“The Review of Teacher Education in Nova Scotia” dealt a serious blow to Cape Breton University. The unfortunate set back comes just after the university received permission to launch their own Bachelor of Nursing program.
The review stated that there are 1,029 people graduating with a Bachelor of Education each year and less than 400 new teachers required to fill the expected vacant positions. The report also stated that substitute teachers have a very hard time getting work each year and that approximately 700 substitute teachers are leaving the province or their profession each year because they cannot find work. While there is an oversupply of teachers in our province, there are shortages in certain specialized areas.
The review also recommended that the current programs, run by Nova Scotia’s universities, maintain their current admission levels with one exception. The only Bachelor of Education program that will benefit from the report’s recommendations is Saint Francis Xavier; the report recommended allowing 14 more people per year to enroll in their program.
The report’s recommendations have been criticized by the opposition parties and CBU’s president, John Harker.
In a press release, Harker said that, ““CBU is very disappointed, both for itself and for Nova Scotia, by the Report of the Review Panel on Teacher Education in Nova Scotia.”
He added that, “Minister Casey has shown, in meetings with CBU and elsewhere that, like Premier MacDonald, and before him Premier Hamm, Access to quality educational opportunities is important to the government. It is certainly important to us, and we are shocked that it does not appear to have shaped the thinking of the Review Panel.”
The report’s co-author fired back and said that, “Universities exist to advance their own interests and their own institutional goals, and they sometimes will embrace programs and initiatives which are substantially proven to be out of sync with government policy."
The report has generated a lot of debate around the education system in our province. Unfortunately, the debate has circulated around defensive posturing and each side protecting their position. In such an environment, debate about the real issues facing our education system will never happen.
The report says that in our current context, we have too many teachers. However, the report does not ask: How many teachers should we have? The report does not ask: How many teachers do we need to ensure a quality education for Nova Scotia’s students? The report passes a merely normative claim whose aim is to maintain the status quo when more is needed from our government.
Also, the report believes that our Bachelor of Education programs should only produce teachers for our province; it believes it is close to criminal to send our educated professionals elsewhere. In other words, in a global society, our province plans to, somehow, go against the grain. Even though the report states that teachers leaving our province is a negative, the report does not contain real recommendations to address that problem.
I agree with President John Harker when he said that the report does not align with the provinces’ stated priority of creating a strong education system. The report does not touch on how we can make our education system better; it states how to continue at the status quo. If the government does not begin facilitating some serious and critical debate, their stated commitment will prove false and students and teachers will suffer.
Originally published in the Cape Breton Post on Monday, January 21, 2008.
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