EDUCATION AND TRAINING

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Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Good evening. The hour being eight o'clock will the Committee of Supply please come to order. The committee will be resuming 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.

Mr. Daryl Reid (Transcona): I believe before recessing for the dinner hour I had asked a question of the minister. The minister was about to respond but time had elapsed, so perhaps the minister could respond at this point.

Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): I am hoping I am answering the question that I recall being asked just before we broke, in terms of whether or not it is the French policy, whether or not there had been any changes. There have been no changes in the grants program and no change in the policy regarding that issue. They have three to five minutes flex time just like any other subject, but the program and the grant and the policy have not changed in that regard.

Mr. Reid: What my constituent was worried about was, and I believe the previous Minister of Education had referenced it in the document that he had released earlier this year where the divisions were free to make some alterations to the core subjects that were part of the curriculum, my constituent was worried that the French language instruction, which was not part of the French immersion program but was part of the English language instruction as one of the subjects, could potentially be eliminated from the curriculum as one of the core subjects. She was concerned about that because it had been in the discussion document, I believe.

I would like to know if that is still the intent of the new minister, if that is a policy of her department now that she has assumed those duties or responsibilities.

Mrs. McIntosh: There is time within the given allocations to have the French language instruction taught as with other subjects. I do not know if that is an answer. Time is in there for that provision.

Mr. Reid: The minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that, yes, there may be time allotted, but I believe there is time allotted for a number of subjects which would be strictly at the discretion of, I believe, the division itself, the division trustees in making that determination, which could potentially eliminate French language instruction as one of the core subject.

I believe that French language instruction is currently defined as one of the core subjects. Is that going to remain as one of the core subjects? If it is not, when does the minister anticipate that change will occur?

Mrs. McIntosh: There still is at the elementary school and at the junior high level time for French to be taught. In fact, staff has just indicated to me that they did consult with divisions. One of them was Transcona-Springfield. They indicated that because the division was also concerned about it, would there be enough time to do this? It was going back to emphasizing the four basic areas. They consulted many school divisions and, as I say, one of them was Transcona Springfield. They indicated that, yes, they still had enough time to teach French as a basic subject of the 30 minutes allotment that is sort of normal at the elementary and junior high level.

So there is no shortage of time, if that is the will of the community to have that. They have time within the time allocations to include that as a subject that they want to see taught in the community.

Mr. Reid: The current school division trustees have indicated that to the minister, from what the minister has indicated here. The trustees now are prepared to include that French language instruction as part of the core curriculum. With the upcoming elections for trustees this fall, that position could change with the election of new trustees.

Is French language instruction as part of the English language programmings or schooling going to remain a part of the minister's department core subjects in the curriculum area?

Mrs. McIntosh: I am just a little perplexed at the use of the word remain, because it is not compulsory now.

Mr. Reid: Okay. So it is an education for me too then. I thought it was part of the core curriculum and that it had to be part of that. So then it has been at the discretion of the trustees for a number of years in whatever school division throughout the province, and with the election of successive trustees to the different school divisions, there could be a change in that policy then, and the trustees themselves would have to determine in consultation, hopefully, with the parents of the community.

Mrs. McIntosh: They will have to have consultation with the parents of the community, and that is the big difference now. They did not have to before. So if it is of importance to the people of the community, they now have a much better chance of having it than they did before.

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Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): In a similar vein, there have also been questions about the time available for music and art at the junior high levels. Is the minister giving the same response?

Mrs. McIntosh: The department did a survey of schools, and what they came back with was information that there is still time in the allotment for a full program offering in those subjects at the junior high level with one sort of qualifier, and that is that it may be, if they are teaching six classes, it might be five and a half, depending how they flex the time, because they do have that three to five minutes sort of flex time where they can free up some time or add in some time. Schools have indicated that they would still have time to do those particular subjects.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us how many schools were surveyed and when they were surveyed, because I think the predominant understanding in the community still is that the times for these programs have been reduced by the new requirements for additional math and language arts.

Mrs. McIntosh: There were about 15 schools and they were not surveyed in the usual sense of the word surveyed. They had consultations with those 15 schools. So they had dialogue and discussion as opposed to fill in the blank, you know, written form. It was actual verbal communication with these 15 schools, and it was done this spring. It was just completed a little while ago, this spring here of 1995.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us on what basis those schools were selected? For example, were they all schools who had contacted the minister with difficulties about the changes in regulations? Were they selected on the basis of representativeness, regional, in terms of transportation needs, those kinds of things? What are we to take from this survey of 15 schools?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, it was an urban-rural mix looking at different configurations, such as nursery school to Grade 6 or Grade 5 to early years, middle years, urban, rural, trying to look at different configurations of schooling. They did talk to divisions that had expressed concerns so that they could see specifically what--not only just divisions that expressed concerns, but they made an effort to make sure that if a division had expressed a concern or asked a question about which they were puzzled that they made sure that those divisions were amongst those that were consulted so that they could, you know, cover off anything like that that might have been expressed in terms of dialogue and consultation with those particular divisions.

We have indicated that this year, this year coming up beginning of September '95, would be a transition year and that in that transition year divisions should make every effort that they can to move to these new allotments and to put more time on the core subjects, the English language arts, the mathematics, those subjects which parents, industry and the community in general have said they felt required more emphasis and more time. So we are asking divisions now to respond to that great outpouring that has come from the public, to which government has responded, and begin to put more intensive effort into those basic subjects and, at the same time, move to the new time allotments as much as they can in this transition year to become in a state of readiness. The feedback we are getting is that divisions are moving to try and do that.

I do not want to forget and it is slightly off topic, but I am afraid I will forget. I have got some things here that, if I could just take a moment, that were asked for. One was the Enhancing Employability Skills that you had mentioned earlier, and I have this booklet here that is the report from the Conference Board of Canada that you had requested. If I may, Mr. Chairman, just table that for the member's benefit. That is what we had indicated for those who are just hearing this particular one for the first time. We based a lot of our decisions regarding the science and technology centres around some of the things that were said in the Conference Board of Canada's report, which has just been tabled.

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I also have the information that was requested regarding the information on distance education pilot projects. You had asked the question, how many distance education projects were received and how many were approved? This indicates that 28 applications had been submitted, with 13 approved, 15 rejected. Of those rejected, the reasons for being rejected were that seven were already covered under the Infrastructure Works application to create a long-haul distance education network in Manitoba, that six did not meet the criteria of the program as well as those that were approved, and that two were not reviewed as they had not filed a letter of intent to apply to round 2. Those were some of the stats in response to the question that the member had asked prior to our break.

Ms. Friesen: I am continuing to look at the junior high curriculum difficulties that many schools contacted us about in the past few months. At the end of the transition year, that is, if we look at September '96, can the minister assure us that schools in Manitoba will be able to continue to offer the same amount of basic French, industrial arts, home economics, music, choral music, band, all the subjects which they have told us, and presumably told the minister as well, that they have difficulties with at the moment?

Mrs. McIntosh: This takes us right back to the whole concept of education renewal that is sweeping this nation coast to coast to coast. The whole idea of placing greater emphasis on the fundamental essential skills and knowledge, literacy, ability to communicate well in all media, the ability to compute, problem-solve and do mathematical skills, which are seen as areas that have lost time and attention from them as we move into compulsory family life, compulsory essential skills for living, so many compulsory subjects that people are saying they no longer now have the full time that should be allotted to subjects that used to get more time and attention.

So the other mood that is sweeping the nation is the desire for more choice by those who have to bear the implications of education, the students and the parents and the guardians who care for those students, who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of any education system put in place. And so people are saying, we want back our ability to choose what people have.

So the member is asking me as minister to choose what we in fact are saying will become, to a degree, community choice, the choice of the people who will be the ones who benefit from the education system, the consumers of education in the popular jargon of the day. And we will be looking at the end of the transition year for feedback from the schools.

I cannot tell you at this time what the feedback from those schools will be. It may be that they will ask to have as compulsory the subjects that she identifies or that her constituents wish to have compulsory. It may that they ask to have compulsory subjects that she has not identified. It may be that they ask to have as compulsory the subjects that are in place right now, and certainly we know there are some subjects that will be valued that in all likelihood will have a high probability of being chosen by the consumers of education.

Divisions which have been offering all or most of the noncore subject areas at the expense of the core subjects--English language arts, science, mathematics, social studies--will have to make some choices about their offerings now. It may be that if they make choices so the core may be increasingly emphasized, as consultations with educational partners has indicated as being necessary and desirable, at the end of this transition year we will have a better sense of how people are feeling about those things. But I indicate to the member that the same problem has existed for many, many years.

I can recall being intensely frustrated in not holding to the letter of the law back in the '80s when we realized that if we taught every subject to the mandatory requirement, we would have to add to the length of the school day and that the method of dealing with it at that time was that divisions just simply ignored the guidelines and taught what they could. Hence, there was no full abiding by the guidelines for time on task in certain subjects at that time, neither was there any ability for the community to choose those areas that they might feel as ones that should have priority over others.

People have said they want their principals to be educational leaders in the schools. The parents, the community and the schools have indicated they want to work together to make choices, and we have agreed with them.

So we will continue to mandate the core areas to give the students that strong foundation that they require, and we have designated kindergarten through to Senior 2 as those years which will have a more prescribed foundation in terms of courses that are offered, and the years Senior 3 and Senior 4 will be the years of specialization in which there will be more opportunity for choice by the consumers, the students and their guardians, and so on.

I will just indicate to you that for Grades 7 and 8, that phys ed with have 30 minutes a day, the arts will have 25 minutes a day, and there will be an optional course for .4 minutes a day--40 minutes a day--just teasing somebody here. So we still are showing a fairly hefty emphasis on those particular categories at the junior high level, because if you spread that out over the six-day cycle at 30 minutes a day, or 40 minutes a day, or 25 minutes a day, you are talking about a fairly good amount of time spent on physical education and the arts, on each of those subjects, equivalent to what might be spent on an optional course. There is an increase in the core at the same time in the science and math area in the middle years, and we feel those are very important areas that we will mandate as being absolutely essential.

Ms. Friesen: The minister began by expressing her frustration with the skills for independent living, law courses, and she did not use the terms, additional ones like sociology and health. But those are the new courses which have been added over the last, say, 10 years. [interjection] Well, the minister says she did not express frustration. That, I think, was the word that she used in having to deal with all of these additional mandated courses.

The problem that I think people in junior high and their families are looking at, and the school divisions are looking at, is that it is all very well for the government to say our new program offers you choices, but in fact what they are saying is our new government offers you choices, but it gives you no time to exercise those choices. Essentially, the generations--well, my own children and I assume the minister's children, the last two generations of students have been able to take in the junior high not an additional level of courses, but basic French, art, band or choral music, and industrial arts or home economics, a combination of those things.

What concerns people, I think, is that their younger brothers and sisters now will not be able to have that range of choices in the junior high school, the point at which, I would think, that you begin to develop the taste, the interest, maybe even some basic skills that will enable you to pick up on them and give you the opportunity to choose them at the senior high level.

I understand the government's policy in looking for specialization at the senior high level, but the point, as I think about all the systems which offer specialization at that level--a number of systems across the world do offer that, and it is a particular educational framework--is that they offer it on the basis of having had a very broad range of courses available to students at earlier levels. So, if you take some of those systems, for example, where students are only taking two and three and four courses in the senior high grades, the Grades 11 and 12, those are students who, in their earlier years, have had the choice of, for example, three languages in addition to their own. They have had the choice of drama and music, of technology, et cetera. What concerns me is the limits of choice that are going to be available to people in the junior high school.

Mrs. McIntosh: Just for clarification. I did not express frustration with courses such as Family Life or Skills for Independent Living or any of those in terms of their content or their applicability or their appropriateness for the age level. I expressed frustration that the department had mandated as compulsory more courses than there was time to teach within the allowable time. Exactly the problem the member is referencing right now. There were so many courses made compulsory that there was not enough time to teach them all. So what divisions were doing is simply just not teaching them all, even though they were all compulsory. We are saying, that is not what we are going to do.

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The courses that you were referencing when you talked about music, when you talked about bands, when you talked about art and all of those things, are all senior years' courses in terms of choices. They will still be able to choose those at the junior high level in the middle years. They are still there, and there still is the same amount of time in the school day. The department's analysis of the time allotments, and the feedback from the schools and communities, indicates the schools will be able to continue to offer the middle years' choices. I am not sure that we are talking apples and apples. We are talking maybe apples and oranges, because the choices that she refers to are the same choices that are there now, that are going to be there now.

When we get to those last two years of high school and they are going to start specializing--and I appreciate that she is talking about the way things are done in other countries in terms of, you know, three and four languages and those types of things. I am wondering if she has any sense of the time allotments that are allowed in those particular schools for the teaching of classes. How many days in the school year? How many hours in the school day? What kinds of rigours are there on the discipline, you know, in terms of the time that is spent on task?

My recollection, and I am going back more years maybe than I should acknowledge if I want to maintain my image as a reasonably youthful person, but attending school in Europe, as I did as a child, the time on task was far more lengthy than it was in any Canadian school that I had attended. You know, our days were very long. Our tasks were very rigorous. We did not have a lot of free time, and, yes, indeed, there were many languages. There was strict, very strict emphasis on the basics, strict emphasis on language, mathematics, science, history, very little time for other subjects. Music was a subject that we spent a lot of time on, but we did not have any of the modern courses that we have introduced in North American schools, and, mind you, I am going back, but we would have all of that. Then we would take the stuff home to do at home if we could not get it finished in school.

We do indicate that schools are going to have to make choices much the way they have been faced with making choices before, but this time they will have the parents involved in making those choices. Those that have tried to offer all of the options at the expense of the core subject areas will find that the core subject areas will have to receive the prominence that society feels they must have, and society as reflected by this government and the many people with whom we have had contact.

So schools which have had a balanced approach in terms of timetabling, between the core and the choice subject areas, will be able to continue to do so, and I see no lack of opportunity for schools to have those very valued subjects of music and art. Indeed, as I have indicated, we have 30 minutes a day or 25 minutes a day assigned to arts and 30 minutes a day assigned to phys ed. Forty minutes a day for the optional, and the optional will include a list of approved subjects, many of which are ones that are currently being used.

If you want to make comparisons with other countries, you look at China, which has school six days a week, 7:30 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon, and maybe they have three languages, but they have tremendous more time on task than we do in our North American society, and they have homework on top of that. So different jurisdictions will have different ways, but those countries whose students are starting to dominate in the world economy are those countries with rigid disciplines in schools. They are taking off, they are getting first choice in the international universities, and they are dominating, and we do not want to see our students starting to slip behind.

Those of our students who excel, really and truly excel, and we have programs for students who have gone through, such as the International Baccalaureate program and so on, where students have rigorous academics. I am not saying it is for every student, and we are not going to bring all schools up to the International Baccalaureate level, but, clearly, that advantage of being able to start making choices has a proven track record.

With the scheduling of physical education and the arts, Grades 7 and 8 at the junior high level, the middle years level, will still have 240 minutes for optional subjects, and that is a lot of time. We have also provided flexibility by allowing those three to five minutes flex time, and that gives time for emphasis on core and a balanced program of options. I think the sense that because we are going to have choice and because we are going to have increased emphasis on the core subjects that somehow students in Manitoba will no longer have access to these very valued subjects that she references is not a correct implication.

Ms. Friesen: Principals of schools I have spoken to in southwestern Manitoba believe that they are going to have to choose between band and basic French. That is the choice that they see before them. That choice was not there before in the sense that they were offering both and believed that their communities were satisfied and, in fact, demanded both. Now that choice that the minister speaks about is no longer available to them to make. Their choices are much more limited.

A second example that was given to me was from the private schools, Mennonite schools in particular, which see choral music as very much a part of the ethos of the school. They believed that they were going to have to make choices between choral music and other programs which they had valued before. Now, is the minister saying this is not the case. Did she include, for example, some of those private schools in her survey?

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Mrs. McIntosh: Schools can still take band and basic French. The Mennonite schools can certainly still have the music that they currently have. If that is their desire and that is their option, they have time allotted to be able to do that and we would encourage them to do that because that is the reflection of their community's desires.

There is no question but the Mennonite schools have an incredibly good focus on music. There is no reason they would not continue to have that focus. If that is their desire, they have time within their allotments to make that their priority if that is their priority.

Similarly, if divisions wish to have band and French and that is their priority, then they can have band and French, because they have got 240 minutes of optional time.

I am pleased to hear the member indicating that she feels it is important that schools get what they want, because that is the whole basis behind our thinking here, that schools should have what they want, not what somebody else decides they should have. By the way the member has phrased her question, she has indicated support for that principle.

She is concerned that the Mennonite schools might not get their full complement of music. That indicates she supports their right to choose--that is a choice--and so do we, and that is behind our thinking here. There might be some situations where schools have offered all of the options for significant amounts of time at the expense of core subject areas, and then those schools will have a more difficult choice. But those schools that have always placed a good amount of time on the core subject areas will not have that problem, because they have already been offering a balanced approach, including core subject areas such as band, basic French, choral music, and will be able to continue to do so.

All we are saying is that we do feel there now has to be some emphasis on those core subjects, but there is no inability for schools to have both band and basic French.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, the minister should be careful not to read more than is actually stated into my questions. I am reflecting the critiques and problems that have been brought to me as a member of the opposition. My concerns are that the apparent offer of choice is a phantom, that in fact schools which believe that they have been doing, schools have chosen to spend a certain amount of time on core subjects and believed that they were doing well, now they are being told that their choices will be more limited, because they must expand the amount of time that is being spent.

This is not results based. This is not outcome or benchmark based. This is the government saying you must spend more time in this area no matter what your results have been, no matter how satisfied your community is with the kind of program that you have been running.

My concern is that what is expressed as choice, in fact, and has been represented to us--and I know to the minister as well--is in fact a limitation on choice for a number of schools.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the member has indicated several times that she has been approached by various schools and school divisions with concerns and critiques. I would be very, very grateful if she could table for the committee--unless she has the same courtesy procedure that we do--but if she would not mind taking advantage of that courtesy and give those people a quick call and ask for permission to table those concerns, critiques, criticisms, worries, fears, disappointments and all of the things that she has referenced in the last few days about individual schools and school divisions being concerned, if she would not mind sharing with us that information so that we can communicate and consult with those people directly.

We would be very grateful because when someone speaks in broad generalities and says things like I was talking to some people and they told me they are worried, it does not really help us to get at the root of the discussion. So if the member would be good enough to table those for us so that we can communicate with those people and be more specific so that we know exactly what it is that people are worried about, rather than sort of the vague generalities and the generic statements that do not really tell us exactly what it is they are worried about--you did be kind enough to mention the Mennonite school and the concern of the private schools that have music programs that might have them curtailed, and I have been able to reassure you that if music is their priority they would be able to continue to have it.

What other schools, what other divisions, what specifically have they said that is part of all of this critique that the member indicates she is receiving on a constant basis?

I think, as a good critic, it would be helpful if we could have that tabled so we could deal with it by communicating with them and having them come in and sit down and go through it, so we can support those schools in trying to resolve their specific concerns or maybe some misinformation they might have been given or that. We would appreciate that, if you would not mind.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I think the minister has already received most of them. Most of the ones I get indeed have been copies of ones that have been sent to the minister. On basic French I know that she has had, or her predecessor has had, communications from the University of Winnipeg French department, University of Brandon French department, the teachers of basic French, for example, on that one issue.

I think if she consults her correspondence with the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents, she will find that there are representations there about the implications of the timetabling changes. I believe in the discussion document the superintendents' association developed around the renewal program this particular issue was made reference to. I believe she has had correspondence from the Association of School Trustees as well as from particular groups of trustees that have also been copied to us.

At the meeting I attended, at which the deputy for this area was present, in Brandon, discussing a variety of aspects of the renewal program, these kinds of issues were raised, both in writing, in the round table discussions, as well as in some of the questions.

So I do not think it is that I have any special knowledge, although in fact the Mennonite issue was raised with me privately, and that is certainly something I would want to check with the individual.

I do not think the minister can be unaware that schools, superintendents, area interest groups, teachers and parents all have difficulty with the proposed changes to the junior high curriculum. It is one of the reasons, I understand, that the government has enabled the junior highs to have a transition year. My concern is at the end of that transition year, are we going to be in any different position, or is the government continuing to say that the schools will have less choice in the range of programs which they have been enabled to offer?

If that is the case, it seems to me far more straightforward for the government to say, yes, you are going to have less choice. You will be able to choose between one out of three instead of two out of four because we are going to put more emphasis upon the core subjects. If that is the issue, then let us say it and let us be straightforward about it instead of saying, well, there is three minutes here and there is five minutes there and there is a bit of recess there, and, yes, of course, it you want it, you will be able to have it. It really seems to fudge the issue for people, and I think it makes them more frustrated about what is happening.

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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I thank the member for that clarification. If I am reading her correctly then she is saying that any critiques that she has received, with the exception of the private school that she is supporting in its endeavours there, which we also support, but with the exception of that one person for the private school, we already have all of the critiques that she has received, and she has not received any others that we have not been copied on. So she is not giving us any new information; rather she is giving us the information that the staff had received earlier and that the staff has been working to resolve with divisions, because I have received very little, if anything, since I have become minister.

I know the staff has been working with schools or those particular schools who have identified that they may have some timetabling concerns or scheduling difficulties. Staff has been working directly with those divisions to address those concerns and help resolve them. So we are doing that. Any division that has contacted us, any superintendents who have said, well, with this timetabling dilemma, or whatever it is they have identified, the staff has gone back to those people and said, okay, now, what can we do to help.

The member says, you know, why do we not come right out and say that we are going to be putting more time on core subjects, and that may mean that some divisions that traditionally have not placed a lot of time on core subjects may find that, if they have been offering all options, may not be able to offer all options any more because we are going to insist on increased attention to the core subjects. She says, why do we not just come out and say that. Well, madam, we have been saying nothing but that for many, many months. I mean, that is the whole point of this whole discussion. To say, why do you not come out and say that, I do not understand why you would say that when we have been saying it and saying it ad nauseam until the point that we have had some people say, why do you not stop saying that.

As I indicated before, there are many schools that have this sort of approach right now, where they have had a fairly strong emphasis on the core subjects, and the choices they have traditionally made will not differ very much. But schools offering optional subject areas at the significant expense of the core subject areas will indeed have to make a few different choices than those they have made in the past so that we can ensure all Manitoba children have a solid foundational grounding.

You will find quite a diversity from community to community with the way in which school boards have structured themselves. I can recall with the family life education program, for example, many years ago being on the school board and deciding that we would involve the parents in that particular curriculum because the subject area was somewhat controversial and sensitive, and so we struck what we called a family life review committee.

We had on that, schoolteachers from the division and school administrators from the division and a couple of trustees and some parents of children attending school at that grade level and went through the curriculum and devised what we thought would suit our particular division. So we had involvement from the teachers who had been working with the students, from the principals who had been working with the teachers, from the parents who had the ultimate responsibility for children at home, and together we took the existing family life program and we modified it.

We put in place something that was tailor-made for our community. It worked well for us. It would work well for another community who may want to put a different emphasis on the same material, the same content. When everybody works together like that, you can adequately and accurately reflect the community.

I am quite confident with the way the range of options are being laid down. You have to take four from a list of six or whatever the breakdown is that you are going to end up with basically the same options that are in place right now being selected because you are going to see people valuing music, valuing the other subjects we were talking about earlier, industrial arts, all of those things which are still in place in the middle year schools at the junior high level. These are not going to be wiped off the map so to speak.

I think there has been a lot of misinterpretation or unnecessary fear about the changes we are introducing which really and truly are not the huge massive changes that people seem to be led to believe.

What we are saying is that we will make this next year a transition year, so that people can come to grips with some of the things we are talking about, so that people can find their comfort level, so that people can work through what we are doing. We are just asking for one consistency and the one consistency which is not in the schools that have been reaching for excellence--really very much difference than what is happening in many of the schools right now, that is that we are now wanting to ensure a solid grounding in foundation skills. Once that is assured through timetabling, schools will be able to fit their other choices around that.

They can fit it around in a variety of ways. Some may have no need to make any change because they are already doing it. Others may have to make some changes, but they are not the overwhelming changes that people have been led to believe.

When we talk about foundation skills of logic and critical thinking and deductive reasoning and thinking, problem solving, computation, learning how to learn, these are things that can permeate all subject areas. You do not sit down and say, okay, students, today we are going to learn how to think or today we are going to learn how to use the English language well.

This will permeate all subject areas so that you can take science, and in science you can learn how to use the English language well during your science class, during your physical education class. You can learn how to do deductive reasoning in other courses besides English language arts.

I do not know if the member catches the drift of what I am trying to say here, but it is a renewed emphasis. As I indicated earlier, in many, many schools these things are being done as a matter of course. They just have not been labelled as such. We are now saying we will label them, we will identify that this is what those schools are doing, and we will be asking all schools to do them as well.

Ms. Friesen: Does the minister have a sense of how many schools will require to make changes as a result of these new curriculum mandates at the junior high level? I am not sure I have a sense of the minister's answers whether the vast majority of schools will stay the same or the vast majority of schools will have to make a change. Vast is probably the wrong word to use, but where does the balance fall? Does this policy have an impact upon only a few schools? Are she and I only hearing from those few schools, or is it having an impact on a much broader range of programs?

Mrs. McIntosh: Division officials inform me that to date, while we do have some schools who have said they are worried about timetabling--and as I said the division officials are working with them, with those particular schools. Division officials have informed me that our feedback to date indicates that the majority of schools are "on side," in that they are saying this is not something that is different from their goals and their objectives, and essentially they are saying let us get on with it.

We are saying we will take the transition year because there are some who said this is different from what we have been doing, and we would like some period of adjustment. We are saying, let us take the period of adjustment. Everything does not have to be done over night. Let us make sure that everybody is coming along with us on this in such a way that they have a comfort level, that they are not going to be suffering from future shock syndrome.

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I have talked to some of my friends who are involved in the system either as trustees or as teachers. I still have some friends who are young enough to have parents in the system, still. A third sort of perspective that I get or that we are hearing, I am getting personally and that other people are receiving, is that there is a third category of reaction that would appreciate a transitional year just so they have more time to consult with their communities.

I am talking now mostly of trustees at this level and some school division administrators who would like the chance to have time to have--leisurely is probably the wrong word to use in this context, but to have a fairly good amount of time to dialogue with their community and their advisory councils on what exactly is our school going to be all about, what kind of atmosphere do we wish to have, what kind of emphasis do we wish to have in terms of the discipline, the goals and objectives of the school, the subjects that we wish to really emphasize.

The example you used of the Mennonite school is probably a very good one because there is a school which has had a very strong emphasis on music. It is very much a part of the atmosphere of their school. There will be other schools that do not have that same emphasis on music, but through that particular vehicle the Mennonite school has reached a lot of educational--I am trying to think of a word here. It is on the tip of my tongue, and I cannot recall it.

They have been able to emphasize an awful lot of things about education through music. Because they are a faith-based institution, they have been able, through music, to emphasize the religious aspects of their school. They have been able to emphasize the use of language in more than one language. They have been able to actually increase mathematical understandings through the spaces between notes and those types of things. They have also been able to bring in to bear the ability to communicate publicly in front of a large audience through their choral programs. There are a lot of things they have done. It is a very important part of their school, and that is a choice that they currently make that they are not likely to deviate from. It is still likely to be their choice because of the emphasis placed upon it in their school.

You will find other schools that also make choices in that regard. You will find schools that have really top-notch science programs right now and have become leaders in that area that may wish to emphasize that. I am thinking of a school that the member beside me and I are familiar with that has done a tremendous amount of work in terms of botany and has, in effect, actually built a greenhouse and done a lot of things in that area. They are not likely to want to give that up. It has become an important part of their school.

We say those choices should be there for them. I do not see it as interfering with the ability to do anything that they currently do.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I think the concern of the person I spoke to was that the choice they might be faced with was, in fact, a very difficult one. Choral music, yes, very much a part of the faith. Basic French, very much a part of the nation. The issue there, in the bluntest terms, is faith or nation. Those are choices which might not have to have been made before.

If this is not the case, if schools are not being asked to make that choice, then perhaps there is not an argument. Those were certainly the concerns that were expressed to me.

It is not necessarily a choice of drama or industrial arts. Basic French is an issue of nation and of a bilingual nation. Students who do not have access to basic French, as the member for Transcona (Mr. Reid) was suggesting, may indeed be at a disadvantage in employment and certainly in their ability to deal with the issues that confront a bilingual nation.

It is the nature of the choice, particularly surrounding basic French and other issues, that I think do concern many families. Perhaps we will see these debates as indeed schools and communities are forced to make those kinds of choices.

I do not know if the minister wants to respond on that, but I wanted to move on to another issue that I think she has been contacted on since she became minister, and that deals with the music curriculum. There are, I believe, letters which have been written to the minister to suggest that in the new curriculum proposals the arts are being treated generally as one category of subjects. The music educators, music teachers in particular, are concerned that this is not appropriate, that music has had its own curriculum, and they would like to see that particular music curriculum retained as a separate subject area.

I wonder if the minister has had a chance to respond to those letters yet and what her response is, or what she plans to say.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the arts, as the member knows, will be treated as a subject area with four strands. It will be four separate curricula, four separate strands, music being a very important strand because, as just indicated, there are traditions in Manitoba in particular where music has always had prominence. One only has to look at the Music Festival to see the degree to which Manitoba schools participate in music to know how important it is to people. I suspect that the member knows, as well as I do, that music is going to continue to play a high role in Manitoba schools because of its many attributes.

I want to just quickly jump back when she said that people are going to have to choose in the private schools between faith or nation. I am just wanting to indicate to her that they can have both of those choices. The member seems to imply that they will be precluded from having both of those choices. They can have both of those choices. I just wanted to clarify that.

I also want to emphasize that there is nobody, and I mean nobody, who has been more supportive of music education in Manitoba schools then me. The member can go back and look through everything I have done to understand how very important music in the schools is to me. I want to say there are probably a very small number of people who are more devoted to music education than I am, so for her to think that I would willingly or knowingly do anything that would allow music to slip out of existence from Manitoba schools is a fallacy. It just is not so.

As I say, the arts will be treated as one subject area with four separate strands, and they will have separate curricula for each of those strands. The reason it is being categorized that way is because if you talk about the sciences, you talk about the fine arts, you talk about the language arts, it used to be that you would have English grammar and English literature and then we just put it down to language arts. At the same time that we went from having grammar and literature and we started talking about language arts, there was the same kind of concern that the member is raising when you go now and call music and the visual arts fine arts.

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I can remember when we went to using the words "language arts" people saying, you are not going to teach grammar anymore, or you are not going to teach literature any more. Of course, it was nonsense. You still teach grammar, you still teach literature. It is just that they were seen under this umbrella of language arts because nothing is in isolation from anything else. So we talk about fine arts, we are talking about a particular type of learning experience which is different from the technical subjects. It appeals more to the sensitivities of the mind in terms of inner feelings, inner expressions, creativity. Not that the technical things cannot be creative, they can be, but, in terms of the arts, we will be talking about music, we will be talking about visual arts, we will be talking about dance, we will be talking about drama.

There was a time when drama was not even considered in the arts. Drama was always something you did after school. I think the fact that it is being looked at as something--I am just going to pause here, because I do not mean for a minute to imply that having something done after school lessens the worth of it, but to bring it into curricula I think is significant. I mean, all of us have seen incredible school productions.

School productions in my division rival those at the Manitoba Theatre Centre, and I am not exaggerating when I say that. We have had performances that could not be bettered at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. Those are very important aspects of the school life. Many of those things have been done by teachers volunteering on their own time after hours. They are very meaningful to students.

I think it is significant that it is being included in curricula, and it certainly does not de-emphasize the arts. To me it places increased emphasis on them. It is not being done at the expense of music. Many of the dramas are musical dramas that have tremendous impact in terms of artistic musical endeavour. When you hear an orchestra and when you hear a chorus and when you hear individual voices in solo performance during the course of a musical production you are getting a very clear and meaningful application of music as a performing art in relation to drama.

So you know the attempt to imply that these things are going to take a back seat I think is maybe not a very effective attempt and not accurate in terms of what I anticipate is going to be happening. As people make choices I anticipate that those things which have been valued are going to continue to be chosen. It is just that you will now have opportunity in the Senior 3 and Senior 4 for extra options in those same areas for enhanced skill learning, and I think that is not so bad.

Ms. Friesen: I am glad to hear the minister's personal support for music education, but she should not take raising of questions in that area as in any way personal. None of the questions I raise are personal. It does not matter who the minister is. The issue is, what is this government, what is the minister saying to the music educators who I know have written to her, because they have written to me, with their concerns about what they see as a shift in government and departmental attitudes towards music education.

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The concerns that they expressed were the ones I was trying to express to the minister in that they do see that a shift has occurred when music becomes seen as part of a group of arts curricula. And my question was, what is the minister saying to them? Are they wrong to believe in that? Are they correct in believing that? Does the minister have some explanation that will satisfy them about their concerns, very legitimate concerns I think, about the prospect of changes to the time-honoured position that they believe music education had in the schools in Manitoba. I think they are worried that there has been a change.

Mrs. McIntosh: I should indicate first of all that this is not a shift. The music educators had believed that there would be just one arts curricula and this is not so. This is being communicated to them, being communicated to the music educators so that they are aware that the government is talking about four strands, separate curricula under the category of the arts. There will still be emphasis in their music curricula, as there always has been, on the instruction of band, how to read music, how to sing in a choir, how to play a musical instrument, how to do all those things that they do so well right now.

They will not be part of one master curricula that has--I do not know what there was some thought it could be--but one sort of curricula that would have maybe the first 15 minutes on dance and the second 15 minutes on drama and the third 15 minutes on singing. That is not a very good way to describe how somebody would devise a course that anybody in their right mind would put together curricula that would look like that. I just cannot think of how else the fear might have gotten to them.

I can understand that people would be apprehensive and nervous about hearing certain terminology coming down the tubes without a clear understanding of what it meant. I can completely understand how they would feel a little puzzled and worried and bewildered. I have no quarrel with them for feeling that way. I think in terms of communicating that we still have some communicating to do, because we are sharing that information with them now and I feel badly that there was a moment when they felt that they did not know what was happening.

So I think that is another reason why we need a transition year so that we can all come together and questions of uncertainty and bewilderment and worry can be put forward saying, does this mean we are going to no longer have a particular curricula just for music--just to use this example--what does this mean, and to be given the answers so that they can deal with the answer. They may say, well, good that is an answer I like, or gee, that is an answer that makes me feel a bit better but it still has this aspect I want a dialogue on, or they can say, well, that answer is no better than the first or whatever they are going to say.

We need to have that communication going because we are going to have at the end of the transition year a move to a slightly different way of doing things. As I said, for some schools it may be no different, but for other schools it may be different, because we are saying we are going to have this emphasis on those four foundation skills, and if there are schools that have not been spending the time allotments on them that they should, then they may have to readjust some of their optional courses. Some may not have to, some may have to, but for those that have to, there will be an adjustment, and we need to work together to make sure that goes smoothly.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: Item 16, 2.(b) Education Renewal (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,225,200--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $2,253,500--pass.

Item No. 16, 2.(c) Assessment and Evaluation (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $686,400.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, the financial Estimates that we are considering here, will this cover the assessment and evaluation under the new curriculum or is this for the continuation of existing programs?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, it is a combination of both, because it is integrated into all the components of Education Renewal. So it is both.

Ms. Friesen: Can the minister separate out for us the financial implications of the new testing processes involved in the new curriculum? Just to clarify that, I meant separate it out in financial terms. We have already discussed some of the elements of testing, so it is not the process, it is the financial aspects.

Mrs. McIntosh: Just in answer to the member's question, for '94 and '95, we spent a total of $1,037, I mean, I beg your pardon, we are in thousands here, $1,037,000. For '95-96, we spent $1,214,000, and taking '94 and '95 as a base year, the incremental costs of switching to a standards testing system are, for '95-96, $177,000.

Ms. Friesen: What would the minister anticipate would be the cost of continuing standards testing, just using existing dollars? Has the government looked at a plan? What is likely to be the annual cost once the program is up and running at 3, 6, 9 and 12 in all core subjects? What is the estimated cost of that, for a year, per year?

Mrs. McIntosh: I do not have a figure that I can give you right now. We will be working on developing those estimates for the '96-97 year as we go through this next year of transition. We should have a better handle on what the final figure will be as we do that.

I have been able to break out the current figures, the amounts we spent right now, but just am not able to give an accurate projection on that at this time.

Ms. Friesen: This particular section of the division, of the department, also looks at other methods of evaluation and assessment.

I wonder if the minister could give us an account of the past year, and perhaps the projected year's work in developing alternatives to standards testing for classroom use or for divisional use.

Sorry, just to clarify. I do not mean alternatives in the sense of either/or. I assume the government is going ahead with standards testing.

What additional means are being made available to parents and to students? What additional alternatives of assessment and evaluation are being developed by the department that will accompany, that will enhance whatever is being developed in standards testing?

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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I believe I mentioned this the other day, but as part of the answer to this question, this also applies because as we develop curricula, all curricula documents are now required to include assessment and evaluation strategies as part of the curriculum development.

So during the development phase, they will also be developing the evaluation and the assessment, so the two will blossom together, so to speak. We are going to be developing teacher support documents at the same time, so as you go through, you will have that other stream being developed, as well, so you have the teacher support documents being developed as the curriculum and as the ways in which we are going to do the assessment are being developed, as well.

We will do that in a variety of areas, including, as I said, assessment and evaluation so that the whole package emerges at the end of the process with here is how you do everything you are going to do about assessment right from teacher preparation to student readiness to, you name it, it is going to be in there.

So you will see all of that appearing in the curriculum framework's implementation documents, and it will be a complete guide for all parties who are involved, so that no one will be left out in that. So the curriculum framework's implementation documents will outline all of those details.

Ms. Friesen: What is the connection between this section of the department and the production of those curriculum implementation guidelines?

Will those implementation guidelines be coming out of, I have forgotten how many people there were on it now, that eight- or 12-member committee? Will there be input from this section of the department?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, it will be a collaborative effort, and you will have a widely diverse group on the collaborative effort. They will also be working with teacher committees. Remember we talked about the teacher committees the other day. They will play a role here, so they will keep key stakeholder input at these stages.

Ms. Friesen: I am looking here at a section of the division which has, over the last two years, I think, decreased its budget, not over the immediate year but over the last two years and where there has been a loss of at least one professional staff. I am curious about that, given the government's emphasis upon evaluation and assessment.

My concerns were the longer-term prospects of this section of the department. Over the last two years, there has been a loss of one professional staff and there has been, I think we are looking at '95-96 in the professional staff area at $428,000, whereas in '93-94, which is the most distant year I have with me, it was $476,000. So the decrease in position, the decrease in the budget over the longer term is not huge, but it is unusual, given that that is the thrust of the government's new program.

Mrs. McIntosh: We are referring to a vacant SY, and it was kept vacant for a period of time, but this year, we have brought in four new positions from the Ed Renewal line and that sort of eliminates the problem with one vacant SY, because it gives us four new positions to deal in that area.

Ms. Friesen: In the lines that I am looking at, which is 16.(2)(c), I do not see any difference from last year in the number of staff, either professional or administrative. Is that difference in professional fees--no, there is no difference in professional fees either.

Mrs. McIntosh: If the member may recall, yesterday, or Friday, rather, we were talking about 25 positions--I do not know if you recall that area of the Estimates--and we had gone through naming all of the different categories.

Four of those positions are the ones that we are talking about, and they have been integrated as we indicated. The Ed Renewal staff has been integrated to make it integral to all areas, and those would be the curriculum consultant, the statistical analyst, the word processor and the casual markers. Those are the four positions that I am talking about.

Ms. Friesen: I am still not understanding it. Last year, there were four staff years that are this year in Administrative Support. I assume those are the categories we are talking about.

So were four people lost from the department and that these four of the 25 have now been added and, hence, we have got a zero sum. Is that it?

Mrs. McIntosh: On page 47--is this the page that you are looking at? Okay. You will see under SY it has 8, and then it has 4, and a total of 12. What we are saying is, you add to that 12 another 4 that come from the ed renewal. So that would give you then 16, which is not written in there, but that is where you would add them on.

Ms. Friesen: I want to go back to the questions I asked about alternative methods of assessment and evaluation. I wonder if the minister could give me an idea of the kinds of recommendations which may be included in the new curriculum. I have already looked at the math curriculum, for example. I guess it is ready to be piloted now.

What alternatives are being suggested to classroom teachers and superintendents in addition to the standards testing?

Mrs. McIntosh: Staff has identified a series of alternative methods of assessment. They would include student portfolios, exhibitions, demonstrations, journals, those types of projects, and those could be expanded upon.

We will also be collaborating with classroom teachers and university scholars and so on to develop the best instructional practice and tools in assessment and evaluation just to ensure consistency and fidelity across the curriculum instruction and evaluation.

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So there is a variety of tools that can be used if you start including things like portfolios, demonstrations, diaries and journals, and if you are working in collaboration with the classroom teachers and university scholars on these types of endeavours. You can get a fairly good assessment in a nontesting type of way, but still extremely valid in terms of assessing a student's ability and knowledge and understanding of a particular subject area. These are types of things that have been used for many years in education to assess students' ability. A thesis, for example, is not unlike some of these. Although a thesis, of course, is for older students, it is an ability.

We have a project underway at a school level that is funded by us in terms of alternative evaluation procedures at Antler River. They are looking at alternative methods of assessment of at-risk students, oral testing, observation classroom assignments, presentations, and that is a collaborative effort between schools, universities and the department. It is not new. It is not new historically. I can recall, and I am sure the member can as well, having periods of time in the public schools where part of your final mark would be your term paper that you would produce and that term paper would be maybe 25 percent of your mark or some portion thereof. So, it is tried and true and has ability to be used in a new order of things as well.

Ms. Friesen: I would be interested in talking a little more about that in a minute, but I did want to finish up my earlier line of questioning which dealt with alternative methods of evaluation being proposed in the current mathematics curriculum for Grade 3 for which the pilot will begin soon.

Mrs. McIntosh: Between the Kleenex and the menthol supplied very kindly by the Chair, I have been distracted for two of your questions and I apologize. Would you be kind enough to repeat that for me, or just the main message.

Ms. Friesen: I just wanted to complete the line of questioning I was suggesting earlier, and that dealt with the current Grade 3 mathematics curriculum which is about to be piloted and tested. I was asking what elements of alternative testing, evaluation and assessment were being suggested in that curriculum since that is the point at which it comes, the package with the curriculum.

Mrs. McIntosh: There are several ways that you can do that and we were just talking with staff here about applying different methods of problem solving and critical thinking to the traditional ways of solving a mathematical problem, for example, that would illustrate creativity and a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. The illustrative examples in the curriculum frameworks of outcomes for math will demonstrate that teachers can link teaching and learning with assessment and evaluation. That particular framework which is called the Curriculum Framework of Outcomes Implementation Documentation for Math and the Teacher, a very weighty title--those support documents will give teachers further support in that area.

A specific example is using a dialogical journal, which is a two-column type of journal where you have two columns in the set-up of the journal. In one column the student can solve the problem, going down and solve it in one column. In the second column the student would explain his or her thinking in solving the problem. So you have two columns side by side, one with the solution and immediately beside it in the second column an explanation of the thought processes that the student went through to solve the problem. That is another way of getting at answering the question, does the student really understand why they have multiplied here? Did they just multiply because the teacher said that whenever you get this kind of problem you always multiply, or do they understand exactly what that concept of multiplication means in terms of solving the problem and they could apply it even if the teacher had not said, whenever you get that kind of problem you always multiply.

That deeper understanding which many teachers currently do, what we are saying is that, first of all, we want to ensure that that kind of learning takes place, period. Secondly, this would be another way, in answer to your question, of doing some alternative methods of assessing in terms of reaching a standard. We want to emphasize and provide suggestions that will help teachers see the assessment and evaluations as an integral part of teaching and not as something that will come at the end, that it has to go all the way through. We will want to emphasize the demonstrations of performance that get at that higher order of thinking and get at that type of problem solving. We want to see how language is used in learning in all subject areas, et cetera. I think I have mentioned that before.

I do not know if that addresses one way that they could get at looking to see if students have that deeper understanding in the area of mathematics, and that two-column approach is just one example of a variety of approaches that could be used. Of course a lot of those elements will be ones that teachers may opt to choose if they find they fit the needs of their class or of its value to them in developing alternative methods of assessment.

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Ms. Friesen: I understand what the minister is explaining, but I have difficulty understanding it at the Grade 3 level. Is it possible to look at that pilot curriculum? Is that available on loan from the Education library?

Mrs. McIntosh: The western outcomes document we hope to have available later this month, so we are talking now a matter of a few weeks. It should not be that much longer before you could pick a copy up.

If we are able to have it available before the end of June, which is what we are hoping, and I always hold my breath, as I indicated before, when I say we expect to have it by the end of June in case something happens and it is not until the first week of July or something, but the target date, it looks like it is on schedule. We should be able to have it ready for you.

That western outcomes document will be the basis that we will use to develop the Manitoba curriculum frameworks, and that will be for kindergarten to Grade 4, and we should have it ready before the fall.

Ms. Friesen: I wanted to go back to the Antler River example that the minister gave me. It sounds like an interesting project. How long has it been going on, and what is the collaboration with, and when does the minister expect an evaluation report?

Mrs. McIntosh: It has completed its second year of funding. It will have one more year, and at the end of that year, we should have an evaluation, and the partner that is in on that is Brandon University.

Ms. Friesen: Is it Brandon University, Faculty of Education?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, it is. Brandon University, Faculty of Education, and Turtle River School Division.

Ms. Friesen: One of the things that occurs to me from that is, it is dealing with at-risk students and the use of oral testing for at-risk students.

One of the elements of the International Baccalaureate program that has always intrigued me has been the oral testing at senior levels in English, for students whose first language is English, and I wondered if the minister was looking at that for senior levels testing in Manitoba?

Mrs. McIntosh: I have been informed that, while the oral abilities and the oral assessment would definitely form part of that assessment of the year's work, it probably would not be part of the standards testing at the end of the year's work, but it definitely would be a factor in the term work.

I agree with the member. I think the oral testing is a very valid way of assessing an ability to communicate. We have all known people who could do a wonderful job writing and then kind of break down when they try to transmit the information verbally. They cannot take time to pause before writing and so on. That will be assessed as part of the ongoing term work, not probably in the final exam.

Ms. Friesen: The educational information system is made reference to here as one of the roles of this particular section of the department. I wonder if the minister could give me a sense of what questions are being asked by this section of the division of the educational information system. What material is being collected, what information is required to presently conduct the work of the division, and what is anticipated in the future will be required?

Mrs. McIntosh: Student marks are recorded in the EIS system, and I think that basically answers your question.

Ms. Friesen: Is that likely to change in the future? For example, I am assuming that in the past the results of evaluations have been communicated to school divisions. Is there likely to be any change in the communication of results or the comparable nature of results or the comparing of results across divisions, the comparing of results vis-à-vis economic statuses of particular schools, the kinds of things that have happened in other jurisdictions where standards tests have been involved, have involved, as a matter of course, a different approach to the reporting of results?

In some cases, some people have essentially created league tables of schools or school divisions. In some cases those have also been tempered or moderated by including in those tables or hierarchy of schools, whether you would call it mitigating information but certainly socio-economic or cultural or linguistic information that has some explanatory role vis à vis the information being communicated. So I am looking for a larger discussion of where these results are going to go and how they are going to be reported and to whom.

Mrs. McIntosh: We discussed some of this the other day, particularly with the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk), who was really concerned that this was taking too long and that we really needed to have a system such as this to better provide data for the benefit of the students. And I understand her concern and the question you have raised. We have an EIS steering committee right now that will be giving advice, that is giving advice and will be giving advice to government about the kind of data that can be used and about the types of applications and capabilities that can surround that type of data.

We still have not got this thing up and running for a variety of reasons. First of all, we do feel that there is tremendous benefit to be gained by being able to track a student, for example, in terms of a highly mobile student, to have all that information be available, not to have records being lost, and new teachers, in areas where children move in and out, being frustrated by records that do not follow in a timely and appropriate fashion or maybe do not follow, in some cases, for a variety of reasons.

We have a number of things that we need to be comfortable with in assuring ourselves that we obviously are very supportive of the process because we think that it could have ultimate great benefit to students. We have concern to make sure that privacy provisions are well attended, that material is not misused or abused in any way but that it be there to fulfill its function, which is to be able to help follow a student through the course of their schooling so that never at any point is one educator or one set of guardians or whoever important to that child at a loss for information as to historical data that might be needed to help the child progress from any given point.

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So we see tremendous benefits in the capabilities that are here. We will be up and running as soon as we can and, to our satisfaction, address those two outlying concerns, and we think they are rather important concerns. So we will be continuing to get advice on those two areas and, hopefully, we will not be too much longer in being able to provide an EIS system for the benefit of the students in this province.

Ms. Friesen: My specific concern, however, was with the assessment and evaluation and the way in which that data will be collected in the future where a great deal more information will be available both collectively across schools and individually on particular students. My concern is, how is that information to be communicated to school divisions, to schools, to parents, and this is particularly the area that concerns me, the broader public, the information about evaluation and assessment results, exam results?

(Mr. Peter Dyck, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, I thank the member for the question. Right now individual school marks of any sort are sent to the division, and that is how we intend to proceed. I am not sure if the member is asking, like, will we be putting out a big news release and saying, you know, here is school No. 1, here is school No. 2. No, we do not intend to do that. What we will be doing is sending the results, individual school marks, to the division for the benefit of the individual school student.

We will be able to release or to make generic statements such as, Manitoba schools now rank, you know, in the top 25 percent of schools across the province in terms of their mathematical assessment or things like that, but we are not going to be putting out, okay, everybody come on, line up, come on down, here is school No. 1, everyone come on over here and enrol type thing. We are not. That is not our purpose.

Our purpose is to be able to better understand how students are faring, to make sure that those individual school marks are made available to school divisions for the benefit of the individual students to whom those marks are assigned and to give the province a better feel for an overview of how we are doing on a comparative basis with other provinces and other jurisdictions in the nation and indeed with other jurisdictions internationally. The individual schools will be the ones that will be the working on school plans, and they may wish to report on school achievement. Through their school plans they may wish to say, our students did very well in the exams in science or whatever, but that would not be the department's role nor is it our intent.

Ms. Friesen: Those are representative of the fears that are there. In the case, for example, of Quebec, Quebec has recently, within the last year, certainly published what is called a league table of high schools and I am not sure if it included the colleges, but it certainly included high schools, both English and French, in its jurisdiction. It has led to many, many concerns.

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Should there be any change in the process that the minister is suggesting here, that is, that the marks continue to go as they do now to the school division, would that decision go back to that steering committee? I think that is the steering committee, I understand, where there are representatives from trustees and superintendents and other groups. I am really asking two questions there. The steering committee on EIS, is that where any changes in policy on the reporting of school divisions would go? Would the minister be seeking advice for them, or would this be strictly a ministerial decision?

Mrs. McIntosh: The EIS talks more about what kinds of data to collect as opposed to saying what government should do with data. As I mentioned before, we have concerns about privacy, use and misuse of information. We want to have a sense of understanding what our schools are doing vis-à-vis other jurisdictions so that we can ensure our students come out competitive with what is going on. We do not intend to rank schools.

I think that was the underlying fear I detected in your question. That is not our intent. I do not think that would be anything the EIS steering committee would make comment on. They would be more indicating the types of data that we would require to have a really good understanding of the implications of any assessment or standards testing. Any decisions regarding policy would be government decisions, and any such decision involving an issue such as the member has just indicated would be one that would require tremendous amount of consultation.

That is a pretty big thrust that she has identified, and I would be very reluctant to proceed in that vein without a lot of consultation. It is not on our agenda.

I appreciate the concern and I am sensing that the concern is being brought forward not as, why are you not doing it, but rather as, please do not do it. I think I am reading you correctly in that.

Ms. Friesen: I think the fear, as always, in this kind of a situation is that those kinds of numbers, where numbers exist, where numbers are comparable, can be compared. Those comparisons will be made inevitably, whether the government makes them or not, and particularly in a situation where you have a choice of schools where that might indeed be one of the legitimate questions that parents might ask of a variety of schools that they are considering.

So the government may not, as the Quebec government itself in fact has done, publish that ranking. But the ranking then does begin to emerge. I think the fears that are being expressed are that the ranking may emerge in a variety of informal ways and may not take into account, I cannot even say they are intangible factors, but less measurable factors.

Mrs. McIntosh: I understand what the member is saying. It is a very valid thing that she is saying.

I think, though, even without any knowledge of how a school might rank in terms of measurable standards, our thing that we are so intent on determining, you will find that good schools--by good schools I mean schools in which learning takes place--become discovered regardless of whether information goes out or does not go out just simply by word of mouth of the people in the schools.

We know this because we have all had personal experience with people saying, I do not want my child to go to School A because there is a rough crowd of kids there who take dope, or bad kids, or whatever, or there is, you know, in that school there is some other negative influence or whatever it is.

You will also hear the opposite: I want my child to go to School Y because in that school we know they have a wonderful band program or they have a really good French teacher or they have really nice kids, or whatever it is that will attract people to a school or dissuade them from wanting to be in attendance at a certain school. People develop preferences with or without data that is an indication of measure for a variety of things that are less tangible but, nonetheless, very real.

What we are looking to find out and wanting to be assured of is the comfort level that as government we know, not just because of the things that I have mentioned but because we have measurable standards that tell us, yes, our students on the whole are measuring up compared to what is happening in other provinces, compared to what is happening in other nations.

Our students are going out into this world economy onto an international stage, and they are going to measure up, and they are going to be accepted in the best post-secondary institutions. They are going to be sought after to work in a global economy, and they are going to be perceived as Canadian students, because so much of our work now is Pan-Canadian, with a good reputation inside and outside this nation. That is our goal. So we do not need to misuse that information in any way once we have got that comfort level, that it is okay, our kids are measuring up. The parents themselves and the people involved will ascertain for themselves from their comfort which school they want their children to get those learning experiences from.

Ms. Friesen: I see how we can draw comparisons with other western provinces using a western consortium and the evaluation methods that come as part of that. How is the minister making that comparison to other jurisdictions where the curriculum is different and the testing is applied to that particular curriculum? Is there a stage somewhere in the western consortium development where curriculum and evaluation are placed in a national and international context? How are those comparisons to be made?

(Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

Mrs. McIntosh: Right now in terms of Canada, in terms of what we are talking about, the School Achievement Indicators program--we talked about that before--is the only assessment project that we are looking at in terms of Canada for that kind of assessment. Math, reading, writing, science--we discovered last time that in math, in terms of trying to analyze where we needed to concentrate our efforts, problem solving and data management were two areas that we determined we should be putting more emphasis just in terms of picking up some speed on them, because vis-à-vis the others, those showed areas where we needed to do some work. So we were able to pinpoint areas that we should be concentrating on in terms of the performance of our students.

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When we talk about internationally we are not talking about this type of assessment which is a national one. We are talking internationally; we are talking about a different kind of thing. For example, I think the member will recall the international assessment of educational process which caused some stir and got everybody kind of agitated there for a while in the spring of '91 when they were talking about math, science and geography at the 13-year-old age level. They had--I do not know--25 or so countries involved, and Manitoba came in at the Canadian average, and Canada scored in the middle. Scoring in the middle is not as bad as scoring at the bottom, but it is not as good as scoring at the top.

Now, their method of assessing 13-year-olds in those technical areas of maths, science and geography were not ones that we chose, but they were ones that were used, and that kind of information was put out then and reflected on Canada. For better or for worse, for right or for wrong, the figures stood there internationally as a signal that we were, someone once said, mediocre, because we were in the middle of the pack at neither really high nor low

That type of thing is something that, if we can change that perception around through measurable standards here in Canada using the SAIP as an assessment tool for national assessment, the western consortium that we have talked about in terms of developing curricula, working with the other provinces in the west, that western consortium has identified assessment as a potential area of collaboration. They are working on curricula development. They are talking about assessment, but they have not undertaken any specific activity at the present time regarding assessment, although we talk about assessment development in conjunction with curricula development, so that is a distinct possibility.

But I guess when the member asks what type of assessment, what type of criteria, not all of those assessments or all those criteria are ones that have been developed here. They are ones, however, that are impacting on our reputation whether we like it or not, and they are ones that I think are relatively easily changed.

I think we have got some very bright and good minds in our students, and I think we have got some very dedicated people in our teaching force, and I think we have got political will, and I think we have got enthusiastic parents. So you get those four factors put together, I think that it is quite an easy matter to change that perception internationally and give our kids that little leg up.

Ms. Friesen: One of the problems with those international perceptions, international measurements that is commonly made, one of the critiques that is commonly made, is that the range of students who are being compared are not comparable, that quite frequently, particularly the European context, the students who are being compared are often ones who have been selected, whereas in the Canadian and North American context generally there is a broader range of abilities which are being tested. Are there ways in which the minister is anticipating, in a sense, challenging the bases of those international assessments?

Mrs. McIntosh: The Canadian ones, the SAIP, the students were comparable, and we were able to identify a couple areas that needed extra work. The staff indicates as well that in the terms of the IAEP that while there may have been some few systems that had some selection by age 13, most of them participating in IAEP did not have that selective component. So the vast majority were, in fact, not selective in the way the member indicated.

The other thing that staff has indicated to me is that in the test development process for the IAEP, there was a consensus process used for developing these tests, and so if two jurisdictions objected, a question was out. So, you know, I think the comparability may have been a little better than the member envisions.

Ms. Friesen: The IAEP process, I am not familiar with it. Is that the one that the OECD developed? Those are the evaluations that I have read, and the ones that are often seen as not comparable. So perhaps we are talking about quite a different system here.

Mrs. McIntosh: This one does not have anything to do with OECD. Those two are not the same tests, so the one that you are referencing may well be one that is out in terms of good comparative value. But the IAEP, which is the international test that had the 25 countries, had Canada coming in at the middle, did use that consensus process for developing the tests. I think it probably has a better reputation for being accurately comparable than the other one you referenced.

Mr. Gary Kowalski (The Maples): It was not going to be my question, but just following up on that, my understanding also is, because in many of those countries children are tracked into different tracks, apprenticeship track, vocational track, different tracks, that regardless of how the questions are developed, who you are sampling is not the same broad spectrum of the youth populations of those countries. In Canada, because of our public school system, we are not into tracking children in vocational, into different groups. We have a broader range of student than in those countries. For example, in Germany they have an apprenticeship track and a vocational track, and Sweden. So I think we still have to be careful with the comparisons.

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Mrs. McIntosh: The staff indicate to me that students who are into specialized programs, individualized programs, et cetera, were not part of this testing, but they were testing students in the regular--whatever regular means, because I always have trouble when I use the word regular--but students in the standard stream. So point well made but not particularly applicable to this specific test.

Mr. Kowalski: I think that many educators spent many a cocktail party discussing these tests at length, and I do not think we will resolve the debate today on the comparative international test tonight.

The subject that I wish to bring forward is in alternative assessments, specifically portfolio assessments, and I will again be very parochial about it. Within my constituency there are a number of schools that do use portfolio assessment, and I have received concerns from parents about the portfolio assessment. I have personal experience in that my daughter has attended a middle school where she received portfolio assessment.

The minister mentioned that portfolio assessment as a teaching tool. It is an excellent tool for teaching, but assessment serves another purpose. I know many educators bristle at using these terms, but as consumers of the educational system, whether it be the parent or the student, the assessment serves another role in letting the consumers of the educational system know how the system is working. In many of the phone calls I have received concerning portfolio assessments was the fact that it is something new, something they have never experienced. They are used to either a grade or a mark, and suddenly they have a portfolio, and when their co-worker or the grandparents ask, well, how is your son or daughter doing in school, their answer is they do not know.

I realize that knowing where they are in the continuum we talked about earlier may not be useful as a teaching tool, but I think this is what parents, students are looking for. Has that been considered in the department's review and acceptance of portfolio assessment being used in the public school system?

Mrs. McIntosh: I thank the member for those comments. I think we need to distinguish between tools that are effective for assessing and evaluating, which I believe he is pointing out, and those that are effective for grading purposes. Within schools we need both kinds of tools, and I have a sense that the member and I would agree that development of a portfolio would have some kind of uses.

It maybe not always be applicable in being utilized for other purposes--or maybe not be as effective is the word--in being used for other purposes. Many employers and post-secondary learning institutions are now requiring portfolios of student work as part of the application process, and if that portfolio system is correctly designed it can serve a very valuable assessment role. I think where I agree with the member is that, although he has not stated this explicitly, it is implicit in his question--I think what is too often lacking are clear criteria for including items in the portfolio or for judging the students' products or for summarizing student achievement. Curricula documents will provide helpful guidelines for this type of thing.

I think assessment strategies have to be comprehensive. That is why we have gone with provincial standards tests as well as a range of testing procedures at local classroom level. We do feel that the standards test, those measurable standards, will be most effective, and your comments on portfolios are appropriate in that context. I say there are tools we can use; that is one of them. It may not be applicable in all situations, and, indeed, we are saying that standards testing will be our basic way of doing that assessment.

Mr. Kowalski: I know that one of the things many of the parents were looking at when portfolio assessments were introduced in a number of schools was, although they were very open-minded, and they were willing to accept it, that they wanted some way to the bridge the way they were used to receiving assessment about their children with the new form as an interim, whether it was, along with the narrative and the sample of the child's work, that there would be a letter grade, a mark or something, to help them eventually translate what they were seeing with what they traditionally know. Is that something that we could look forward to if the department is going to accept portfolio assessment as an assessment strategy?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes. I just want to indicate that if using the portfolio as an assessment tool was the only tool that was going to be available, I think I would be quite concerned. In terms of the question you asked, I think it comes back to--I have this irresistible urge to use, to keep using the term "future shock," and I do not want to overuse it, but I sometimes feel that we are living through it in almost every segment of our lives.

For people who have been immersed in a particular system and are suddenly confronted with change without having had the opportunity that we have had, you and I and the other people involved at this level where we have a chance to sort of go in depth into the exploration of issues and be advised by experts and consult around the province and do these things--for people who have not had that opportunity, to be suddenly faced with all of these different ways of doing things, it is really disconcerting.

I think this transitional year may help somewhat with people to come to understand exactly what some of these changes are, why they are being put in place, the rationale for them, the improvements we expect to see, the problems we are trying to address. I find that, once people have a chance to do, they usually go: Oh, I see, oh, that is right; well, you know I have always kind of thought. Then they will tell you why they always agreed with that concept, but they just did not know what you were talking about. I do not mean you. They would always know what you were talking about, but some of them did not know what I am talking about.

They just needed it put in language that was understandable or in a frame that made sense. For example, one of our portfolio projects links the research on effective use of portfolios with the Conference Board of Canada and their employability skills profile. That is an interesting linkage there that would maybe take away some of people's--first of all, what does the word mean. A lot of people say, what is a portfolio, what does it mean? A couple of years ago I think most of us might have been asking that. We get more exposed to it.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: There has been a request for a five-minute break. What is the will of the committee? Agreed? We will resume at 10:45.

The committee recessed at 10:38 p.m.

________

After Recess

The committee resumed at 10:45 p.m.

Mr. Kowalski: I would like to carry on about portfolio assessments again. Another aspect of portfolio assessments is, I do not know if it is happening in other divisions but in the area I represent, they are looking at using portfolio assessments in the senior grades, and one of the aspects even at the middle school years level was, if portfolio assessments continue to be accepted, how will it be used by postsecondary educational institutions to determine their acceptance into different faculties, different programs.

Now that the Department of Education is looking at this as an alternative assessment strategy, has the department talked to the universities in Manitoba, the community colleges, realizing of course that not all our students go to the Manitoba universities and colleges but a great majority of them? Have there been any discussions with the deans and the presidents of post-secondary education as to the possibility of portfolio assessments being presented for entrance into their institutions?

Mrs. McIntosh: I just want to clarify first of all that our modus operandi, so to speak, would be the standards testing and the whole reference to portfolios as one alternative came up in response to a question from the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) who had asked, are there any other tools that might be used to help assess students' progress, and I ran down a list of things that could be done in the classroom as alternatives to either enhance the standards testing or that teachers might wish to use during the course of the year on coursework and that type of thing, not in place of standards testing but rather as one other alternative that teachers could use as tools.

I do not want there to be a misperception or a misconception that in place of standards testing this would be what we would do. It is just one other thing that can be done in the course of evaluating a student to assess their progress and their depth of understanding on any given issue.

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I do not know if that helps clarify what I think the member was trying to ask. We will consult, however, on the other point in your question, with all potential users of assessments. As we develop assessment portions of curriculum documents, whatever they may be, we will do that type of consultation to make sure that anybody who is going to be using the assessment results will have had prior consultation on methods that might be employed by Manitoba schools, but standards testing is our aim and our goal.

Mr. Kowalski: I do not know if we can--misunderstanding of terms and that--standards testing can be portfolio assessment, can be oral testing, the way we determine those standards. We heard early in the Estimates process, standards testing is not necessarily multiple choice, computer marked, and portfolios could be a standards test, as could an oral examination, as a test in physical education.

So the fact that the emphasis is going to be on standards tests, I do not think I have heard so far that standards tests will mean a certain type of test, and portfolios could be a way of testing standards, and it was mentioned here as an alternative assessment. It is being used in some middle schools now. I do not know if it is being used in any senior grades. In some universities they are using portfolio assessments, and I would not want the tone of my questions to indicate that I do not support the concept of portfolio assessment. It is an excellent tool. I have had experience about it, and it might be a better indicator for post-secondary education and which students are best qualified to go into certain faculties as opposed to a letter grade or a mark in that a portfolio might be a better indication of the possibility of that student's success or failure.

I do not think the present system, with the high number of students that drop out or finish after first year education, is totally acceptable. So I am not saying that portfolio assessment takes the place of standards tests. A portfolio assessment can be a standards test.

Mrs. McIntosh: I understand what the member is saying. I just want to indicate, just by way of clarification, our intentions here that standards tests would have to be written within a set time frame, for starters, and the research on the use of things, one of the other alternatives such as, say, oral testing in large-scale testing situations is not yet solid in terms of reliability and viability. This is also true for large-scale use of portfolios.

If I may just read to the member some of the things that we have with standards tests that may help further clarify this from our perspective for his information, when we look at standardized testing versus standards testing, because they are two different things, under standards tests we will look at criterion-referenced as opposed to norm-referenced under a standardized test, and we will say that we will be looking for students' results reported in relation to descriptions of what students are expected to achieve as defined in curriculum documents.

Similarly with standardized tests, they will be commercially produced for a mass market, whereas standards tests will develop locally, in this case provincially, with the help of classroom teachers. So they possess a higher degree of curricular fidelity than a commercially produced mass market type standardized test, because a standards test would be based completely on outcomes and standards found in provincial curriculum documents.

Standards tests require extended responses on the part of students as opposed to in a standardized test, the multiple choice type. Again, under a standardized test you will see most questions focus on the recall of rote learning and the application of lower level skills, where under standards testing we would have the emphasis on questions requiring the use of application and interpretation of knowledge.

Again, it is a different approach. Under standardized tests you would have them often referred to as objective. They can say that questions can be marked unambiguously right or wrong, but a standards test is not quite that objective. It is also not as subjective as commonly supposed. The objectivity by an intermarker agreement--and we are talking about training our markers. That can be achieved by training markers on carefully developed marking schemes. Periodic checks are conducted in this type of marking to detect and correct any marker drift that might occur. Under standardized tests there will be one best answer, but under standards testing you might find alternative solutions that are possible, that have varying degrees of rightness and wrongness.

Two other examples: on the standardized tests you will have proxy measures for complex skills. For example, you will have the measurement of writing skills through sentence correction exercises. Under standards testing, as much as possible, you would direct or authenticate measures of skills. Authentic measures of skills are employed requiring students to write an essay or perform a laboratory experiment or complete a research project.

The last one that we have indicated is that standardized tests are used mainly for measuring the end product of student learning, as if it has an end. Under standards testing you will find it possible to measure process as well as product, as long as the students are able to show all the steps used in arriving at a final answer. That gets back to the two columns I talked about where a student will solve a problem in the one column and in the second column explain the thinking process that was employed to arrive at the answer. Those things under standards tests that I have identified in terms of your concern, if we attempt to meet all those things I have just identified under standards tests, then concern about portfolios and those types of things become lessened. Clearly, with portfolios you can not do all of these. That is what I think was meant when staff indicated that use of portfolios on a large scale will not give the reliability and the validity that is as solid as the standards tests.

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I do not know if that clarifies or confuses. When we look at the different types of testing processes, one we will be using when it is upcoming in the language arts test at Senior 4. Students will be given four 60-minute periods over a four-day period--four days, four periods, 60 minutes each--to develop a piece of writing. That is different than just requiring a single demand piece of writing, where you go in on Monday and you sit down and write your essay. It is probably a more realistic approach to the way a piece of writing might be used in the real world upon graduation.

So that is just one example of an application of skill.

Mr. Kowalski: I think I want to move from standardized. It is a subject we could go on about some more, but I think I would just like to move.

Earlier we talked about the comparison of schools, the test results. The minister mentioned that people, whether or not the results are published, always find out which schools have a better reputation. That is not always true. It is not a level playing field in that I was told one way to decide which school was the best school in your division is look at which schools the teachers who live in your area are sending their kids to, because they have the inside information, they know where the best principals are, they know where the best teachers are. So the test results themselves will not tell us which are the best schools, because there are many things that make up a good school, the climate, the safety of the school, the quality of the program, the physical qualities, a number of things.

With the educational renewal reform, the blueprint indicating that parents will have more choice as to which school they can send their children to, would it not be a legitimate purpose for the department of Education in some way to give information to parents so they can decide which are schools that have better programs, which schools are safer schools, which schools have excellence in one area or another? If I have a child that is very interested in a band program, the best band program in the area, if I have a child that is very timid, which is a very--so the minister said, well, people just seem to know. That is not always true.

Is the department looking at some way of assessing the schools in Manitoba?

Mrs. McIntosh: Very good questions. I should indicate to the member that comment was made in reference to the fact of my belief that even in the absence of publishing a list that ranks the schools in terms of best to least, parents would still make selections for their schools based on reputations that they had acquired about particular schools. In terms of rating a school, how do you rate a school? As you pointed out, there are different things that people will look for in schools.

One way that we have said parents will be able to better exercise choice would be the development of school plans. Schools will be asked to develop school plans that will indicate to the people who will be attending schools what type of schools they can look at. The school plan will indicate very clearly what a parent could expect in that school for the academic year.

We have developed characteristics of effective schools. We have not developed themselves; there are many learned researchers, writers, scholars, et cetera, who have identified the characteristics of an effective school. Listing the things that are known about effective schools we will find several characteristics, one being strong instructional leadership at the building level in each of the schools. So a strong instructional leader, strong principals, strong teachers, very important in terms of the building level at each of the schools, a clear and focused academic mission so that there is no guessing about what the school plans to accomplish in terms of the academics. That is a very important component of an effective school, that people know what the academic mission be.

High expectations for both students and staff--those schools that place high expectations on their students and on the people who teach those students tend to become very effective, and it is like any area of life, many of us who have lived a bit, just a little bit, know that the more that is expected of you, inevitably if you are a person of normal abilities, whatever that means, you will rise to the level of expectation.

Now, we are down to the level of expectation. You just have to look at how children develop, and with your background in police work I am sure you have seen this with children who have gone astray, that you can place some high expectations on them and affect dramatic changes. Similarly you can reinforce the negative expectations and see no improvement whatsoever.

Another characteristic of an effective school is the sufficient opportunity for learning, and I have my little favourite example that is just sort of my little pet favourite thing, that I believe that schools are for students and nobody else, not for teachers or professors or ministers of Education or whomever, schools are for students. I believe that with all my heart and soul.

The other thing that goes along with that is that nothing should interfere with the student's ability to learn or a teacher's ability to teach.

So we talk about eliminating disruptive personalities from the school, giving the principal authority to get rid of dope pushers and unsavoury elements from the school--those are distractions from the learning experience--similarly, the teacher being able to suspend a student from the classroom for disruptive behaviour. It gets right back to, students should be free to learn and teachers should be free to teach without distraction.

The other three characteristics--frequent monitoring of student progress, we get back to our standards testing plus all the alternatives that we talked about; extensive parental involvement; and a safe and clean school environment. Those are carefully researched characteristics of effective schools. Those things become self-evident to any interested observer. It does not take long to witness that a school offers those kinds of things if you are investigating, for want of a better word, an appropriate school for your child. You will almost invariably ask those particular questions. Schools that perform well in them and are known as effective will become schools of choice whether or not the Department of Education issues a statement saying, this is school No. 1 and this is school No. 2, how do you rank them?

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: Item 16, 2. School Programs (c) Assessment and Evaluation (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $686,400--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $359,700--pass.

2.(d) Native Education Directorate (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $160,300.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I think I have been voicing some concerns about this particular section of the department for a number of years now, and the issue is not so much what is being accomplished but the fact that there are so few employees in this division that they must connect with so many other departments and committees and now new curriculum areas that the needs of Manitoba's educational system, which must respond perhaps more extensively than in any other province to native education concerns, is not as great as we would like to see it.

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My first question really is to the minister. What plans are there for expansion of the Native Education Directorate? I noticed that in the lines we are considering there is an overall decrease from $238,000 to $217,000 and that follows on a slight overall decrease from the previous year.

Mrs. McIntosh: We had 13, we still have 13, and I will give you the breakdown. I should indicate first of all that we have done some restructuring so that we can better integrate the curriculum issues and implementation issues. I will just give you the breakdown and show you.

At this time last year, the end of March last year, 1994, the Native Education branch staffing complement was comprised of eight permanent full-time employees, one who was out on long-term disability and four vacant SYs. In the following month, in April of '94, the former Program Development and Support Services division was reorganized to become the present School Programs division.

The Native Education Directorate was established with three SYs and the former Native Education branch was redirected to ensure aboriginal representation in all areas of the division, not just isolated in one branch. They were redirected and it was redirected so that we now have those three in the Native Education Directorate and the rest dispersed, for a total of 13 all together. Those positions were, we now have one in the Program Development branch, in the Parklands-Westman regional team, in the Program Development team, in the Winnipeg regional team, two in the south-central regional team, one in the Program Development branch, another one in the Program Development branch, another one in the Parklands-Westman regional team, one in the northern regional team and another one in the Parklands-Westman regional team.

We still have two positions which have been advertised but successful candidates have not been found and those positions are being held. They are designated for aboriginal staff. You can see the breakdown of how we have redirected those people to integrate in with all aspects there instead of just being isolated out from the everyday.

We are going to continue to provide leadership and co-ordination for departmental initiatives on K-S4 aboriginal education, and the redirected staff will be providing their services in their new respective roles within the entire division.

Ms. Friesen: At which point were there 13 people in the Native Education branch? I am looking at three sets of estimates and I can still only find three in each year, so at which point were there 13?

Mrs. McIntosh: I know that as of the end of March last year, there were 13 positions that were in that area, but as I indicated one was on long-term disability and four were vacant positions. So there were 13 positions. When it was reorganized, the 13 positions were reorganized to go to different areas and some of those positions then they were no longer--we now had 13 real people, actually I should say 11 real people because we are still waiting to find two. We have not yet found suitable people. We are designating them for aboriginal people. We actually have 11 real bodies now in those positions, but there were 13 as was apparently in our last Estimates and debates in 1993-94.

Ms. Friesen: I am looking at page 49, Subappropriation 16-2D, Native Education Directorate, and it gives three staff years, which includes one managerial, one professional, one administrative support for 1995-96, exactly the same for 1994-95, and exactly the same for 1993-94 in the previous year's Estimates book.

Should I be looking elsewhere?

Mrs. McIntosh: In the 1993-94 annual report you will see 13, and even though this year you only see three in what we now call the Native Education Directorate, those other positions are still fulfilling that role but dispersed throughout the department so they are no longer in one area. The technical work, due to the restructuring, is shown in the Estimates book.

Ms. Friesen: I think we are back to same problem that we had right at the beginning of the Estimates, and that is the difference between the estimates, both numbers and in this case staff years, in the Estimates book for 1993-94 and what is shown in the annual report. I have the page in the annual report, yes, and it does show 13 staff years. In the Estimates of Expenditure for 1993-94, it still only shows three. In the annual report it shows an underspending of $236,000. Does that then account for the extra 10 people?

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Mrs. McIntosh: There is a timing problem here again. To find that change you would have to go right back to the '93-94 Estimates, and in that vote then you would see this change occur. The division was reorganized in May '94, so our reconciliation has already occurred. In March '94 you saw the layout that I have described before, but then they did the reorganization in May, and now, of course, the reconciliation has already occurred, so there is a problem with the timing of the reporting for the purposes of following the path of how these changes were made. And I appreciate that it probably is somewhat confusing unless you have got the books all the way back to the '93-94 Estimates, which makes it hard to follow in the Estimates for this year.

I guess the long and the short of it is this: there were 13 positions, some of which were filled, some of which were not filled, in the former Native Education branch that was reorganized. It became the Native Education Directorate with three people in it. The remaining eight positions were disbursed throughout the regions and the Program Development branch and to give it that perspective in more than just one segregated area. We have two positions yet to be filled. They are being held and are designated to be filled by aboriginals.

Ms. Friesen: Could we go over again how those people were redirected? As I understand it, two went to Program Development, two went to the Parklands.

Mrs. McIntosh: Two to Program Development, three to Parklands-Westman, one to Winnipeg, two to south central, one to northern region, and three to the directorate, and two yet to be filled.

Ms. Friesen: One to Winnipeg strikes me as odd, given the concentration of aboriginal populations in Winnipeg. This must be the largest concentration in the province, yet only one of a possibly eight or nine was assigned to Winnipeg.

Mrs. McIntosh: There is one formally assigned to Winnipeg, but because the directorate itself is located in Winnipeg, there is a lot of support that goes to this area through the staff.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister indicate how the directorate staff offers support to Winnipeg? What are the mechanisms for that? What kind of support is offered?

Mrs. McIntosh: Staff is just jotting down a note there for me.

While they are doing that, I would like indicate that there are a number of other things that have gone on in terms of Winnipeg and the support for aboriginal education there. Winnipeg 1, for example, was the only division which has received funds to hire an inner city consultant and an aboriginal education consultant. Those positions assist the administrative and instructional staff in the areas of program and professional development. So they were given, in terms of the funding, to provide for their own aboriginal educational consultant plus an inner city consultant, which does a tremendous amount of support work to help with the number of aboriginal students that are in that division. As well, they have two division-wide staff development programs in the areas of inner-city education and aboriginal awareness, and that is also a tremendous help to them in terms of inner-city schools and the inner city education, which has a large aboriginal component.

In answer to your question, staff has now just passed me a little note indicating that they have assisted with the school planning to the two aboriginal schools that Winnipeg 1 has put forward as alternative schools. They have done a cultural awareness consulting in terms of language development process with school divisions and the Manitoba Association for Native Languages. They have worked with aboriginal teachers circle and summer institute. So there are a number of areas there that they have assisted, and I am quite certain that that assistance is very much appreciated by the Winnipeg region, the city of Winnipeg, and the City of Winnipeg School Division No. 1.

Ms. Friesen: I am looking at a report from the Winnipeg School Division No. 1 dealing with the number of curriculum units which have been developed in this past year. I will read some of them, and what my concern is, is this being duplicated in the other regions? For example, at the elementary level, and this is in this year, materials for a Grade 3 Fisher River Cree community kit, Grade 4 the Ojibwa community kit, Grade 6 the Autonomy of Aboriginal Peoples, Grades 1 to 6, a language arts resource guide, Grades 4 to 6 The Metis.

Then at the secondary level, language arts from Grade 7 to Senior 1, a program involving beyond April Raintree, Language Arts with an Aboriginal Perspective, Grade 7 Spaceship Earth, a Look at the Earth as a Self-Regulating Organism, presumably involving an aboriginal perspective, and a social studies in Grade 8, The Development of the Metis Nation, and then at Senior 1, Issues in Geography dealing with aboriginal land claims, precolonial America and Canadian history and then Native Voices on the Environment for the world issues area.

That seems to me a good list for a year. It is very, I think, quite ambitious and would be very helpful not just for native students or native teachers but throughout the curriculum. Is the process which the government has set up of these regional committees, regional specialists, are we duplicating this? Was not the whole point of having curriculum development at the ministerial level a common curriculum, common standards, common resource-based materials? Has the move to the regional groupings, in fact, led to a great deal of duplication or the potential for it?

Mrs. McIntosh: No. It has not. The aboriginal units developed in Winnipeg 1 have been developed with support from the Manitoba Education and Training staff. It is not a duplicate of Manitoba Education and Training work. It is consistent, and I want to indicate, as well, in terms of are we doing things for Winnipeg 1 that we are doing for the other regions, Winnipeg 1 gets $1.5 million for special support for hiring staff for aboriginal, for aboriginal staff. It is a whopping big sum that is given for special support for aboriginal staff. I think it is quite significant and certainly a very valuable thing for them.

Winnipeg 1 uses the Manitoba curriculum in answer to the concern you expressed just a minute ago. It uses the Manitoba curriculum as the foundation for developing instructional units. So there is that consistency that we are looking for at the same time that they are getting special attention because of their identified needs in this particular area.

Ms. Friesen: What I am trying to get at is, for example, are the three former staff members of the Native Education branch who are now in the Parklands-Westman Region, are they similarly developing a similar list of materials for use both by aboriginal and nonaboriginal students? For example, why do we have current aboriginal land claims being developed here in

Winnipeg? Is that material communicated to other divisions or is everybody reinventing the wheel on aboriginal land claims for use at the Senior 2 Level?

Mrs. McIntosh: That is one of the reasons we have the directorate. We have those three that we felt it was still important to have a Native Education Directorate because they are co-ordinating all those kinds of issues and work. So in addition to other things they are being co-ordinators of those very types of issues that you have identified. The resources which are developed in the various divisions and regions are shared across the province so that they have consistency of approach.

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In terms of the aboriginal content--and you just asked the question about land claims--both urban and rural, 48 programs in five divisions were funded to integrate the aboriginal content into the curriculum in instructional practices. By accurately incorporating aboriginal cultures into the curriculum, schooling becomes more relevant to aboriginal students and also educates nonaboriginal students. Accuracy is of benefit to all. It is very important. It is particularly important if there have been areas in the past that have not been as clearly portrayed as they might have been in terms of aboriginal issues, and particularly important for aboriginal students to make sure that they are getting a more accurate portrayal of the history of this part of the world.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, is there a similar list of curriculum work that has been done in each of the other regions, the South Central, the Parklands-Westman and the North?

Mrs. McIntosh: The short answer is yes, but I somehow think we need more than just a short answer here, but the short answer is yes, and maybe I will just ask if the member seeks further details on that yes.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, I am not sure how much detail the minister would have with her tonight. I would be happy to look at it tomorrow afternoon.

The focus of my concern is how--the minister says the role of the three people who are left in this area are, one of their roles is to co-ordinate the curriculum research and materials being produced across the province. So I am looking for complementarity in each of the three or four areas. If there is a co-ordinating role, one would anticipate that other regions are producing different kinds of materials and that there is a mechanism for correspondence, there is a mechanism for transmitting the material from one region to another, and I wanted to understand how that is happening.

Mrs. McIntosh: I can give you some indication of the role of the directorate, and in addition to the things that have been discussed so far, the directorate has an emphasis on facilitating and monitoring school program planning and providing services as members of an interdisciplinary team.

The directorate will be participating in lead roles and program development in co-ordinating the integration of aboriginal perspectives. They continue to provide leadership and co-ordination, as I mentioned before, for departmental initiatives, kindergarten to Senior 4 aboriginal education, and the directorate is attached to the ADM's office in order to ensure that the needed attention to aboriginal issues is kept current and before the minds of the ADM and the staff there. The regions work very closely with the director of development and the Native Education Directorate and there is a significant role for sharing information and for deploying resources in that particular directorate.

They have a number of things that they do. They have in their mandate, as we do in our mandate, as a result of the reorganizing, we indicated that what we wanted to do in terms of restructuring was to strengthen the school program division's focus on aboriginal education. We wanted to ensure that all division programs reflect the aboriginal perspective, which is why the integration, why the reaching out of the eight people as opposed to keeping them together and removed from the others who needed to benefit from that perspective.

Ms. Friesen: The five programs I mentioned at the elementary level, the Fisher River Creek community kit, the Ojibwa community kit, the autonomy of aboriginal peoples language arts resource guide and the Metis, how has that been communicated to the other regions?

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Mrs. McIntosh: First of all, the regional managers do attend the superintendent's monthly meetings in their region, and so there is a very good communication going on there, and staff informs me that it really is a very good communication that they experience at those monthly meetings. Where there is shareable activity with curriculum adaptations on projects wherever it can be shared, then we are in a position now with a mechanism that will enable that to happen effectively because of the directorate.

I understand that Winnipeg 1, just to name one division because we were talking about it earlier, is very good and open about being willing to share documentation and projects and so on that they are working on. So that sharing and that shareable activity which is structured, programmed so that it happens on a regular basis is probably the most effective and common way of accomplishing what the member was asking in her question.

Ms. Friesen: I can see how it could be accomplished, but we have now had this regional structure in place for two years. One of the costs of that regional structure, at least on paper, has been the Native Education section of the department, that it has diminished at the expense of regional structures.

So my concern is, how has that changed, enhanced--one would expect it to enhance the availability and diversity of curriculum materials available. So I can see how it is possible to exchange material, to have lots of people working at it from different perspectives, but what I want to know is, has it happened?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, and I should indicate it has not been in place for two years but in place for one, a year ago May. It has been an actual physical change. We believe it is a really good improvement. The member indicates that the branch has decreased at the expense of the branch. I prefer to phrase it not in the negative but in the positive, that the outreach has been able to grow because of the reorganization as opposed to the branch having something happen at the expense of the branch, the ability to reach out has grown. It is just a case of, is the glass half full or half empty? I am saying it is half full and filling up, as opposed to half-empty and becoming further depleted.

It is just a different way of phrasing it, but it has been a year, and over the last year, working collaboratively with school divisions, we have, I believe, done a fair amount to improve a situation where we really do have to focus on a segment of the population that to date, for a wide variety of reasons, has experienced high statistical figures in terms of lifestyle problems, in terms of societal problems. Education is the way out, education is the answer, not the only answer, not the only way out, but very important. We believe this reorganization will give us improved opportunity to assist.

I just want to indicate the purpose of the--Parklands Region has developed a project over the last year, and I just would like to indicate the purpose of that. They have done it collaboratively with the school division and they are being supported by Manitoba Education and Training in the Program Implementation Branch in this regard. They are attempting to bring out a better understanding of aboriginal issues to schools and communities throughout the Parklands and Westman regions by bringing parents and schools together through advisory councils for school leadership to deal with aboriginal awareness. They will be establishing a committee with representation from the school divisions, the Program Implementation Branch, which will be over a two-year period. We are providing $1,000 this year for some planning for this project.

We are impressed with their enthusiasm and expect that, again, if they are successful in their goal of bringing out a better understanding of aboriginal issues to the schools and communities in their area that the Parklands and Westman regions will be very well served by this initiative, this project of the Parklands Region.

So we are providing support to them. Those are the kinds of things that areas and regions will come up with, projects that work collaboratively with school divisions. The regional approach has allowed regions to develop these kinds of priorities that we can hopefully see some positive results from.

The native studies curriculum support documents for those three areas--kindergarten to Grade 4, Grades 5 to 8, and Grade 9 to Senior 4, or S1 to S4--will be available to schools in the fall. Hopefully then they will be picked up and looked at. In our Renewing Education: New Directions, the Foundation for Excellence, we do have commentary in there on aboriginal perspectives, and in the future our new curriculum will have aboriginal perspectives in the curriculum.

There is quite a lengthy section talking about aboriginal perspectives indicating some history, some goals, including goals of aboriginal perspectives for aboriginal students and goals of aboriginal perspectives for nonaboriginal students. We are wanting aboriginal students to develop a positive self-identity through a number of things that we are doing. We want nonaboriginal students to develop an understanding of and a respect for the histories, cultures and contemporary lifestyles of aboriginal peoples.

We would like to see both sets of students develop informed opinions on matters relating to aboriginal people and to be able to be participating in a learning environment that will equip them with knowledge and skills, particularly the aboriginal students, with knowledge and skills that they need to participate more fully in civic and cultural realities in their community, either if it is an aboriginal community or in a wider centre such as, for example, the city of Winnipeg which is multicultural in terms of a wide diversity of ethnic groups.

The aboriginal students are not experts in their culture. They are learners, they are participants. We make it an error if we assume that they are the experts. They have learning that they need to do. Their knowledge about their own culture may be no greater than other students in the class, but if they do have extensive knowledge of their culture it could benefit the entire class.

But we have information for them that they need to learn in order to see themselves in a good self-image, in a positive framework to understand themselves, to respect themselves, their culture, their cultural heritage and all that is unique and peculiar to their learning experience and to their own self-esteem. We have all of those things that we are looking at.

With all of this, of course, we are not looking at lowering expectations for aboriginal students. We are saying high expectations, measurable standards will be applied to all students. It may be that you need supportive learning environments for certain students, but I think you do no one a favour if you lower expectations for them because certainly the world out there will be expecting them to measure up. So I think we have an obligation to see that they are strengthened and empowered and given the ability to measure up to those standards that we will be setting.

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We have a process for the development and integration of some of this content, for all of the content, and we will have an aboriginal perspectives resource team which will comprise itself of targeted aboriginal educators. That will be established soon, and it will support aboriginal educators in a diversity of roles. That, I think, will be a very important step in the development of curriculum and assessment and all of those things that go along with aboriginal education. So the directorate and the eight people who have been dispersed throughout the program area will be very important in helping us achieve this.

The assistant deputy minister had an advisory committee on aboriginal education during the development of renewing education, and you will see that influence surfacing in the work that is being put forward.

I will maybe stop there because I am starting to take too long. If we were in the House the Speaker would be rapping me on the knuckles right about now.

Ms. Rosann Wowchuk (Swan River): Mr. Chair, the minister indicated that there are three people who have been appointed in the Parklands to deal with the regional structures of native education. I would like the minister to indicate where those three people are located and which school divisions they are working with at the present time.

Mrs. McIntosh: In the Parklands Region we have three, as the member indicated. One of those has been appointed and filled. The other two, right now, are under competition for filling, and we are looking for aboriginals for those two. We have already had two competition go-rounds but have not yet found people to fill. Hopefully, with this current go-round, we will end up with those positions properly filled.

The position that has been filled is located in Dauphin and is currently serving the whole region, not assigned to just one area but located in Dauphin and working out of Dauphin. We do not have an expected date for when the other two will be filled. We are, as I indicated, in the middle of that process, having had two rounds without success and are in the middle of another round, which, hopefully, this time will give success in terms of finding two people who could fill those vacancies for us in that region.

Ms. Wowchuk: When the other two positions are filled, where will they be located and which divisions will they be working in?

Mrs. McIntosh: I have just been informed that we are down to one vacancy because we have a support staffperson filling one of those three roles. The other vacancy, once it is filled, will also be located in the Dauphin area and working out of Dauphin. They will be fanning out from the Dauphin area, but the office will be in the Dauphin area.

Ms. Wowchuk: Since it appears difficult to fill these positions, can the minister indicate where they are advertising? Is it a lack of skilled people here in Manitoba, or is it possibly the fact that the salary is not attractive enough to bring people to the area?

Mrs. McIntosh: We first of all indicate that we have advertised in all the normal places, the Winnipeg Free Press, the local papers, the standard places that are advertised to fill positions, and the salary range would be equivalent to that of a teacher or an educational consultant. We have been having trouble with the two rounds they had finding someone with the qualifications required to fill that position. The department even considered at one point maybe underfilling and training a person once they got in the role, but there was no suitable candidate, so they feel that putting out another call, which they have done, ultimately we will find the right person.

In the meantime we do have the two, and we are optimistic that we will get it filled. It is just taking some time: (a) it is a sensitive and--it is not an easy job; (2) we have people with qualifications in other areas who do not wish to relocate. It is important that we have someone who has an ability to know the area and be there. It will get filled ultimately; it is just taking a bit longer than we had hoped. We do not want to just hire for the sake of hiring. We want to make sure we have got the right person.

Ms. Wowchuk: The minister indicated that these staff people will be working out of Dauphin and fanning out to the whole region. In the north end of the region we have two new schools that were started, one in Shoal River Reserve and the other one in Indian Birch, both new schools that will need a lot of support staff and both schools that are interested in aboriginal education. The Shoal River School is located in Pelican Rapids where there is also a Frontier school, also in need of support. Can the minister indicate whether the person who is filling this position is working with the schools on reserve as well as the schools in the other divisions?

Mrs. McIntosh: Just a question. Are those band schools under federal jurisdiction that you are referring to?

Ms. Wowchuk: Yes, the Shoal River is a reserve, as is Indian Birch, both new schools. The Pelican Rapids school is a Frontier Division school.

Mrs. McIntosh: Frontier of course we would be working with, because Frontier School Division and the schools that are part of that division come under our authority, so those are schools we would be working with.

Band schools on reserve, however, we do not work with, because they do not come under our jurisdiction. We have a federal authority that deals with them. The consultant in Dauphin will be working with the public schools if they require her expertise. Schools can call the regional manager there if they need her, but as far as the band schools are concerned, we do not interfere with the federal jurisdiction.

Ms. Wowchuk: In light of the fact that these are new schools and schools that do need a lot of support--and they are Manitoba children, they are Canadian children, we want to see them have the best opportunity for an education--it is in the best interest of everybody in this province that we help these children get an education and instill in them some pride in their native culture and all of the things that the minister mentioned.

Has any consideration been given, if a request came, to offer or share resources since these schools are just new schools getting started? They are lacking in resources and need help where there is any kind of expertise. They need help to get started, and it is very important that we work along with them. Is there any consideration given to sharing these resources, or has there been any contact made where the department can also help in these areas?

Mrs. McIntosh: You are talking about band schools.

Ms. Wowchuk: The band schools, yes.

Mrs. McIntosh: From time to time on a cost-recovery basis we will provide services to band schools, but we do have a cost-recovery system from the federal government. They also have access to our curriculum. If they choose to, they can use that. They do not always choose to, because they are not bound to use our curriculum. Like, they do not have to do anything we tell them. They do not have to have Manitoba teachers. They do not have to have certified teachers from Manitoba. They do not have to have our curricula. They do not have to do anything we do unless they feel like it.

If they would like to have access to our curriculum, we are always pleased to provide it. If they need services from us on a cost-recovery basis, we are pleased to enter into that, but we simply cannot afford to pick up the federal costs, especially when they are chopping so much money from us right now for the schools for which we are responsible.

Band communities right now are looking at self-government, and education is an important part of this, and I agree, they are Manitoba students, but we do not get a lot of calls from them asking to participate in Manitoba.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: The hour being twelve o'clock, committee rise.