Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
As of 2018, public confidence in education in Canada had been stable for a decade. Slightly greater than three-quarters of the population (77%) expressed satisfaction with their schools and in the education system generally. The approval rate for all OECD countries was 65%. Canada trailed Ireland and most Nordic countries (84%), Slovenia and the Netherlands (81%) and exceeded the United States at 67%. Anecdotal evidence suggests that confidence in public education may have been affected by the way education systems addressed the challenges of the COVID pandemic, but I have yet to see any systematically collected data.
If the 77% satisfaction score was a letter grade, Canada’s education system would be a solid B to B+. That’s not bad. But there are some things that might be done to increase public confidence in the system and improve its impact upon students.
Teaching is too complicated to leave to generalists. Generalist teachers are pretty good. They are in many respects like my family physician. She is adept at handling many everyday maladies, but when she encounters something beyond her realm of expertise, she refers her patients to specialists.
Individuals preparing to teach develop specializations: language arts, social studies, science, mathematics, technology studies, etc. I am a certificated teacher whose specialization is social studies (civics and history). I am an adept reader and can apply statistical techniques with reasonable success. I could not however teach beginning readers or grade 8 mathematics. Nevertheless, if I agreed, I could be employed to teach either in British Columbia.
Teacher certification in British Columbia does not designate the areas in which teachers have prepared. It should. Elementary teachers should be required to demonstrate proficiency in literacy and numeracy since they establish the foundation in those two crucial areas. The certificates earned by secondary teachers should designate the teacher’s area of instructional expertise. All teachers should be encouraged to expand their areas of expertise beyond the fields in which they were initially prepared.
To the best of my knowledge, teaching is the only regulated profession in British Columbia that does not require practitioners to maintain the currency of their knowledge of teaching. Of course, many teachers do. But there is no requirement that they do. There should be.
Teachers prepared in British Columbia have typically completed a practicum (student teaching) of approximately four months, during which their fitness to practice is assessed. If they have migrated from other jurisdictions, the period during which their entry-to-practice competency was assessed may have been shorter.
Lengthening the practicum is something I favor, but I think the first two years of teaching should be probationary and one during which beginning teachers are mentored by their peers and have their performance evaluated regularly. A longer period of probationary practice would likely improve the quality of instruction provided by beginning teachers and enhance the public’s confidence in education.
As good as a B or B+ may be, it
may not be sufficient to retain the support of some parents. Private school
enrollments in British Columbia have been growing incrementally. The
implementation of the changes suggested above may help to counter the
perception among some that “good is not good enough.”