are going to have increased social studies? How is the time to be expanded, if at all, or are we simply looking at the same grade levels, the same areas of curriculum and somehow more densely packed? Is that all we are really looking at?

Mrs. McIntosh: As I indicated to the member in my earlier response, we are at the stage right now of consulting with the western consortium of educators and they, at this point, have not yet indicated what consensus they have come to as to those details that she is asking. When those details are ready, of course, they will be shared with any interested person, but I cannot preempt what their recommendation to us will be until I have seen it, because I have not seen it yet.

The educational partners, I can assure her, will have a role in determining the shape and the timing of the new history and the new social studies and the new geography, and the levels for increased social studies, which is what we are talking about, have yet to be determined. So Manitoba education partners will have a significant role in this. We are not saying that because the western consortium is working together on this that Manitoba does not have a significant role there because it does.

There were a couple of things that were said that I think need to be clarified in terms of the record. The member had indicated that at Grade 11 students can begin to understand things such as the theory of knowledge and so on. I quite agree that at Grade 11 they can begin to understand the theory of knowledge. I reject the notion, though, that it is only at Grade 11 that they will have sufficient maturity to be able to understand those philosophical and sociological aspects of life. I am concerned about the aspect of the opposition promoting that we have to wait until Grade 11 or Senior 3 before we can begin to expect students to have some concept of those very fundamental understandings of the universe and the world in which we live.

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I indicate to the member that I had just put into the record an indication that we are going to, in terms of the richer contact in the elementary school--not Grade 11, in the elementary school, and I just stated it earlier that we will be studying concepts in social studies which she says cannot be taught until Grade 11. We will be introducing concepts from psychology, sociology, economics, political science and issues for social groups, problems of everyday living. In fact, we will have an emphasis on activities that engage students in inquiry and problem solving about significant human issues, and the comprehensive nature of our curriculum renewal is directed at developing students' abilities of inquiry, of reasoning, of analytical thought.

If the compulsory subject change was the only thing that we did, which the member seems to have the misunderstanding that is all that we plan to do, then maybe she might have some legitimate cause for concern. But we have repeatedly indicated that that is not what we are doing, because this is a major change with respect to learning and curriculum and assessment.

So I do reject the statement she made that at Grade 11 students can begin to understand these complexities, because we believe that there is a great capacity to have some understanding of theories of knowledge, of philosophy and all of the good things that she mentioned at a much earlier age than the age that people normally are when they get to Grade 11. Again, our information is based upon best practices researched. We have--I would be pleased to table--a whole series of quotations from reputable people in the field who agree with the direction we are taking in expanding the expectations and minds and experiences of children and not waiting until they are on the verge of adulthood to begin talking to them about fundamental issues such as the ones she raises.

I am concerned that she would think that we have to wait until they are 16 years old before we can start talking to them about what knowledge is and how the facts that we learn relate to deeper, more complex understandings of why the world around us has evolved the way it has and what impact we can make in terms of our activities, our own perspectives, our own things that we do. The member had indicated that we do not do something that we should not be teaching some of the things we are teaching at the expense of the loss of history, with the assumption that there is going to be a loss of history. She keeps coming back to this assumption that any of these good things we are doing, she keeps saying they are good, they are great, but do not do it at the expense of history, implying that we are going to be doing these things at the expense of history. I reject that notion.

Not only will they have an enriched experience in terms of gaining some knowledge of history, but at the Senior 3 and Senior 4 level there will be even a greater opportunity to add to their history instruction, if that is the way she wants to have it phrased, than they have now. They have an option now of being able to graduate from high school with more history than they currently have the option of graduating from high school with. In terms of students not being able to understand, I will give you one example.

At a junior high in our area, children at the junior high level, not at Grade 11 but the junior high level, one of the teachers in one of the junior highs assigned his students, in terms of trying to understand Canadian parliamentary systems, the assignment that they had to in some way--he gave them a list of things that they could do--learn about the electoral process by the election that was on at that time. Three of those students chose, as a way to fulfil their assignment, to monitor one of the election campaigns in the area. They happened to choose mine, so I happened to see their experience in that.

I was very impressed with these three students who to that point, in terms of a deeper, richer understanding of what democracy is all about, had had no particular political involvement or exposure to the electoral process. They followed through every step of the campaign, even to going door knocking with the candidate, listening to what people said at the doors and understanding how those ideas got transmitted back to decision makers and ultimately affected party platforms, ultimately affected voting patterns, ultimately reflected decisions in government. They saw with their own eyes how the system works, and not only did they understand that, they began to explore the philosophical differences that they saw in approaches to government at the doors, talking to people.

I think that kind of exercise indicated to me that young people--just one of tons of examples--do have an ability to see something about the implications of knowledge and how knowledge can be used. That is just a very small example, and it is maybe not the best example in the world, but it is one kind of example that I have had recent experience with, just in the last months, in terms of watching and understanding of a system evolve and the implications, the deeper understanding of the parliamentary system in Canada, how it compares to other regimes in other parts of the world where candidates cannot be free to be chosen, where people cannot be free to question, where people cannot be free to make choices, and how we make our choices and the freedoms that accords us, and the beauty of those freedoms and the appreciation for those freedoms that come with that basic understanding. So they were not just being told here is what happens in an election--you do this, this and this. There was a much deeper thing they were looking at which gave it really strong appreciation for Canada and for the way things have evolved in Canada that allow people to be free in that sense.

The Curriculum Frameworks documents that are currently underway, they will address the nature of discipline including history. When I say discipline I do not mean--just as the member explained what she meant by critical, I say the nature of the discipline and I think the member does not require a definition of that. It will address the nature of the discipline including history in the introduction. It will discuss what skills, concepts, approaches are fundamental to history, and that may help provide some further clarification. As well, it will show similarities with other social studies disciplines.

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I do not want the member to think that she and I are in disagreement. We are not in disagreement on the importance of history. One statement you made in your introduction there, and I wrote it down, you said something about we will have to disagree because we think history is important or words to that effect. We do not disagree on that. We do not disagree at all on that. We may disagree on the method of delivery and the approach that we plan to take to expose children to history, but we do not disagree on the importance of history.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I think where we do disagree is whether Canadian history should be a requirement for all graduates of Manitoba high schools. Clearly there is a disagreement there, and I am not alone in this disagreement. There have been, as I said, numerous petitions and letters to the previous minister about this.

Just to pick up on the example that the minister offered, that is of observation of elections and students' participation in that. It obviously is a very good project. I think the minister benefited from having students watch her program, her election, as did the students benefit, as would the class.

We are not rejecting the expansion of knowledge at earlier levels. We are not rejecting the raising of expectations for all children at all levels. So that is not the issue. But if you take, for example, the example that the minister gave of electoral understanding, very good, that is exactly what the Grade 9 social studies curriculum has done. The teacher offered and took advantage of a situation that comes around every three or four years to give his or her students practical benefit.

You see, what the Grade 11 Canadian history could do at the ages of 16 and 17 years old--and of course curriculum development is based upon educational psychology or psychological principles which argue that there are different levels of understanding possible for students at different levels of their experience. Not everybody in a Grade 11 class is going to be at the same level, just as not everybody in a Grade 9 class is going to be at the same level of abstract conceptualization; but on the whole, Piaget would lay out those principles of what students could be expected to learn at different levels. That is why we do not teach the same kind of trigonometry in Grade 12 that we teach in Grade 6. Similarly in the social studies and history.

What those students in Grade 9 will be going on to get in their senior Canadian history, as they become ready for voting, is an understanding of the different governmental systems which have been part of Canada's past. So they take it in Grade 9 at the very basic practical level of, what does a government do? How does it work? How do you get elected? Very basic, and it arouses their interest. It expands their knowledge of the world, which is exactly what the junior high and Grade 9 levels should be doing. By Grades 11 and 12 what you can begin to do is to enable students to understand the origins of that and to understand about historical change. For example, how did we get responsible government? What were the processes involved? How did we get representative government? How did Canada function under royal monarchical government in the French period? How did it function under aboriginal government in the Prairies? How was Metis government, the government of the buffalo hunt, developed in Manitoba? How many governmental systems have we had in this country, and how is the one that they observed in Grade 9 developed, and what were the origins of that?

How has the franchise been won? The minister says we should not take it for granted. Of course we should not. One of the ways we enable students not to take it for granted is to understand the history, the extent of the history of the struggle for the franchise, first of all, for the so-called universal suffrage, manhood suffrage in the 1870s and then again for female suffrage and then finally for aboriginal suffrage and also for the restoration of the vote to the Japanese after the Second World War.

Now, students are not going to get that historical understanding of change, of how one brings about change in the country, at the Grade 9 level. Some teachers will teach it, but they will have not very much time. In the past, what we have been able to do is to take that expansion of their world that we developed in the Grade 9 level and to adapt it to both a discipline but also to a historical and deeper understanding of the varieties of experience of the people of their own past, of their own families. That is what I sense is going to be lost.

Now, if the minister can tell me that that is going to be maintained, that there is going to be at those senior high levels, when students can build upon existing knowledge to understand those historical changes, to understand how the world is changed and how it can be changed and how their own country has come to be, then, perhaps, we do not have a disagreement but, at the moment, I think we do. I do sense that some stage of our students' development into citizenship is being lost.

I want to ask the minister if she can give us some evidence of the ways in which the Canadian content of Manitoba curriculum will be expanded. Is she, for example, planning to move that Grade 11 Canadian history, portions of it, into the Grade 10 level? Is that what is going to happen if everything is to be completed before Grade 10? Are we going to change the American history course at Grade 10 to be a North American history? Are we going to change it to be a Canadian history? How is the Grade 9 course to be changed to add Canadian content? How is the Grade 6 course to be changed? Are those the levels the minister is looking at or is she looking at a social studies course in every year or adding Canadian social sciences to every level of study? Is that the proposal that is on table before the Western Consortium?

Mrs. McIntosh: The member is very knowledgeable about history, because it is her own discipline and she comes to it with a great deal of knowledge about historical events and is able to quote dates and figures and events in history very well, as it is her area of expertise, but I indicate to her that in quoting all of these authorities and talking about Piaget, for example, that she is talking about some very valuable but some also very old kinds of news.

We talk about the best practices research that I am citing for her in other examples. We are seeing a change there in the thinking about learning and curriculum, and we see a decrease in focus on the postponement of significant curricula until secondary grades. The authorities she quotes as sort of still the most current and only authority, we see there that the developmental phases are not as biologically or age related as previously thought. I appreciate her quotation of a respected authority, a valuable authority, but not the only authority and not the most current authority.

So we see a new paradigm and we talk about best practices research and, again, we have done a tremendous amount of research into the psychology on this, we see Vygotsky talking about mediated instruction, where the teacher takes the student one step beyond where they are in terms of knowledge, skills and understanding and causes the child to move to the next level of skills and so on. It is maybe authorities that she also knows but chooses not to reference because their research indicates and confirms the best practices research we are talking about, which says that there is a decrease in focus on the postponement of significant curricula until secondary grades. Those kinds of principles upon which we base our raised expectations for students are significant and should not be ignored by those who are concerned. We no longer wait for children to get to a certain stage before we move forward. We move them forward, and it is a different kind of thing.

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The changes that we will be talking about will be based on research, will have the input of exemplary teachers and scholars who will comprise project teams for western outcomes and Manitoba frameworks. They have not yet concluded their work to answer the specific question that came after the preamble, so I do not have the dates, times, specific content available at this time. When they are available, which we hope will not be too much longer, they will be made available.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, could the minister give us a date for when they will be available? You see, we have been hearing now for a year that the government is going to increase the amount of Canadian content in the curriculum. So I think it would be helpful for all those people who are concerned about the loss of Canadian history to have an estimated date of when this collective process will be concluded and we will have some idea of where, when, how the government is going to increase the Canadian content in social studies.

Mrs. McIntosh: I repeat for the record because it must not be allowed to stand as fact that students in our schools are going to experience the loss of Canadian history. That is not an accurate statement. Students have to take Canadian history. They will not be able to go through our New Directions program without having Canadian history. So it is important that the record show that students will not lose Canadian history in Manitoba schools, and that needs to be emphasized repeatedly so that the misconception that the member either has or wishes to have other people believe is correct, should not be allowed to stand as accurate.

The member does not like, or indicated yesterday that--implied, I suppose, because she did not come right out and say she did not like it--she implied that our new streamlining of curricula development was not to her liking, which will now reduce the current development from four to seven years down to about three years, and yet is insisting that we come up with a new curriculum. I do not know, is she wanting to know right away if we can give her a final date? Yesterday she was indicating that we should not be rushing through curricula development, so I do not know which way she wants it.

I do not have a specific date in terms of when the curricula committee will report. There is a target date set for this fall, but whether it is going to be September 15 or September 23 or September 30 I cannot tell her. It is targeted to be reporting to us in the fall of '95, and, beyond that, I simply cannot be more specific.

Ms. Friesen: Well, that was the information I was asking for, when would we know? The minister says it is in the framework. Well, perhaps it is, and if it is, then I missed it. My apologies. The minister is also leaping to conclusions when she said that I implied I had criticism of the framework timetable. I have not voiced those criticisms yet. I would like to explore the timetable today, perhaps have some basis for evaluating that timetable that the minister is suggesting for curriculum development.

My concerns are that we are losing the senior high curriculum, that there are concepts that when students are 17 they can understand, that they cannot understand when they are, on average, at the Grade 9 or at the Grade 6 level. Again, I think the basic argument that I have made, that curriculum is based upon expanding levels of student understanding, applies equally to Canadian history and Canadian social studies. And that is really all my references were, is to say that there are different levels. They are different for different students. There are average understandings and average levels of ability to conceptualize that we will find at different grade levels, and that is how we develop curriculum.

The arguments that the minister is making for mediated instruction, yes--again another old idea, that you understand where the individual student is, and you take them to the next step. That to my sense is what teaching is all about.

I think we are sort of going around the circle on some of these ideas and arguments, so what I understand now is that the western Canadian consortium, of which Manitoba is a member, will be reporting in September '95 on its proposals for Canadian social studies teaching across western Canada, and that this will include proposals at this stage for changes in the grade level at which courses will be taught. First of all, that is a question. Will it be proposing changes in grade levels? Will it be proposing changes in content or directions for changes in content? Will it be directing--what will be the nature of the report? What are the levels of direction that are going to come in September '95, and what is the next step after that?

Mrs. McIntosh: The initial report will be on research, trends and policies.

Ms. Friesen: Then what is the next step after that? Where does that report go? How does that get translated into curriculum, and what is the timetable after that?

Mrs. McIntosh: The next step will be based on a synthesis, will consider developing a work plan, conceptual framework et cetera, for a western social studies project for consideration by the western curriculum directors, project management team and subsequently by the ADM's steering committee, and that should be around Christmas '95, somewhere in December maybe.

Ms. Friesen: When we are looking at all of this, the context of this is the entire social studies curriculum, or is this just for the development of that Grade 3 curriculum?

Mrs. McIntosh: It is for developing the outcomes for kindergarten to Senior 4, because as you know, we are moving on the continuum, what the member for Maples (Mr. Kowalski) referred to yesterday as the Australian benchmark, and as the member knows, we no longer pluck out, we see things in totality.

Ms. Friesen: So by approximately December we anticipate seeing--what kind of a document will it be at that stage, and where will it rest, and then what is the next step after that?

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Mrs. McIntosh: I should just indicate, when I say that December is the target deadline, that December was our target deadline, but I did indicate and wish to impose the caveat, just in case the member has forgotten what I said the other day, that because we now have other provinces wanting to be part of what we are doing and we have agreed to work with them because we feel that the principle of having western curricula, to have western standards and then to expand to Pan-Canadian curriculum standards as has now been requested by other provinces in Canada, the fact that we are working with other groups now may cause our deadlines to be slightly behind, because we wish to be thorough in our exploration with other provinces. So our target is still that date, but understand we are working with other organizations, and it may not come in specifically at that time.

After that step has been taken and after that report is ready, then the development of specific subject area general outcomes, specific outcomes from K-12 or K-Senior 4, and illustrative examples to produce the common western curricula framework of outcomes from K-12. We will be incorporating the review panel feedback as required. That is the next step that occurs after--I could on through them all if you would like.

Ms. Friesen: I am still trying to get a handle on the transition from the western Canadian consortium to the departmental actions that we have talked about before. Is that when this is happening?--and we will say December, but as far as possible, December.

Mrs. McIntosh: I would just like to indicate, we are doing this all together. It is not outsourcing, so we are working in partnership. We will be carrying on as we work with the western consortium. We will still be working here on our own, with our own thinking and plans and so on. We will be coming together. I do not know if that answers your question about what the department will be doing or not.

Ms. Friesen: I am really having a difficult time understanding how the western consortium links with the department. Is there anything that the minister could table on this? As I understand it at the moment, the western consortium, some version of it, whether it is staff or ministers, is meeting on and off now until September 1995, when it will have a report which will look at the research trends and some proposals, presumably. Between September and December, more or less, there is going to be some synthesis, some response to that report, and then at the ADM level there will be some connections between the western consortium and the provincial department on trying to set out some specific subject outcomes for the K-Senior 4 level.

Where do we begin to click in with those committees of 12 and the report writers and the desktop publishers? When does that begin to click in? Is there something the minister could table so that we could all visibly see what happens with an abstract timetable? It is not my desire at this point to tie the minister down to a particular deadline, it is to get an idea of what the process is. It is all very new for Manitoba teachers and parents and for opposition members. It is useful, as far as I think, to be very clear and not to have any misunderstandings about what the western Canadian consortium is doing, what Pan-Canadian is doing, and what the department is doing. At which point to do our parents and our students and our teachers begin to and be able to play a role in this?

Mrs. McIntosh: We will begin to play a role here in Manitoba as soon as that initial report in September comes forward. Immediately, at that time that information will be provided to the subject area steering committees and they will begin their examination of it. Before too long--as soon as it is complete, it should not take that much longer--I will be releasing a Foundation of Excellence report which will further clarify some of those details. The subject area steering committees get that information as soon as it arrives and begin their work on the statements in the report. That will be local. Those will be Manitoba teachers. Those will be Manitoba people, not people from any other province.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us who would be on the subject area steering committee? I do not necessarily need names. I want to know what the nature of that steering committee is.

Mrs. McIntosh: The steering committees are very broad-based committees and they encompass, again, a wide spectrum of those interested in education: teachers, universities, colleges, the other educational organizations, some representation from business or industry, a wide-ranging make-up on the committees.

Ms. Friesen: The minister says committees, I have been talking in my own question simply in the context of the social studies curriculum. Do I understand from that that there will be subject area steering committees in X number of disciplines, or in X number of areas?

Mrs. McIntosh: In all the core subject areas.

Ms. Friesen: We have been talking in the context of social studies curriculum. Is this same process being paralleled by each of the three other areas?

Mrs. McIntosh: In all four of the core subject areas, yes, and staff has just indicated to me that math and language arts are further along the course of development because they are our primary, initial thrusts.

Ms. Friesen: Each core area has a different steering committee?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes.

Ms. Friesen: Has the minister appointed the subject area steering committees--I gather they have been appointed, obviously, in two areas where they are working. The two other areas, have they been appointed yet?

Mrs. McIntosh: The mathematics and language arts committees of course, as the member indicated, have been appointed, and actually their year is up in terms of the timing for re-appointment, either to confirm that people will still be remaining or to add other people.

The other two, the science and the social studies, have not yet been appointed, but it is expected that they will be very soon.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister table at a later date the specific membership of those two committees that have been appointed?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, I would be pleased to do that.

Ms. Friesen: The minister talked about a continuing appointment. What would be the continuing role of this committee, first of all, its immediate role the first year? Then how does the minister see these steering committees, which I assume are different than the review panels that I want to talk about next, what is the difference between their two roles, and how will their continuing appointments be directed in the sense of responsibilities?

Mrs. McIntosh: Three basic ways, Mr. Chairman. One would be to help with any implementation, the other would be to assist with the ongoing renewal of curricula because, as we said, it will be always--like we do not believe that curriculum once set will sit and remain static. It will be constantly renewed. The third would be to assist in understanding how teachers will be working with the new curriculum, so there would be the three sort of areas of endeavour.

Ms. Friesen: I am not sure I understand the last one, to assist with how teachers will be working with--Do you mean relating to teacher education or professional development or what?

Mrs. McIntosh: They will be in close contact with teachers in the field. Whatever terminology you want to put on it, I suppose it is professional development, I think you said, but they will be working with teachers to get an understanding of how the implementation will be addressed as we move into the new curriculum.

Ms. Friesen: Well, it seems to me this would be an appropriate area for connections, formal, informal, with the faculties of education and with teacher training. How are those links to be made?

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Mrs. McIntosh: Well, first of all, there is university representation involved on the committees, but there is also an Interorganizational Curriculum Advisory Committee. It is called that. It is called the Interorganizational Curriculum Advisory Committee, ICAC, another bunch of letters that we have to remember, but that is like an umbrella committee. It is there for curriculum advice, and it is going to have on it MAST, MASS, MTS, the Faculty of Education at the university and parent representation. That parent representation will be coming from the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils. It will not be ad hockery, it will be organization specific.

I think as representatives of those various organizations come together to provide curriculum advice, it is sort of an umbrella organization format that will get some of that kind of input the member is talking about, and that is a good question.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, that is a new committee, that Interorganizational Advisory Committee?

Mrs. McIntosh: It is about two and a half years old which I, in my mind, call new. It is relatively new.

Ms. Friesen: The other area I would imagine where input into curriculum has been brought to the minister's attention, probably on a number of occasions, is aboriginal input and again, for want of a better word in this context, multicultural input. How is that to be ensured at this stage of curriculum development? I am still on the subject area of steering committees.

Mrs. McIntosh: On every committee that we set up in these regards, we have criteria that indicate that we represent geographic areas of the province and that we represent the multicultural mosaic of Manitoba which includes all of the groups, including the aboriginal component.

Ms. Friesen: Can the minister tell me, in the two committees which have already been appointed, how that has been achieved?

Mrs. McIntosh: We do not have the names here, but we can get them and bring them back. That will give us, along with the names then, the indication of the region they are from and what Manitoba perspective they present on the committee.

Ms. Friesen: I want to move to the next stage now. It may be a parallel one. The minister indicated that after the subject area's steering committees had met and devised the common curricula framework and the outcomes at K to Senior 4 that she would then be producing a Foundation for Excellence report. Are such reports in each subject area? Is it going to be one single report? Is it a kind of a summary of the work of these four committees that will be presented at the end of the first stage of work, or is this something separate?

Mrs. McIntosh: I hope this is what you are looking for. The purpose of a Foundation for Excellence--which shall be the release I will be making as soon as it is completed and, as I say, it is very close to being ready for release--will have in it our vision, and parts of that will include principles of teaching, learning and assessing; curriculum development process; types of curriculum documents and the elements integrated into the curriculum; the foundation skill areas which I talked about the other day; resource-based learning; differentiated instruction; curriculum integration; aboriginal perspectives; gender fairness; appropriate age portrayals; human diversity; the antiracist, antibias education; sustainable development.

It also will talk about the issuing of diplomas, statements of marks and transcripts and the mandatory status of curriculum. That will be part of the vision aspect of the Foundation for Excellence. But the purpose of the document in an overall perspective is to first of all put out that vision to guide kindergarten to Senior 4 schools and schooling and to communicate the broad outcomes of education for kindergarten to Senior 4 and to describe Manitoba's curriculum development process for the reader's benefit, and again, to describe the various types of curriculum documents to be developed.

It will detail the elements to be integrated into all curriculum documents, so that the reader can gain a better understanding of what we are looking at. It will provide information on reporting student marks and issuing diplomas and statements of marks and transcripts. It will communicate the revised requirements in Manitoba's four programs. When I say the four programs I mean the English program, the français program, the French Immersion program and the senior years technology education program in both français and English.

It will specify the new time allotments for Grades 1 to 8--and I think that was something you had expressed interest in--and the credit requirements including the graduation requirements. I believe you asked for those the other day for Senior 1 to Senior 4. It will describe the phasing in of the new graduation requirements, and it will also describe plans for the senior years articulation with the adult learning system.

It will have those things in it, and of course it will be probably more than what I have just given you, but that I think will give you a feel for what it will contain.

Ms. Friesen: It is essentially a process and principles document.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, back on the timetable. The steering committees have looked--or steering committee if we take the social studies example, has now looked at the curriculum, and it has developed its framework and specific subject outcomes from K to Senior 4. What happens next? What is the next stage?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, just to be sure that I have not left an incorrect impression, the steering committee will be reviewing, but it will not be doing the actual writing. I think I made it clear but I am not sure. Just in case I did not, I wanted to make that clarification.

The next step then carrying on will be to review all the draft materials produced by a Curriculum Frameworks of Outcomes Development Team. They will have reaction guidelines provided which will be developed by the consultant project team. They will develop that in collaboration with the Curriculum Frameworks of Outcomes Development Team, which is the title. I know it is a bit wordy. In other words they will review all of the materials produced by the Curriculum Framework and they will do that in collaboration with the Outcomes Development Team.

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Ms. Friesen: Sorry, I have lost track of who is reviewing what here. The subject area steering committee does not write things, but it does develop outcomes and approves a common curricula framework. Who does what next? How do we get to--I will leave it and maybe we can try again.

Mrs. McIntosh: I think I have confused you and I apologize if I have, because I realize that this is wordy. I will see if I can put it in better language.

You have the steering committee that we referred to earlier. When that report comes in, they will get it and they will check it through and they will begin to do things like help with the implementation and those types of tasks.

Next step, I will try to word this better. While the steering committee is carrying on doing that, our own Manitoba development team--and I will just call it the development team because the other words just kind of get confusing. They need the titles for their own work. The steering committee is carrying on doing its work, and then we have a Manitoba development team which will then begin to do a review of the draft materials produced by a curricula framework team. They will have reaction guidelines provided, which will be developed by a consultant project team, and they will do that in collaboration with the outcomes team.

That is a group of people--maybe this will help--they will be educators, primarily classroom teachers selected by the department from nominations submitted by superintendents. They will use departmental selection criteria, and, of course, they will also include university scholars, college instructors and representation from industry, labour and parents. So that group, which is a different group from the steering committee which will be primarily sort of educator types, will also have the industry, labour and parent people on it.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, the steering committee continues. A curriculum development team, which is the 12 people, more or less, that we talked about before, goes to work to produce the specific materials that will be used and the goals and the standards and the outcomes, et cetera, that will be used at Grade 3, Grade 4, Grade 5, whatever is applicable. Their work then goes to, I think, what we called earlier a review panel. Is that right? This review panel selected by superintendents, by industry, labour, teachers--it will include teachers, et cetera--then reviews what is proposed by the curriculum development team, which is essentially a professional team that we are actually looking at on line 16.2 (b). Is that the curriculum development team, which is these consultants and the 16 staff years that we have on this line?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, you are correct in that they comprise a portion of the team. I just want to go back and emphasize what they will be doing. You had referenced some of their tasks; they will be developing the outcomes. Now that steering committee does have, as well, representation from industry, et cetera.

Ms. Friesen: I think I lost the terminology there. The steering committee has representatives from--

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, I just wanted to correct something I think I said. I may not have, but if I did, I wanted to make sure I did not mislead you. Originally, I talked about the steering committee, and I outlined it: it is made up of teachers and industry and everything. Then I think that, when I was going through outlining who is on this second group we are talking about, I made reference to the fact that the steering committee was primarily educators and left the impression that it was only educators. I just wanted to clarify that if I did that.

Ms. Friesen: Here is what I understood from what you had said both times. The subject area steering committees are composed of teachers, university people, community colleges, business and industry. The review committees selected by the superintendents and others includes industry, labour, teachers, possibly superintendents, I do not know.

Mrs. McIntosh: I am going to try to keep it simple. What we have are two committees whose composition is very similar in terms of the organizations and representatives who sit upon them. Their tasks are slightly different, though, because the steering committee is long-term commitment. The review panels will be brought together to do a shorter term review and looking at outcomes. Maybe that is the simplest way to explain it rather than going through all these titles, et cetera.

Ms. Friesen: Yes, that helps. I do notice however two different compositions. In the review committees the minister included labour, in the subject area steering committee she did not specifically include them although she did say business and industry. So were we looking at the same things there or is there a different intention?

Mrs. McIntosh: Staff is indicating we do try to target both labour and industry on these. Sometimes we are not always able to get a representative, but we make the effort in our attempt and our desire to have both represented.

Ms. Friesen: How does the government define business and industry for the purposes of education? Does it for example, and perhaps specifically, include public institutions, Crown corporations such as the Manitoba Telephone System or Hydro or the big Crown corporations? Does it include credit unions? Does it include co-operatives?

Mrs. McIntosh: To date they have not generally targeted or gone to Crown corporations, but they have gone to all others. Co-ops and credit unions would be included in a list of groups to approach, areas basically where their input would be valuable because it is part of the spectrum. So that includes just about everybody really except they really have not gone to Crowns.

Ms. Friesen: I do not know what the implications are of going to Crown corporations for this kind of expertise, but it seems to me that there is an enormous amount of expertise that could be very useful in both the Telephone System and Hydro, and MTS in particular has been exemplary in developing partnerships with schools. I am particularly thinking of the Tec Voc one and also Gordon Bell in my own constituency. So I would like to see that Crown corporation.

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for that. We will take her point as a very constructive comment and appreciate it.

Ms. Friesen: So we are at the curriculum development team. This is the one that has the two months, more or less, to produce something for the review panel to examine. What is the next step after that?

Mrs. McIntosh: Now we go to what, if you are looking on the Appendix A sheet, would be the field validation. There we have a review of all draft documents produced by the curriculum framework, the outcomes development team. They react according to reaction guidelines, and again a similar type of composition would be the educational partner representatives--MAST, MASS, MTS, MAP, et cetera. Those groups would be on that.

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So they do that. That is the education partner review panels. That is where we have those employed or involved in education reviewing and reacting.

Do you want to go on to the next or do you want to pause there?

Ms. Friesen: I do not have the paper that the minister made reference to. Yes, I would like to stay here for a minute. We have got the development team which has produced some outcomes. Is the curriculum development team that I was talking about earlier the same as the outcomes development team that the minister, the phrase that she just used, or is this a separate team? Maybe we had just better start from the beginning. What happens after the curriculum development team has had its material reviewed by the review panel? What happens next?

Mrs. McIntosh: I think, Mr. Chairman, if the member does not have this particular appendix, that I can provide it to her. It will make it so much more clearer to see it put down in forms that are descriptive, set up like this.

I will just indicate to you what I am giving you here. What I have got is Structures of Curriculum Development. It has got five steps shown: the Curriculum Development Team, which we have talked about, and it has got a little description there, et cetera; then it has got the Review Panels; then Field Validation; then the Authorized Use and the Continual Updating. Under each of those headings it explains very simply, in sort of a one-or-two-sentence, descriptive way, how we see this thing unfolding.

When we start getting into the specifics, as we were trying to do just a minute ago--would you please table that so the member can have it? I think it would be helpful for her. Just talking about it, with all of these titles sounding so similar and the make-up of the committees being so similar, it gets very confusing, but I think the visual image will make it a lot easier.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: I thank the honourable minister for the information.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, yes, a visual presentation would be helpful. The minister identified it as a an appendix, and it is an appendix to what?

Mrs. McIntosh: This is from a working document that the department is doing right now in terms of the Foundation for Excellence. It is still within their sort of working papers, but I just think it would be useful in terms of simplifying what could become very complex.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, at which point do the resource materials get developed and identified and translated, and which committee does that?

Mrs. McIntosh: I think if you would take a look at the sheet that you are just in the process of being handed, you will see where that falls in. She is just taking a copy. When you get it back, take a look, and if it does not clarify, I will go through it with you.

Ms. Friesen: What I am really looking for is the time lines for the development of those resource materials. If one of the fundamentals of a new curriculum is resource-based learning, clearly that is one of the major components of the development of any new curriculum.

Is that to be comprised within the two months, or is there a parallel team working? Are there additional supports being brought? Where does that all fit in, and what are the time lines for that?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the member bearing with me, because this is an area that I am on a fast learning curve on here as well, and I am going through some of these questions she is asking for the first time myself. I appreciate her asking them because it is being a good learning experience for me.

In terms of the question she has just asked, in particular, there will be a call for materials that will be going out to publishers once the outcomes are complete. That goes out to all the provinces and, once the publishers have responded with that information, the review would take about half a month, two weeks, approximately. That is something I did not know, so I learned it with you.

It is expected that the math materials will be ready for schools to see this fall.

Ms. Friesen: I can see from the document the minister just tabled that the learning resource selection committee will be working essentially parallel with the curriculum development team, that it is a separate group, so I am interested in the composition of it. Then I guess it begins working really before or in parallel with the review and the curriculum development. So I am interested in the composition of that committee.

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Secondly, it sounded from the minister's responses, though Manitoba would be putting out a call, Manitoba would be reviewing materials.

If there is to be a collective western process here, does this go back at all to the Western Canadian Protocol? Is there bulk buying, for example? Are the common resources that people anticipate using, is each province going to be doing learning resource selection province by province?

Mrs. McIntosh: The call in this instance was done by Alberta, not by Manitoba, but it will go out to all provinces. There will be a western review of materials and we will be looking at things like bulk purchase and those types of items that you have identified.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, then what is the role of the learning resource selection committees? It says, and I will just read the document into the record: responsible for evaluating and selecting print and nonprint learning resources which support the curriculum.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, each of the provinces will do a portion of the review to a set standard. It will be a shared review. For example, if they have a set standard on gender equality and any other type of issue, then each component doing the review would be working to that standard. The work itself will be shared, so you will have a review committee here doing something and a review committee in Saskatchewan doing something. The set standards are being developed by the western consortium before any review takes place.

Ms. Friesen: I assume the set standards are those that the minister outlined or will be outlining in the Foundation for Excellence document: the aboriginal perspective, gender, fairness, age, et cetera.

Mrs. McIntosh: The member is correct. We will have included, just for a little further clarification, those items that she has talked about. They will include things such as accuracy, evaluation, bias, physical characteristics, cost, currency. They will have materials for inclusion in the listing that are approved for use with programs and courses and objectively analyzed. You have attempts to put learning resources into some sort of logical relationship with curriculum development.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, the composition of this committee, is this a departmental committee or does it have outside members on it?

Mrs. McIntosh: This particular committee will be primarily subject area teachers with the expertise of the area.

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Ms. Friesen: Going back to the earlier distinction we used, is this a short-term or a long-term committee? Will they be continually evaluating the resource-based learning materials for the updates of the curriculum, or are they short term for these first few years?

Mrs. McIntosh: This is an ongoing one. The thing that happens, and the member I think is familiar with this from other experiences, is that those teachers are really well trained so we like to utilize them as long as we can, but then eventually we will renew and replace people and they will go back to their field. It is ongoing, it is not a short term.

Ms. Friesen: This review of materials available, does the committee, does the minister, does the government rule out the creation of materials? From the way in which it was first presented the argument was that a call goes out for essentially what existing materials are there and then the committee reviews existing materials for their applicability to the particular outcomes that it is looking for. Does the call include the creation of specialized materials?

Mrs. McIntosh: The member asks a really good question, because to really be new, there is an opportunity now for the creation of new material, and the publishers in fact are eager for this, because with a consortium of the west it gives us the same strength and buying power as some of the larger provinces, and indeed we include one of the larger provinces. So they are very interested in developing new materials based upon our specs.

Ms. Friesen: One of the reasons I asked this, of course, is that it changes the time lines if you are including the prospect of the creation of new materials. Is that part of the call necessarily, or is it in this first stage of new curriculum? Is it existing materials only?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, some of the material may well be new, especially in high school math and science, because publishers have been following the trends, and they have, from the early days of the new concepts, been watching and preparing. So we do not know at this point which of the materials that come may be new or which will be existing, but we feel it is a good possibility that in math at the high school level, science area, that we could see some new material that has been developed based upon the following of our moves here by publishers who want to be in on the initial stages.

Ms. MaryAnn Mihychuk (St. James): I am going to ask a few questions in terms of the electronic library linkages. What type of linkages are planned? Is it interdivisional? Is it between the department and the division? Will we ultimately have access to our public library system? Perhaps the minister can outline that.

I know that many divisions are looking at having electronic monitoring of their catalogues in school divisions. One of the major problems with that is it is cost prohibitive to provide the required changes. So I am very interested in this area. I think we do need to enhance this process, and I am looking forward to the plan.

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for her question and for the support she indicates because it is very much appreciated.

We have a project called the linking libraries project. It is an initiative of education reform. It does propose to link electronically the Manitoba libraries, the school, public, college, universities, special and government, through the telecommunications network. The idea and the concept of course is, as you indicated, to try and provide a library setting for Manitoba learners right from early years through to adult with electronic access to library resources throughout the province. Of course, that is a large vision, and as the member indicates, it is one that has a cost component to it.

In '93-94, an independent group was hired to study the issue. It was called Nordicity group. It worked with the guidance of representatives from the Manitoba library consortium, and they brought to the minister in April '95 the Linking Manitoba's Libraries: A Vision and Action Plan Report.

We now have a newly created interdepartmental committee. It goes with Manitoba Education and Training; Manitoba Culture, Heritage and Citizenship; and Manitoba Rural Development. They will be forwarding as soon as they can, as soon as possible, to me a Treasury Board submission with the recommendations on linking libraries report.

So we have a really strong commitment to enhance student access to educational resources in establishing an electronic library and towards sharing the library catalogues with a wide variety of educators and government people, individuals, groups.

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We are working towards this end, and like so many other initiatives in society these days, it is a new way of doing things. It is a new way of sharing and accessing information so it is both exciting and challenging. You will find, I think, people eager for the opportunity to have faster access and nervous about it at the same time.

Ms. Mihychuk: How much money is allocated in this year's budget for this project, in the '95-96 Estimates?

Mrs. McIntosh: For '95-96, the amount of money dedicated to this is in the $80,000-range, and I am giving ballpark figures. It is not the exact amount.

Ms. Mihychuk: Can the minister explain when the interdepartmental committee, composed of Education, Culture and Rural Development, make their submission, the minister indicated that she will be submitting a Treasury Board application or a request. Is that separate from the Department of Education. How does that process work?

Mrs. McIntosh: I guess what I mean by that is that the details and the cost implications will be analyzed in the report, and that will be coming to me. We always do an analysis of cost implications to analyze what a project might cost, the justification for the costs and, you know, from which line it should be taken, and so on. It may be a proper Treasury Board submission, but it will be an indication as to the amount of money and sourcing and those types of cost implications. It will be the financial and cost analysis, I guess, is probably a more proper way to say it. It will be a joint government activity, it will not be specifically Education, but Education will take the lead.

Ms. Mihychuk: The budget allocation of '95-96 of approximately $80,000 is going to do what in this process? Is this something that is internal to the department at this time?

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member again for the question. Those dollars are in the operating budget for education reform. They will be used with respect to activities, professional fees, operating costs, those types of items, and it will be dedicated to the implementation of the report once it is complete.

Ms. Mihychuk: I am sorry, I guess I need a little more clarification on that. The $80,000 that we spoke of is directed for the linkages project, is that not right? We are talking about professional fees for whom, operating costs of what, since we really, I understand, are in the beginning phases of looking at this whole vision.

Mrs. McIntosh: Once the report is complete, then we will know what kind of work we will need and the staff will then, there will be people then working on the implementation of the report. Those are the costs we are identifying, those are the costs that that money will be targeted towards in part.

Ms. Mihychuk: When can we look forward to the report being completed? Is this the interdepartmental committee, and when would we expect the report to be produced?

Mrs. McIntosh: The committee is being formed right now and the time line that we have set would see the report being complete in the early fall.

Ms. Mihychuk: I look forward to further updates on this project.

I would like to now move a little bit further on in something that is outlined in the School Programs. In the Activity Identification section of this line item there is an indication that grants will be provided in support of pilot projects in distance ed. Can the minister provide us more information on those grants?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, I can. I am just looking at this now. We have--this was announced last year about this time, almost to the day I think. The purpose of that program is to provide information on strategies for the improvement of distance education expertise in schools, post-secondary institutions, other training programs, infrastructure at both the school, the educational institution and the community levels. It is not just in school but also into the community, student access to information and programs, teaching strategies for distance education.

The focus of the pilot projects will be to test, evaluate and integrate distance education technologies and methodologies with existing and evolving curriculum and program delivery. We have some funded projects here. We could indicate that in Antler River--I am using now the name of a school division--there is a project titled Level Playing Field for Rural Students. Garden Valley has one called Passport; Mystery Lake has one called MysteryNet.

We have some individual schools in there. Miles Macdonell Collegiate, for example, has Network for Learning. Then there is an urban school division consortium, and they have one called InterNetworking Connectivity; Assiniboine Community College has one called Virtual College Trial--I love some of these names. Brandon University has Combining Modes of Delivery; Pembina Valley and Rhineland, the Southern Manitoba Connection; Evergreen, the project title is Using Interaction Response Technology; Swan Valley, the Northwest Consortium Communications Program; Midland has the integration of audio-visual computers and distance delivery; Lakeshore has Linking Lakeshore; and Lord Selkirk has the Selkirk/Interlake RuralNet.

Those are some of the funded projects under the pilot and you can see the various types of endeavours. The titles give an indication of what the project is, although they do not give it a full descriptive, and the total expenditure comes to some $660,000 for those ones.

Ms. Mihychuk: Can the minister tell us if the department received a good response from this grant program? How many school divisions and projects were submitted and how many had to be turned down?

Mrs. McIntosh: We do not have that information here at the table right now but we will get it and bring it back, I guess, Monday because there will not be enough time to pull it out before the end of the session today. We will get it for you.

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Ms. Mihychuk: On the issue of technology and having information at our fingertips, these are wonderful experiences that our children are now accessing. One of the concerns that educators have and parents is that many of these accesses, for example, to the Internet, are wide open. As schools look to linking up, and many have, students are then able to access what we would normally consider material that is inappropriate, material that includes racism, a lot of the sexism is in there, there is pornography on-line. Is the government prepared to take measures? I understand that this is also a federal issue, but I believe that our students are moving much faster than our governments. As they are on-line now I think the issue is important immediately.

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for the question because one of the things that governments discovered, I suppose not just governments but all kind of individuals and groups, as we get into this wonderful world of technology, and it is a wonderful world and we have all these incredible capabilities now available to us, the downside is that you then begin to have access to things that can be picked up literally by the push of a button as opposed to having to go out and seek it out and so on. It is always a concern of responsible authorities when they open up opportunities to make sure that they do not, at the same time we open the door to let the sunshine in, let the bad elements in as well.

We have had internal discussions about access and about things that could be done to limit access to undesirable materials. The one thing that we feel will be a really good safeguard--or those discussions are ongoing I should indicate. We will continue to go through them because I think they are important discussions to be having. One of the safeguards that we have built in a classroom situation, of course, is the supervision of the professional in the classroom. With technologies that are used in schools, the supervising educator will be in a position to monitor what is accessed and what is not. There are other discussions going on as to what other kind of limitations can be used. Some feel that in the final analysis the very best thing we have going for us are good supervisors in the classroom when the students are accessing the equipment.

That is not to say that that means we do not need to have any of these discussions about protecting students from undue exposure to things that are detrimental and sometimes even more than detrimental.

Ms. Mihychuk: Is the minister aware of any type of discussion between the province and the CRTC, for example, in this area?

Mrs. McIntosh: In terms of discussions with CRTC, to date discussions with CRTC have been more involved around cables and things of that nature. Although discussions start to take place on issues like this as we begin to look at avenues and ways in which blocking mechanisms could be put in place technologically, at the moment the main emphasis the department is having in terms of any ongoing discussions with CRTC on this or any other issue is to make sure that we have a good understanding of what kind of blocking mechanisms might be able to work before we start discussions as to what we would like to see CRTC be able to provide us.

When we get to the line on MERLIN, if you are available, it might be a line that could enable more information to come forward for you, because it is MERLIN that has been doing the technological work on all aspects of these kind of communications abilities. Things are evolving so rapidly that you will find the mechanism for blocking and then it is another mechanism for unblocking the block and this type of thing. So they have the technical expertise and might be better able to give both you and me an update as to where they are in that regard, because it is a concern that we are all aware of and it is not one we wish to ignore.

Ms. Mihychuk: I would like to make some inquiries in a different area. Under Education Renewal, the government put forward a set of ideas and one of the major platforms are the parent advisory committees. There have been some changes indicated by the Premier during the election. Can the minister now indicate to us what the structure, what the model of the council will be in its new form?

Mrs. McIntosh: Bill 5, that I have before the House right now, is the bill that will make the establishment of an advisory council mandatory if 10 parents request that there be one and that bill will contain some of this information.

The change that was made involving the composition of the committee, the committee will be community and parent member advisers to the school. The change that was made during the election came in response to feedback we have received from the public indicating one basic concern which in the original guidelines, in order to ensure that the committee was fully representative of parents, they had limited the participation of teachers. The feedback we received from that was that teachers who were parents were being denied access to their child's school by virtue of their occupation.

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The government recognized when that was pointed out to them that the people who were making that response were correct. They had noted a flaw, had drawn it to our attention, and we agreed with them that they had put forward an indication for change that was a correct indication.

We thank them for that and have changed the policy according to what we were told. What we now are saying, we still would like to ensure that there are parents on the community committee, but if a parent happens to be a teacher, so long as it is not a teacher in the same school. But if the people want to have parents on who happen to be teachers, then they can do that. They can expand the committee as big as they want to, to accommodate as many parent-teachers as they wish.

What we are saying, for simplified purposes, is that a third of the committee could be teachers. If the council wants to make it a half, they can vote to make it a half. If they say, well, we have six teachers who are parents who want to participate and the committee is not--you know, half of the committee is not six, well, then they could just expand the size of the committee, so they can have their representation. It will be up to the community now to decide how that representation breaks down.

They have to have 10 people requesting an advisory committee before it is mandated. If they have 10, then they must have it and the make-up will have community representation on it, will have parent representation on it, could have teacher representation on it and will reflect the community, and they will be advisory to the principal.

Ms. Mihychuk: That is interesting. The solution that the government is proposing does eliminate one of the areas that there was fairly blatant discrimination on behalf of individuals who happen to be educators.

My concern is that many divisions and many schools have a variety of models of advisory councils, governing councils, many that include educators and other staff members, including the caretaker and clerical as partners in decision making. The staff members are provided with an active role on the committee by being voting members. Although in the majority of cases that I am aware they constitute less than 50 percent, they do not hold majority. They are welcome because of the expertise that they bring, the knowledge and the philosophy that primarily in early years--in the elementary system there are two very important people that are involved in your child's education, and that is yourself as the parent or guardian and the teacher.

I am wondering why the government has decided or why, in the vision that we have now, we do not look at educators and other nonteaching staff as partners on this and include them as voting members.

Mrs. McIntosh: We do see teachers and those who work in the building as partners in education, absolutely. They are fundamentally important key roles in education. They are the deliverers of education. They are the ones who have been trained. They are an essential and key component.

I guess what we are saying here is that the parents in the Parents' Forum and through the years in correspondence--you have probably heard it too--that the parents, we felt, deserved a turn to be partners and encouraged to participate. So often, without any intention of ill will or any other thing, you used to have parent-teacher associations where you very seldom talked about matters such as these. You would talk about fundraising or you would talk about volunteers in the library and the Christmas concert, but you very seldom at parent-teacher association meetings, in the experiences of most parents, got into the nitty-gritty of these fundamental things about education.

When you did, because the teachers are, just as you say, the ones with the expertise and the ones with the knowledge of the system and the material and the culture of education, for want of a better word, the educational jargon, the things that go along with acquiring the expertise, they very often were the dominant influences in any such discussions, as I say, not because they meant to take over and rule, so to speak, but because they did have that kind of exposure to the culture in a way that the parents would not.

Parents often tell us, and they told us clearly in the Parents' Forum, that they felt a little intimidated or nervous or less likely to speak out because they felt that, well, after all, I am not the expert; I just know and love this child unconditionally. That is one type of parent who, we felt, needed to be given a strong mandate to speak out and not feel that somehow they were intruding into an area that really was not their speciality and they really should not be commenting on because after all they were not the expert in the field.

The other type of parent that we wanted to bring into the net is the type of parent who maybe was not a member of the parent-teacher association, who, to date, maybe needed a little bit of a nudge to get involved in their child's educational experience. We know all the research tells us that parents who get involved in their child's education help produce a child who is more receptive to the schooling experience, that parents who come out to things, who support things at the school, who come out to parent-teacher interviews, for example, and who take an interest in what the child is learning and the courses they are taking tend to produce children who function better in the school setting. So this is an incentive to that type of parent to get them involved. By no means are the teachers excluded, because the teachers will be there, and the teachers may be there in a role as a parent, so they come with a double expertise in those situations.

They come with the depth of feeling for the individual child and they come understanding how the involvement of the parent from a teacher's perspective--those who are teachers know that where you have got a good supportive parent you have got a much better chance as an educator getting through to that child.

Parents are often included in just sort of symbolic and arbitrary and limited ways, as I say, not through any evil intent, but it was just deemed that they really were not the experts here and there were certain areas that they just were not encouraged to comment upon, and indeed unfortunately in some school settings, discouraged from making comment upon.

We have all had the experience of either having been told or know someone who has been told, look, you know, you are the mom, why do you not just stay at home and be the mom? I am here in this school, I know what is going on here, you really are not an expert in this field. That hopefully is not the type of thing that happens in the majority of cases, but it has happened. We are all aware unfortunately of those rare and hopefully rare occasions where it has happened.

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But there were never formal processes for selecting parent representation developed. Schools would have different ways. Some would have a strong parent council where you would have the exceptional principal who actually encouraged parents to be part of discussions on the real nitty-gritty parts of education, and you would have the other extreme where principals or school divisions would actively discourage the formation of a home and school or a parent council because they were concerned that you might find parents starting to stick their nose into the school and kind of getting in the way.

So you had everything from one extreme to the other. You had those places where parents were just openly welcomed with open arms and fully involved and others where parents were more or less turned away at the door.

We wanted to have some sort of consistency in approach. We also found that in some schools, and parents complained bitterly about this, the parents were just kind of selected by the administrator in the schools--now we need a parent council, so why do you not come on and be the president--that type of thing where certain parents were rarely chosen to be involved in that type of thing for a variety of reasons. So we did not think that was good.

We had indications coming forward at the Parents' Forum that in addition to the sort of inadvertent, unmeant exclusion of parents, there were some blatant, isolated examples of outright exclusion. I do not want to become too negative, because I do not like dwelling on the negative, but where you have parents sort of outmanipulated and outnumbered, those instances were also brought to our attention.

So we thought, well, you have got all of these extremes, from the two that I mentioned, from closing the door on the parents to bringing them completely in. We knew that there were two types of parents, those who had not taken enough of an active interest and those who wanted to take an active interest but were, for a variety of reasons, feeling that maybe they should not really speak up on certain matters. This we felt would take away the symbolic, I was president of the PTA, and what did you do, well, I arranged the Christmas tea type of involvement, so that you would have a true partnership in an advisory council.

It has been extremely well received by parents and, surprisingly enough for those who felt that this would not be accepted by educators, by a large number of teachers who have said things to me personally such as it will be really good to get these parents out and get them involved. I get so frustrated come parent-teacher night. The very ones I need to see just do not come out. They are wanting to see parents assuming some responsibility and giving some support to the teachers rather than seeing them as two isolated entities both concerned with the same child but not sharing their concern for that child.

Ms. Mihychuk: There are numerous different models of advisory committees that exist already in the province. We have two school divisions that have fairly extensive well-developed models that do include guaranteed decision-making abilities for community and parent members, and that includes the Frontier School Division and the one that I am more familiar with, the Winnipeg School Division.

I take a great deal of pride in being one of the originators of the model in Winnipeg. We conducted a series of public forums--I believe four or five, actually--and went out to the communities speaking to parents and community representatives asking them what their vision of involvement was.

You are very correct. There is need for a guaranteed voice and that is what we heard, but we heard stronger than that that parents and community members do want to work hand in hand with educators and staff members, and these models have been in existence already for years. I do know that the minister or the previous minister has received letters of concern from advisory committees in the Winnipeg School Division, not only from local advisory committees--and there is one per school so that is approximately 80 schools in Winnipeg No. 1--but there are district advisory councils in that division that expressed many of those concerns.

In some schools, for example, it may be difficult to get 10 parents to initiate this process. It all really depends on the community, and it is not necessarily that they feel oppressed or unable to participate. It almost takes a certain will on behalf of the school, the educational centre, to open their arms. There are a great deal of resources in a community and the school is the prime example of a centre that can co-ordinate that.

There was the concern that this would require 10 members from the community to self-generate the request, and that is one of the differences in the models as well. I believe the other two divisions require that the council be established and then there is an annual plan, the membership is evaluated and so there is a built-in accountability into the system, but there is the onus on that educational centre to ensure that representation is there.

Can I ask the minister why the government did not explore that avenue?

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for her comments and I commend Winnipeg No. 1 for having gone the route that they did. I just wish to clarify that if 10 parents do not wish to have a council, then any existing council structure can continue, so we are not saying that if--you do not have to find 10 parents and make them do it. We are saying, if 10 parents wish to have this kind of advisory council, we will be saying to the school boards and the schools that they must have those councils allowed; but, if 10 parents do not wish to have the council, then they do not have to. If they have an existing structure in place, the existing structure can continue.

When as we say they are mandated, we do not mean mandated in the sense that it is being interpreted in some quarters. We mean where it is requested, it must be allowed, because we have had it happen in the past where people have asked if they can form a parent council and they have been told no. I do not think we are apart on that. I think we see eye to eye on that.

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The advisory councils have a mandate, but it does not exclude adding additional responsibilities and roles should there be mutual agreement to do that. What we are saying is they should be allowed, if requested, and be able to do certain things. Now they can do more than that if they wish, and everybody wishes, that is up to them. If there is an existing council and they wish to switch over to the way we are doing things right now, or the way we are proposing things be done, they are free to do that. I would submit, I think that existing council members under those scenarios would have nothing to fear from being elected because then they would know for sure they have the support of the people of the community.

I just want to see something here. Staff has just handed me a little note that there had been research done on other Manitoba models, other provinces and other countries.

It was for that reason it was recommended that rather than making it mandatory, thou shalt have 10 parents and they must do this, we would rather mandate the opportunity and let parents and community together take the initiative and decide whether or not they wish to avail themselves of this opportunity, so that gives the shared responsibility focus back to the local level.

I want to just add to something I had meant to say in your earlier question when you were talking about recognizing the many things that teachers could offer in terms of a partnership. I had indicated that we recognized that. What we are trying to do now is to also give parents that same elevation in terms of the comfort level of a partnership.

I also wanted to say, and neglected to say it at the time, that teachers will have other ways of affecting the direction of a school in addition to advisory councils that parents do not have access to. They will have that through staff meetings. They will have that through opportunities to dialogue with other staff, with administration, with other experts in the area of education, with department officials and so on, that parents do not have. So this may be their only vehicle to really impact on the school aside from their one-on-one appointments and times that they talk with the person responsible for their own child.

I say that I like what you just said. I think I am familiar, not nearly as familiar as you would be, with some of the efforts that Winnipeg No. 1 has made to include parents. In terms of moving in a direction, format may differ slightly, but we are not far apart on the direction. We may be talking about the details.

Ms. Mihychuk: That is true. My concern is it may be difficult for 10 parents to actually get together to request it, that we may actually have some schools that do not have representation because it will require a considerable amount of effort and organization on behalf of community to do this. I understand that there are some schools, Sprague, for example, that may have only 20 students, so it would require half their population to request it. I am sure that was not the intent. I sense there is some flexibility, so hopefully the guidelines will provide that room for--I think clearly I support the mandate or the intention to have that voice there.

My other question is: Where we have a very active community--and I know of several schools where they have in fact a well-established council and in some schools where there may be even two councils, there are schools within schools. For example, the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen), a school in her constituency has three parent councils, depending on program, all extremely active, extremely vibrant committees, and they work fortunately in harmony. However, there is another example that I am familiar with where there were two councils in conflict.

This may provide some legitimacy for a group of 10 who may not have been endorsed by the annual meeting to come forward and request some other form of governance structure. Who is going to be the appeal on this case? Traditionally it has been up to the school board. What is going to be the role now? If 10 parents come to you and say, I would like to establish the school council for school X, please authorize it, how are we going to deal with that situation?

Mrs. McIntosh: You are zeroing in on really legitimate concerns and questions. I thank you for doing that.

I just indicate to you that built into the guidelines in terms of the concern about small schools, a very reasonable concern, are exceptions for small schools, in an attempt to accommodate that concern you have identified.

As we go along, we now have made some modifications to the basic principle. As we go along, if we can get suggestions for improving the process, I am quite willing to listen. We have to start some place. So we will start basically with the structure we have. As advice comes in saying, okay, now we are trying it and we think it is pretty good, but a little detail we need refining here--we do not see things carved in granite that can never ever be altered. We see this as an evolutionary thing, and so we have a mindset that is open.

Just like I said, we are constantly going over the curricula, constantly renewing it, that always, always, always we will be looking to see, can we do it better? can we do it better? If the answer is no, then we will stay the course. If the answer is yes, then we will move to do it better.

You asked the question--the advisory councils--they are intended to represent all the parents and programs in the school. The suggestion has been made for the scenario that you described, like the one in the member for Wolseley's constituency and so on, that you could have one council with a subcommittee, like where you have a dual-track school--and we had some of them in my home division as well.

There could be several solutions, but one that has been one that we will propose if asked the question, if you have a council with two subcommittees, one for one side of the track and one for the other side of the track, you might make a joint decision then on the principal because in a dual-track school you would have one principal--and the situation right now in St. Vital, for example, where the parents, under this new system, would have an opportunity to be part of the process of saying, the principal we want for our school should have the characteristics of being a strict disciplinarian, or we want someone with a really gentle approach because we have children who need a gentle approach or whatever characteristic they are going to identify as part of their part of the process.

For a dual-track school, you still would have the one administrator so you would have to come together for that, but they could have two subcommittees that would function as individual councils, should they wish, for their stream of the school. So there are ways that those things can be accommodated that would still work because even in a dual- or a triple-track school while you have the separate streams, you still have one community of children on the playground at recess or coming on the bus to school or school assemblies or Christmas concerts and the staff component--the janitor, the secretary. It is still one community within the building, just like a government with different branches.

So your question is a good one and the concern you identify is a valid one. I hope that we will be able to accommodate those.

You asked who would they be appealing to if they had discrepancies and so on, like little problems in setting up, who would be kind of the final adviser or authority to whom they could turn. Hopefully, a lot of these things could be settled at the school level with their own administration, with their own local authority and amongst themselves.

The Minister of Education and the government of Manitoba mandating the advisory councils, of course, are keenly interested in seeing that all goes well as they do set up, and it will be a mandated thing that the government right now, as we sit here, has a bill before the House to make these legal and binding. So we seek local resolution first, but people always have the recourse to appeal to the minister.

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We have divisions right now preparing protocol for advisory councils, and we would expect if they needed questions for clarification along that line that they might wish to give us a call and they would be most welcome to do that.

Ms. Mihychuk: For clarification then, if there is an existing council that has been duly elected through an annual meeting and in an existing structure, for example, in Winnipeg No. 1, and you had then 10 additional parents come in and ask for some sort of legitimacy, would one supersede the other? Which one would form the council?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, where 10 parents ask to have an advisory council set up under the government guidelines, then the local authority is obliged to allow that to happen by election. So what would happen in that case then would be that the school would be told you are going to have a school advisory committee and those who are currently members are free to run, but the election will be open to all those who are involved and interested with that school. Those who are on a current existing council would be free to run for the new one, and if supported by the majority of people in the school and community, would be back on and maybe fulfilling the same role they are currently fulfilling but it would be made open to everyone.

That would help get around the problem that has happened in some schools and communities where you have--I hate the term, but it is used so frequently--the inner click that kind of gets in and says let us have a parent council. Okay, we will get together. I will be president and you be vice-president and you have a group of sets of parents over here who are not as assertive who feel left out and do not know how to get in. So you open it up. If those people are the people who truly are the best ones and deem to be the best ones to represent the school as parent representatives, then in all likelihood they would be elected.

Ms. Mihychuk: I am sure this will raise considerable debate as I know of situations where it was not perhaps the regular populace that was looking for a voice. It may be a special-interest group that is looking to change the direction. They have a certain political agenda for the local school. There may have been an annual meeting. It has been called at a time frame which may not be convenient. They stacked the meeting. You can end up with a body--just basically it could lead into more dissension than probably the intent of this legislation.

Mrs. McIntosh: I know what the member is saying, but I give back to her that that is already happening. That happens now. I have seen it. I would wager that she has probably seen it too where special interest groups can get in and kind of take control of the school. I guess that could happen under any model that you would set up. No matter how you tried to structure it, whether it was completed unstructured or highly organized by the Department of Education, a special group can always manage to infiltrate and take over.

We have seen that happen in just a wide variety of ways. We saw that with a public organization not that long ago where it was infiltrated and taken over by another group. It hit the papers, front page headlines. This particular public organization now is controlled by this special interest group. It happens.

Ms. Mihychuk: Some of the councils both in Frontier and in Winnipeg No. 1 represent populations that are not very familiar with a decision-making or an advisory role. The people are not familiar with being in schools and institutions. Both of these divisions have put in extra supports to try to educate the community, to get people feeling like they are able to come forward. In the inner city, for example, I am familiar that there is an organization known as CEDA, Community Education Development Association, and community workers are placed in schools, most half time but sometimes on a full-time basis to do exactly that, to get parental involvement and community involvement in the school motivated.

Even in those cases it is extremely difficult. As people are faced with intense poverty and they are looking at the basics of life, they find it very difficult to understand how this is going to have a meaningful role. So you have a real challenge to reach out to these people. Is the government prepared to provide some support for those situations to make this process truly meaningful?

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for that question. The member raises a really genuine concern because what do you do about parents who for whatever reason do not come forward, do not participate? Some of those reasons may be reasons beyond their own control. Others may be reasons just because they are apathetic. The one group that is apathetic we wish to inspire. The other group we also wish to inspire, but in a different kind of way, because they are missing something as well. The circumstances of their life, the member is right, preclude them from having the energy, the time and the will or the ability to participate. They are maybe trying so hard just to get through the day that it is all they can think of just to get through the day.

Staff here is giving me some assistance on this, because it is something that has been talked about, and it is the question, what do you do if? They indicate to me that we do have some trained staff. We do have principals and parents who can work with school teams to try and help them plan some meaningful parent involvement. It may mean doing some reaching out, and it may mean that we may not have an advisory council in that school because we have said if 10 parents do not ask they do not have to have. If we wish to inspire, it may mean that we do some outreach, but it will not be because they are mandated and forced to have this advisory council. It will be for the more altruistic reason in that we feel they would benefit so much from being brought into their children's lives.

So the department--this is where I will indicate what the staff has indicated to me here--will provide the development of a tool kit that will help with getting things organized, running meetings, that type of thing. They have dedicated, we have dedicated, a half-time staff person for this, just for this type of thing. We have other staff who have already worked with parent groups and are out there working with them, not necessarily the parent category you are discussing, because I think what you are talking about in the main are really disadvantaged people.

If you have any good ideas on how to do it, I would be pleased to listen. I know you have had experience in that part of the city, so you really do know and understand that problem.

We will go with what we can do, and we will hope that as we do what we can do we will be able to enlarge to capture in people who have normally not been part of their children's lives in that way.

Ms. Mihychuk: One of the things is providing those supports. I am pleased to hear that the department will be providing some materials as to how to organize. I would encourage also the department to perhaps provide some professional development sessions for community members.

If that is going to be arranged, when and how can the community tap into those resources?

Mrs. McIntosh: I have just been handed a very polite little note from the Chair that indicates that we are not discussing Estimates, that we are discussing Bill 5, and there will be time for debate on the bills. It is very courteously worded. It is also very clear. It is interesting. Well, maybe we should carry on at another time.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: The hour being 2 p.m., what is the will of the committee? Committee rise.