The data regarding Ontario’s education system is encouraging. In
December, 2010, the OECD ranked Ontario in second place for reading,
next to Shanghai, China. According to the Ministry of Education, high
school graduation rates are at 79% - representing about 52,000 more
students per year. Sadly, many of these reports do not measure student
and employer satisfaction with our Education System.
As a mentor to many young people in Ontario, they often say to me... “We are taught to be robots not thinkers” to “We know theory but nothing about the real world”. The
main reason for this disconnect is the lack of Student and Parent
evaluation of our education system, as well as the lack of political
will from all parties to seek evaluations from Students and Parents.
There needs to an evaluation process in place for teachers,
administrators and the education system in general. Not just by high
priced consultants such as McKinsey & Company but also by Taxpayers and Students.
Students aged 16 and older should be surveyed based on teacher
experience, school environment and perceived relevance of the content of
their learnings in school. Parents with elementary school students
should be surveyed based on their child's experience and their
interactions with the education system. The results of these
evaluations should have some weighting on funding for various school
boards, teacher evaluations and individual school performance.
The Education bureaucracy at Queens Park does not seem to trust 16
year old students to evaluate their policies and the execution of
education strategy in the classroom. This is not 1980, where the only
place one could obtain data was a library. The average 16-year-old
today is much more in tune with the world. YouTube, Facebook and
Twitter feeds to smart phones has led this increase in information.
Receiving feedback on our education system from our young people will
help educators better integrate technology into the classroom.
When former Premier McGuinty suggested the classrooms be open to cell
phones, one must wonder – did anyone ask students how to best do this?
What smart phone applications or devices would bring benefit to students
in the classroom? No, instead it will be up to Queens Park and
they're more concerned about EQAO scores then student feedback.
Valuing Diversity within our school system is another issue. According to the 2006 community profile census on Statistics Canada,
the immigrant population accounts for about 51% of the total Peel Region
population. This means an increasing need for Educators to improve
communication with parents from immigrant communities. In March of this
year, Peel District School Board received just over $3 Million from
Citizenship & Immigration Canada to “help newcomers understand life
in Canada” (Source: Proactive Disclosure CIC Website).
What we don’t
know is how much of these funds are going to ask new comer parents about
their experience with the education system in Ontario. Do they
understand their rights to speak to Teachers, Administrators and/or
Trustees? How do they see their daughter or son adapting to school in
a different country. All we know as taxpayers is that the Peel
District School Board received $3 Million for some vague reason.
Parents and eventually students are the customers of the education
system. Ontario depends on educated young people to be the future of our
province. It only makes sense to engage parents in evaluating our
elementary school system to ensure that Queens Park understands the
challenges parents face. Students at the age of 16 bring much needed
ground-floor feedback around our education system.
Teachers and
administrators are vital to the flourishing education but it is now time
for the active feedback and evaluation from students and parents to be
just as important.
