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Re-Engineering Education: Curing the Accountability and Democratic Deficit in Nova Scotia Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) February 2018
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Within the context of an apparent transnational agenda of accountability, standardization, and increased government control of public education in many countries, including Canada, a growing number of constituencies question the legitimacy of school boards and argue for their elimination. Herein the authors report results of their pan Canadian study on the extent to which school board insiders (school board trustees, provincial school board association executive directors and school district superintendents) perceive this transnational agenda to have impacted public school governance in Canada in two specific areas of interest: (a) the relevance of school boards; and (b) the nature of school board members' connection with their constituents.
Across Canada there have been numerous recent examples of incidents where
the political and ideological interests of provincial governments have run
counter to the mandates of school districts. In this pan-Canadian study, focus
groups were conducted with school board trustees and school district
superintendents to examine the relationships between districts and provincial
governments. Preliminary data suggest that the significance of the school
district apparatus in Canada has diminished as provincial governments have
enacted an aggressive centralization agenda. We theorize that in a politicized
environment, the values, reward systems, and accountabilities against which
school board superintendents and trustees operate are likely to differ
substantively from those of politicians and bureaucrats, thereby creating a
policy environment that is antagonistic to local governance.
At least as early as the nineteenth century, the two most related approaches to societal improvement have been restructuring and systemic reform. For education, that has meant school closures as well as consolidation of schools and school districts. Although there exists a substantive literature on educational reform there appears to be little discussion on the impact such actions have on schools. This paper briefly describes research on current issues in rural education with a focus on consolidation. The methodology emphasizes teachers' knowledge of practice and is followed by the findings, which highlight the impact these reforms have on practicing teachers. The argument is made that government reforms have adopted consolidation of schools and districts as a primary strategy for fiscal accountability. This focus singles out economics, while excluding the cultural and social context embedded within schools and central to the communities in which the schools are situated. In this paper, the argument put forth is that consolidation as a single-minded strategy of education reform is an inadequate framework that places teachers' work and student learning at risk. The accounts of practicing educators speak for using consolidation only where absolutely necessary and maintaining as many small schools as possible.
In 1989 the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms brought in self-managing schools as the unit for educational administration. The government’s stated aims included a mix of outcomes and processes, which were to: improve educational opportunities, meet Māori needs more effectively, give local knowledge real responsibility, and encourage flexibility and responsiveness. The system was to be more efficient, and provide greater accountability. After 20 years, progress towards these aims is, at best, mixed. This article provides a broad overview of the frameworks for school self-management over this period, identifying two main phases from 1989 to 2009. The first led schools to develop inward-looking identities. The second introduced a greater emphasis on capability development. The ongoing legacy of the initial phase is discussed, since reform phases do not so much replace one another as build on what has already been established. It also discusses the shortcomings of each of these phases in relation to the aims of Tomorrow’s Schools, and the kind of framing school self-management might need if it is to realise the aims of improved educational opportunities, particularly for Māori, given that this was an initial driver for the reforms.
