HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

Mr. Keith Colwell (Chairman)

Hon. Carolyn Bolivar-Getson

Mr. Alfred MacLeod

Mr. Chuck Porter

Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon

Mr. Charles Parker

Ms. Joan Massey

Ms. Diana Whalen

Mr. Leo Glavine

[Hon. Carolyn Bolivar-Getson was replaced by Hon. Ronald Chisholm.]

[Mr. Alfred MacLeod was replaced by Hon. David Morse.]

In Attendance:

Mrs. Darlene Henry

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Legislative Counsel

WITNESSES

Department of Education

Mr. Dennis Cochrane, Deputy Minister

Mr. Darrell Youden, Senior Executive Director of Corporate Services

Ms. Ann Power, Director of Student Services

Mr. Mike Sweeney, Senior Executive Director of Public Schools Branch

Mr. Tom Henderson, Literary Assessment Consultant

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2006

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Keith Colwell

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'd like to bring the meeting to order. The first thing on our agenda this morning is the appointments to the agencies, boards and commissions.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Agriculture, to the Farm Loan Board, I so move Stephen Healy as a member.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

HON. RONALD CHISHOLM: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Community Services, Children and Family Services Act Advisory Committee, I so move Kenneth Deveau and Mirjana Musanovic as board members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Under the Department of Economic Development, to the Waterfront Development Corporation Limited Board of Directors - do you want to do these en bloc or individually? I would assume that's en bloc. May I have a motion for them please?

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Economic Development, to the Waterfront Development Corporation Limited Board of Directors, I so move George Archibald, Alan L. Barkhouse, William H. Gates, Ruth Goldbloom, David Harrison and Donald J. McIver as board members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

HON. DAVID MORSE: Under the Department of Environment and Labour, to the Fire Safety Advisory Council, I so move Betty Josey and George Muise as members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is the Fire Services Advisory Committee.

MR. PORTER: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Environment and Labour, to the Fire Services Advisory Committee, I so move Russell Mackintosh and George Muise as members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Okay, that's great, thank you very much. When we get the guests in we'll go around the table and introduce everybody.

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, just a question on process. When are we going to have the presentation in relationship to the way we get the information?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Oh, the letter you have here?

MR. MACKINNON: Yes.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We'll do that at the end of the meeting, after our guests are gone.

MR. MACKINNON: Okay, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, I'd like to welcome our guests today and we're going to start our meeting off, as we usually do, with introductions.

[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]

I would like to thank our guests for coming this morning and I'm sure we're going to have some very enlightening discussion. I would ask Mr. Cochrane, Deputy Minister, if he would like to start off. I know that's a dangerous thing when I ask you to speak. (Laughter)

MR. DENNIS COCHRANE: Mr. Chairman, I promise I'll be within five minutes.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Oh, you're very thorough and to the point.

MR. COCHRANE: You must have a lot of shy deputies come in here who don't say anything, is that how this works? (Laughter)

First of all, thank you very much for the invitation this morning. Just to add to the team from Nova Scotia, we have Nancy Watson who is the Director of Communications, and Kevin Finch who is a consultant in the Department of Education, Communications Division as well.

We want to thank you for the invitation today. I think it was just April that we were at the Public Accounts Committee on inclusion in special education, so we do appreciate the opportunity to discuss some of the initiatives and some of the progress we've made in this area.

Basically when people talk about special education, one of the things that happens is they talk about just an allocation for special needs children, but the whole allocation of the Education Department really is there for all the children. If it's a classroom teacher and they have a special needs child, then that's a cost associated with special education. It's not just the amount that might be assigned with regard to that.

All of our students, including our special needs students, benefit from initiatives that have been launched under Learning for Life I and Learning for Life II. In those two programs there are targeted funds for specific initiatives. I'm sure you'll ask some questions about that, as well. We have dedicated dollars to special education, and those are up significantly. We see a 23 per cent increase between 2001 and 2005, and now, since the Hogg report, the allocation is $117.9 million. There was always a debate about how much the board spent on special education and how much they were assigned by the department. Bill Hogg went out and, in his review, recognized that and actually made a different kind of allocation formula for special needs.

We've had, obviously, some significant improvement in the allocation of the special needs budget, and that in spite of the fact that our overall school population is declining. Specific and significant progress has been made on the SEIRC report, which is the Special Education Implementation Review Committee that was put in place in May 2000. We've taken action on every one of their recommendations. Some are complete and some are remaining as works in progress.

Significant progress has been made on early identification of students with special needs. We have the Reading Recovery program, which the bottom 20 percentile of every class in the province has access to one-on-one instruction from a qualified Reading Recovery instructor. This, obviously, helps these students address their reading and writing needs. We have more resources for parents and students, and a number of documents and so on that are available, fact sheets for teachers and parents on writing of IPPs, on adaptations, transitions, inclusion in Richmond, and the program planning process. We've recently published the program planning process, a guide for parents, which helps them understand the program planning process and how they can help their children succeed.

We also have a special program, the Tuition Support Program. Recently, those students received a one-year extension while we do consultation on the program. And we also have done a number of other things in the department. We've been able to, I think, significantly improve the resources available in our school system, and significantly improve the services available to special needs students in the Province of Nova Scotia. With that, Mr. Chairman, we'd be pleased to entertain any questions that you might have.

[9:15 a.m.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey.

MS. JOAN MASSEY: I'm just wondering, I know you mentioned in the Hogg report that there has been a $117 million allocation, and that is up 23 per cent?

MR. COCHRANE: No, the 23 per cent is really related to what was spent before the Hogg report reallocated that. In 2001, we had $46 million; in 2005, we had $57.1 million. That's the 23 per cent, or the $10.7 million. What Mr. Hogg did was recognize the funding that was needed for special needs and, in the formula funding, made that allocation.

MS. MASSEY: You mentioned the formula, is the formula what's here - we have a document here, the Final Funding Allocation, that was in the front of our package here. It says Appendix, Funding Formula Framework Overview. So the Funding Formula Framework Overview, is that his, the document that he put out?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, that's what he designed.

MS. MASSEY: Special education is what we're talking about. When I read that last Friday, it says, "Special education funding was determined by the application of a special education support matrix which applied funded enrolment against a standard resource grid to derive an FTE number which was then valued based on the board's average teacher salary for 2005-2006."

I don't know what that means.

MR. COCHRANE: I understand. (Laughter)

MS. MASSEY: If you could just put that in layman's terms - or MLA terms, that would be even better.

MR. COCHRANE: I don't know if I have more trouble with the lawyers or the accountants.

MS. MASSEY: I don't know what that means. I just circled that, because I don't know what that means.

MR. COCHRANE: Basically what he did is he recognized the funding formula, and in the formula he matched our ratios. For example, the ratio that we have right now for resource teachers is, for every 193 students there's one resource teacher, and we're working our way down to one resource teacher for every 165 students. In Mr. Hogg's formula, he recognized the number of resource teachers, the teacher aides, the kind of intensive needs and supports for these children, the administration and the coordination requirements - so, he looked at the ratios that we have, and actually recognized that formula.

For example, we allocate, now, funding for every 2,500 students, there's a school psychologist. In his funding formula, he recognizes the money needed for the school psychologist for every 2,500 students. That's how he did it. Speech-language pathology, for every 2,000 students there's one speech-language pathologist. As I mentioned before, for every 165 students, our goal is one resource teacher. Then the administrator of special needs children, there's one for every 7,000 kids.

In his formula, he recognized all the targeted funding that we've put out there, and has recognized that we've been able to meet many of the reforms that were asked for in that Special Education Implementation Review Committee report that came from that committee that was formed in May 2000.

MS. MASSEY: That was my next question. The SEIRC report in 2000, you mentioned that a lot of action has been taken on that, but some of it is a work in progress. I'm just wondering if, possibly, you could give us some documentation on that. It's hard with these types of things. You can tell me some things now, but what still needs to be done - maybe an overview of that. The formula that you just mentioned - I think somebody just passed you that - could we have a copy of that? You just said it makes it so much more easily understandable. I know when parents call my constituency office and they have problems with IPPs and these sorts of things, they want to know what the government is doing to help their kids. A document like that is so much simpler to explain.

MR. COCHRANE: I'll table the SEIRC response work plan, which we updated in November 2006. It talks about all the recommendations in the SEIRC report, what we've been able to accomplish, and what are still works in progress. Plus, we will give you the ratios for the core professional services, which would be resource teachers, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and special needs administrators by board. So you'll be able to see the Halifax Regional School Board, where they are, in comparison to the provincial numbers at this time.

MS. MASSEY: I guess what I'm hearing you say is that we do recognize there's still a greater need than what we're able to fulfill, and we're trying to move along in that direction.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, we're almost there. For example, in speech-language pathologists, we now have one for every 2,093 students. The SEIRC report recommended the ratio be one for every 2,000 students. So we're almost there with regard to that one. We're close. Interestingly enough, too - I find it interesting - the resource teachers, originally they said they wanted it 1 to 200, and we got to that, and then lowered it to 1 to 165. We're close, we're 1 to 193. So for every 193 students in Nova Scotia schools, there is a resource teacher. Our goal is one resource teacher for every 165 students. That will meet the recommendations that the SEIRC report brought forward to us.

It came with a lot of flurry at the time, saying, well, you need $20 million right away. We couldn't have gotten the professionals right away, even if we had the money to allocate. By the way, the Hogg report and the allocation and the funding formula is all up on our Web site, as well. If you do get specific requests and someone wants to try to figure it out, they're welcome to take a look at the Web site, because it is there. We will table the update, and we will table the ratios and where we are with regard to them.

MS. MASSEY: I don't know how much time I have, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have about three minutes left. I'm making it 10-minute rounds.

MS. MASSEY: I'm just trying to understand - the SEIRC report, when that was done, there were recommendations made based on the way our system worked then and what we wanted to move ahead towards our goal. Have things changed so that it's time for another review?

MR. COCHRANE: A lot of the recommendations were based on national norms, and they looked at what the norms are for school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, et cetera, and they made recommendations based on national norms. We're getting very close. (Interruption) Recommended norms, nationally. The one that we're now focusing on, we're continuing to give money to all these, but the ones we're now looking at are the guidance counsellors. The principals told us very clearly that they felt there needed to be more guidance counsellors in the system. So last year $500,000 was put in as a targeted amount of money, we engaged 12 more guidance counsellors, and this year we expect to add more money to continue to work towards the ratio of guidance counsellors per pupil that we would like to achieve.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Charlie Parker, do you want to finish the rest of the time and then I'll put you on for the next round, too, if you like?

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Right in sequence? Okay. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I have a couple of questions I want to ask. I used to be a school teacher back in a former life and taught at junior high and elementary levels and I guess the last year I taught was Grade 6. I remember that class, we had a very mixed group of students. Some were very gifted, some were very much challenged, you know, special needs. There was a student in there who had I guess a hearing difficulty and there were some others with reading difficulties for sure, so there was a good mix - I guess inclusion is the word, we had a variety of students in there. It was a challenge, certainly as a teacher, to try to look after all those needs.

Does inclusion work? Are we getting value for our dollar? Are we getting feedback that it's the right way to go? Or is there any resistance to inclusion in the classroom? It has been going on for two or three decades now, at least, I think. I have heard both sides of the argument, but I'd like to get your opinion on it.

MR COCHRANE: Well, the Constitution of the country is pretty clear about the opportunities that all students must have in the education system. Our mandate for the Student Services Division is very clear. In most cases I think people feel that with the right amount of resources it's the right system and it's working fairly well.

One of the debates we always get is someone will always say there's not enough money. Well, I guess there's never enough money but as we work toward the norms and the ratios, we're going to the best guidelines we can find.

There is always a debate. Nova Scotia is very much in keeping with the other parts of the country in how we do this.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm going to have to cut you off right there. I'll come back to you, Mr. Parker, in the next round. Mr. Glavine.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you as well to all the members of the department for coming in today and shedding some light on this very important topic. I was going to continue with my colleague's start on inclusion generally, but I had listed a few areas so I guess I'll go through my list.

In terms of the Hogg report, do you feel, Mr. Deputy Minister, that it really did drill down on the differences that exist in the school boards across the province? Certainly we can all point to geographic areas, historical programs offered, and see tremendous deficiencies. First of all, just at first blush, do you think the Hogg report is addressing, in all of the seven boards and of course the French board, the true special needs that exist in those systems?

MR. COCHRANE: I can see where you're going, coming from Annapolis. I do believe it does. There were a number of accommodations in the Hogg report made for various issues. For example, the declining enrolment - if your board went below more than 2 per cent over a period of time there was a special allocation in order to recognize that you can only adjust so quickly and so much. It does reflect upon the funding formulae, and so on, that are out there. Your question was more than just special needs, it was the special needs of the boards. For example, we pay the actual transportation, but that will be a different per pupil number in each board. Boards have a tendency to say, well, if they're getting that for transportation I want it too, but we're paying the actual cost so you wouldn't pay more than the cost.

There are two boards that have drawn to our attention some concern and we have undertaken that we would take a look at it; one is Tri-County and one is Annapolis. Annapolis always felt that they weren't getting the right amount of money, until the Hogg report came out and there was a recognition that they were fairly well funded. There are some efficiencies that the Hogg report reflects, and some of those efficiencies are in places like Annapolis and Halifax where you may get a critical mass. We did undertake and we will be going back to both Annapolis and Tri-County, taking a look at what the Hogg report did allocate to them and a reflection on it.

MR. GLAVINE: I appreciate that because certainly I have heard from - those are the two boards that I have heard from and I meet with the superintendent of HRSB tomorrow. My feeling is that in trying to address the overwhelming number of special needs and special ed cases in the Annapolis board, they have paid the price with an exceptional number of large classes. When you have a student population in AVRSB that's one-third that of the Halifax Regional School Board and they have the same number of classes at 35 and over, which is 38 and 40 respectively, in first semester this year, I feel in trying to address the enormity of the special needs - and especially when you take a look at Annapolis East Elementary, Kingston Elementary, with the number of autistic children because of the exceptional program they do have there, that there is a price paid in trying to deliver good programs to those children. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that.

MR. COCHRANE: Well, we're certainly going to take a look at it. Basically one of the things that has come out clearly is that the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board has probably given more IPPs to students than some of the other boards. That may be because the professional staff look at the child and their specific needs and do recognize that, but all IPPs aren't created equal and someone may give one for two or three areas and someone else may only give them in a severe case, where all student learning outcomes are affected.

[9:30 a.m.]

We do have an allocation in the budget with regard to that. Basically the allocation came that it recognizes about 1.76 per cent incident rate in the general population that would have IPPs and the formula recognizes that. There is about 3 per cent of the student population in Annapolis, 2.7 per cent in Chignecto, for example, so there are some differences there. The issue is you have to look at what does an IPP dictate? It doesn't always mean that there is going to be a teacher assistant, it doesn't always mean they are going to need the same amount of time under speech-language pathology or psychology or resource time, but we are going to take a look, we've heard the complaint.

We fund, as you know, the class sizes from P to 3 right now and last year there was a glitch because Annapolis chooses to have multi-grade classes. So, in other words, they make a class of P-1 or P-1-2, and that threw our formula out of whack. So last year we supported them and we said look, if you're going to do that and you want to do that pedagogically, then you have to ask us for an exemption from that cap of 20, where it brings the second adult in. They have done that, but they've done some things that caused their class numbers to look different than others.

MR. GLAVINE: One of the areas that I'm very concerned about with inclusion is that the inclusionary model has become somewhat of an imprisonment for dealing with

all of the high-needs children we have. When we fund, through the Tuition Support Program, 107 students to go to Landmark, Ridgeway and Churchill, but yet our resource rooms are not able to meet the needs of the dyslexic child, the ADD or the ADHD, how are we intending, in the long run, to deal with those children who we just literally threw into the general class of 30 or 35 students and maybe pulled them out once or twice a week for resource help? We cannot address those needs in that context. They have to have an intensive, special program and under the guise of the inclusionary model and the resource room concept, we say we're meeting needs when, in fact, you and I know they don't meet the needs and the corrective measures required for those children. How are we going to deal with that as we go forward?

MR. COCHRANE: One of the things that came from the SEIRC report, as I said, was recommended ratios that we're working towards. Those were national recommended ratios that we're going to put in place. For example, we couldn't meet the - when they said the resource one, of 1 to 200 for resource teachers, we were at 1 to 219. Once we got to 1 to 193, we dropped the ratio target to 1 to 165.

Once we reach those, member, we'll take a look at, do we need additional resources in those particular areas? Those were the national norms; those were the national numbers. I have no reason to think that our school population is any different in its composition than the school population in other provinces in the country. But we will reflect upon those as we reach the ratios, and we're getting very close now to reaching them.

MR. GLAVINE: Just to move forward, as I say, I still don't think that really addresses some of the big needs. In fact, just recently I heard from a parent who has a very high-needs child, two years below grade level, developmentally delayed, and because she is a quiet, non-behavioural-issue child, she, in fact, doesn't even have any EA in a regular classroom. So the parents there are actually seeing their child dropping further behind each year that she's in school. Now, shouldn't we expect better for that child? Shouldn't we be having that child assisted and moved along? Of course, we've had, again, in some boards, a problem with sufficient numbers of EAs.

I see that as a major dilemma, that a developmentally-delayed child who can make advancements in the public school system, if given the right opportunities, but very often they are really short-circuited and don't get that individualized help, which in a class of 30 to 35, as we know, you struggle to give as much individualization as is possible, but, really, we fail very often in that regard.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has elapsed, so maybe you'll want to come back to that point.

Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, folks, for coming in today. I have just a couple of questions. For Nova Scotia's seven school boards, do you feel, at the present time, at least, that there are strong links between the school and the outside agencies in the communities in the school board area?

MR. COCHRANE: Do they have links?

MR. PORTER: Yes.

MR. COCHRANE: Significantly. Every board and their professional staff spend a lot of time dealing with outside agencies as far as support for the students. APSEA is a good example. It's an outside agency that's owned by the Atlantic Provinces. We spend about $9 million a year. It provides service for the hearing handicapped and the visually impaired. Technically it's an outside agency, but we also see a lot of the social agencies. I was over recently - and I see member More isn't here - to the Reigh Allen Centre over in Dartmouth. They have a number of students who are assigned there who are interacting with the school system all the time.

There are a number of these all across the province. I think every member probably knows a number of them that exist in their own area, where they're dealing with agencies to support students when they need it. Much of it is emotional. Some of it's educational, certainly. There are a number of agencies out there that do support students and their families.

MR. PORTER: Emotionally - give me an example, when you're talking about an outside agency. Are you talking about a physician or, in this case, a student with emotional needs?

MR. COCHRANE: It could be the Association for Community Living, that deals with students and trying to make them independent livers inside their families and so on. It could be the health agencies, we have a lot of relationships, a very good relationship with the South Shore board and that district health authority with regard to health agency supports. There are all kinds of groups, and so on, that do support our students.

One of the things we do try to do through what we call CAYAC is to coordinate some of the agencies and their activities inside of our school system. We have a provincial CAYAC committee, we have regional CAYACs. Some of the jurisdictions, I know particularly in Yarmouth, a lot of the agencies meet regularly with the school board to talk about the services they can provide and what they can provide to support the school system.

It could be as unique, perhaps, as the soccer association or minor ball, because they're dealing with our children all the time. They'll do the registrations in school,

they'll come in and talk to the class and encourage the children, so a lot of agencies out there in Nova Scotia. We're fortunate because we have a fairly robust private sector that is dealing with the school system all the time.

MR. PORTER: Is this consistent across all seven boards?

MR. COCHRANE: Pretty consistent. Some boards have more than others, but it depends on the nature of the support. It's pretty consistent across the province though, particularly more relationships now with the district health authorities and what they're doing with the school system and so on.

MR. PORTER: I guess when you say mostly consistent in larger areas - and I'll just use the HRM, for example - would you see more of that available here as opposed to maybe Windsor or the Valley or somewhere like that?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, proportionately, probably not more. I mean, there are 56,000 students in HRM and there are 16,000 in Annapolis - probably proportionately somewhat similar, maybe a little different degree of profile and we'll see some. I know there has been a lot of work done in Annapolis with regard to the health authority, and a lot of the initiatives with regard to healthy eating and health promotion came out of pilot work that was done with our schools in the Valley and the health care professionals.

MR PORTER: Yes, we see that a lot, especially in my area . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, you would see it there, for sure.

MR. PORTER: . . . clinic, for example, has a lot to do with the school and different programs and so on.

MR. COCHRANE: I think you're going to see more, too. I think in the near future, you'll see some more initiatives with regard to that.

MR. PORTER: What about the assistance for students with autism? I know that has been a big issue.

MR. COCHRANE: We've actually come a long way and I'm going to let Ann speak to that. We now have a consultant at the department to deal with autism, we have a number of supports in place. There is financial support through Heath and we've done a number of different things in our school system to support the children. Ann, do you want to . . .

MS. ANN POWER: Well, around 2000-01 we worked with Community Services and the Department of Health to develop a technical report on the research which

supported different delivery modes and assessments and so on for students with autism. The Department of Health began with an initial $2 million investment in early intervention, and has continued with that investment in early intervention for students with autism so that students can be diagnosed as early as 2 to 3 years old and are getting services early and then transitioning into school.

We have a transition process set up and we have been doing extensive professional development and training with teachers across the province. We set up a provincial advisory committee on autism and that advisory committee, which involves advocacy organizations as well as the IWK and the school boards, advises the department on the type of in-service that's needed and on an ongoing basis. As well, as Dennis mentioned, we have an autism consultant who is very skilled and a parent of a child with autism herself, so she understands it from a parental perspective as well as from a training perspective.

We have been doing pretty much every month there is in-service and training either being done with school boards or being planned all through the year. Last August we did a seven-day workshop, which was our introduction, with 40 teachers. All school boards are involved, and each regional school board has an autism lead team. We also have demonstration sites set up across the province so that teachers can go and actually see more experienced teachers teaching children with a variety of new - at least to them - techniques in working with children with autism.

If you're interested, I could give you much more information.

MR. PORTER: I had a question. You mentioned about training in school boards, who does that training? Is that health care, or a psychologist or somebody comes in who does whatever diagnosis . . .

MS. POWER: We partner, as well as do it separately. So, for instance, for early intervention - I'll just use a particular one that we've done. It depends on whether or not it's something that you would do for older children and younger children. If it's a technique that you might use or a strategy with older and younger children, then we'll partner together so that health care workers, early interventionists, and teachers can all work together. If it's specific to, let's say schools, so it might be around a strategy like structured teaching, then that will be perhaps more focused on the teachers. If it's specific to younger children in terms of early diagnosis, that might be more focused on the IWK psychologist. We might do the adolescent psychology piece of it.

So we either partner, if it makes more sense economically, or we do it separately. The nice thing about it is, it's beginning to look like a seamless type of intervention from the time that you're identified all the way up to the transition into adulthood.

MR. PORTER: Do we know how many students in this province in our schools today are autistic? Do you know the numbers?

MS. POWER: We're just working with the IWK and our partners to see if we can get a better handle on that number. It certainly continues to rise, or the incidents continue to rise, but it's difficult to break that down because usually we look at it as autism spectrum disorders, which include quite a wide variety of developmental issues. So actually, the advisory committee - the advisory team - is looking at ways in which we can also get more information earlier on and that's helping us to do that. So we're actually in the process of trying to do that, to get a better idea of the numbers coming.

The transition teams will be able to tell the school boards, in the year before the children come, how many children are coming and to be able to set up program planning teams to plan for their entry to school.

MR. PORTER: From that pre-testing in the Spring?

MS. POWER: Yes.

MR. COCHRANE: And because they're autistic doesn't mean they need the same level of service. There are different kinds of issues associated with - it's like an IPP, they don't all need the whole issue.

MR. PORTER: So it certainly wouldn't be fair to say that every autistic student in a school is going to get an EA or is going to need an EA for that matter.

MR. COCHRANE: No, and probably wouldn't need one.

MS. POWER: Students with Asperger's syndrome, for instance, would function very well because they're very high functioning.

MR. COCHRANE: Asperger's is part of autism and it's very interesting. Children who have it aren't able to discern black and white, it's all - it's absolute, there are no shades of grey.

A good example - a mother was talking to me one day about the young fellow, he was selling chocolate bars and he wasn't supposed to go door-to-door and he said, no, mom, I didn't go door-to-door, I skip every second door. In his mind, on the test the teacher said, look at the answers and pick one and he went all the down and picked one because that's what she told him. He didn't have the ability to differentiate between what she said and the fact that there were four choices. You wouldn't need a full-time TA but you would probably need someone to make sure that they go back to him and explain the

instructions and that kind of thing. It will be a branch of autism, but not the same severity.

[9:45 a.m.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm going to have to cut you off right there. Mr. Parker.

MR. PARKER: Back to round two, is it? Thank you. Before, I was asking you about inclusion. It's an interesting system, I guess, that generally works, but I'm sure there's still some resistance to it. I guess the principle is that all children are included in the regular classroom with their peers and the social skills and their learning environment is enhanced, I guess, by being able to do that.

Are all children in Nova Scotia at this time included, or are there still special classes in some boards?

MR. COCHRANE: There would be some special classes, some on a pilot basis but some that are remnants from years before. One thing we have to recognize, and we do as a department, is that inclusion doesn't mean that every child is in every classroom every hour of every day. They may be pulled out for individualized instruction with the resource teacher; they may spend some time with their TA - we hope not too much - on a one-to-one basis; they may spend some time with the school speech-language pathologist. We do have some short-term placements at APSEA where they're brought to Halifax as a residential component. So we recognize that inclusion is not meant to be that every child is in every classroom every minute of every day. They should be pulled out as the individual needs dictate, and that's happening.

What we don't want to see is, of course, a classroom where the child is there all day and not receiving any interaction with other children in some of the courses that they are able to cope.

MR. PARKER: I realize that some of them are - the principle is that they're pulled out for special help to various resource teachers, but are there any classes still set up with all special needs children?

MR. COCHRANE: There are a couple. Ann, do you want to . . .

MS. POWER: I'm just looking for the number because I do have it here somewhere and I can get that for you. I just can't find it here. Every school board has learning centres, where students spend 50 per cent or more of their time with a special class teacher, with very small numbers - usually around four to six children. They're in every single board in the province, usually for children who have more challenging needs

and for whom the decision is made to be in a smaller environment just because of the logistics or because it's a better learning environment for them.

We speak about a continuum of programming options and services. When you sit down to program plan, you make your decisions around what that child needs in terms of their education, and then, after you decide that, you make the decision on where that should happen. When you look at the policy and you look at the Special Education Implementation Review and you look at the response to the review and our recommendations that we're operating on, they all centre around programming for students and making sure that you're focusing on the outcomes that they need and the learning that they need and then, after that, making decisions on where that should happen.

Inclusive schooling really speaks to, not the where of where you are on a daily basis, as much as it talks about ensuring that when children are in school, we're giving them a good education, and we're focusing on that.

MR. PARKER: So we don't have 100 per cent inclusion of every child; we still have some classes that are sort of specialized for children of similar needs who are together as a group with a specialized teacher, but not in the regular mainstream of the classroom.

MR. COCHRANE: That's right.

MR. PARKER: Is there resistance to inclusion from parents or from teachers or from educational professionals of any type who say it's not the best way to go, that there's another that perhaps works better?

MR. COCHRANE: There's always some criticism of every system. This is one of the interesting politically-correct topics. Very often people won't tell you what they think; they'll whisper what they may think. It may not come from any basis in fact or statistics, but you will hear people comment and so on about it. There is some misconception that every child is in every classroom every day, and the classroom teacher is trying to cope with 30 of them. The classroom teacher, in many cases, is trying to cope with 30, but our average class size in Nova Scotia is 23, our PTR is 16.2.

There is some of that, there's no question. When we formed the Special Education Implementation Review Committee, we put four teachers on it on purpose. We went to the Teachers Union and said, give us four people to sit on this committee so we can hear, out loud, what we're kind of hearing, quietly, behind us. The answer that came back was, inclusion is great but you need more resources. That's a bit of a cop-out - I'll get myself in trouble here, but too bad. What happens, though, is we are adding resources, but I don't know that we can ever add enough to deal with all the problems

that might come in any classroom in today's society. Some of our behavioural problems are not necessarily associated with special needs; they're related to a lack of control both in society and at home. That, often, is more difficult to deal with than some of our special needs children.

However, I will take this opportunity to make a comment that I think you're looking for. The minister has discussed the issue of inclusion with the school board in the province, and we've now gotten around, I think, to six of the eight, and we're trying to get the last couple in. This House session seems to have gotten in the way, not that democracy is not a good thing. (Laughter)

What the minister is going to do, she is going to introduce, very shortly, a review process with regard to inclusion. We don't want to go back to the basic implements of the program, but she does want to look at a number of things associated with it. Basically, it's to determine whether the funding provided by the department to support individual program planning and service initiatives has resulted in the intended outcomes. Is what we're spending giving us the results and the outcomes we wanted? They'll also make recommendations, how we could improve the outcomes of the current initiatives, and to identify new initiatives that may have been shown elsewhere, or here, to effectively close that achievement gap for children and students with special needs.

So there are really three things we're asking this group to look at, and we want to try to keep the study somewhat focused, because you open the door and everybody is in telling you about all the problems there may have ever been, and we are concerned. These are children in our school system who have a constitutional right to a certain level of education, and it is in the Education Act and in our mandate.

Basically, they're going to look at the effectiveness and the efficiencies of the current special education programs and services. They are going to try to determine the impact of the presence of special needs children in the classroom learning environment and to make recommendations to add, delete or modify programs and services to better meet the needs of the students receiving special education programs and services.

This will start soon. We will be going back; I have discussed briefly the concept with the superintendents, and the minister has discussed it with a number of the boards in the context of her consultation with boards when we've made our rounds. We will attempt to take a look at that, and hopefully receive positive input.

An answer isn't, it's just great, just give us more money. It has to be targeted, it has to have the outcomes in mind and then we have to have some sense that what we're doing is going to have a positive impact on those outcomes.

MR. PARKER: Okay, we'll look forward to seeing that report when it's finished.

MR. COCHRANE: I don't know that I am.

MR. PARKER: I have a couple of other questions here, if I have time, Mr. Chairman. I guess the principle of inclusion is that resource teachers are there to come and help the students, take them out of the regular classroom from time to time. Do we have enough resource teachers? I heard you say no, we don't, but we're starting to catch up.

MR. COCHRANE: We're close.

MR. PARKER: Are they being deployed in the areas where they're most needed, I guess? What are our needs? What are the shortages that we have at this time in resource teachers?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, certainly in the core professional services, we do know that we need more guidance people. The resource teachers obviously are doing pull-out in many cases or actually going into the classroom and working with the student and the classroom teachers. In addition to that, we've added a significant number of literacy and math mentors who really are a resource to the classroom teacher.

Our ratio is 1 to 193. We do need some more. That would indicate about how many more? (Interruption) So whatever that number is, about 30, so divide 30 into the number of the population. So we do need more. That's the main area of the core professional services that we're still a bit shy on.

MR. PARKER: Do we have many children who are on a waiting list, hoping . . .

MR. COCHRANE: I've got the waiting list statistics with me.

MR. PARKER: . . . to a speech therapist or a psychologist or whatever is the resource teacher of greatest need?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes. We do have the waiting list numbers and it's always a number. Do you want to speak to it, Ann? You've got the document.

MS. POWER: Wait lists are very difficult to determine because they're based on priority. So let's say we're both teachers and we both have children in our classrooms who we think could benefit from a speech-language pathology referral. We will make that, but then the principal and the team and the school have to say, which is more of a priority? Then that has to be put into a priority list in a larger area of the board that the speech-language pathologist serves.

Sometimes it's something that can be dealt with within the classroom. So you might put forward a referral and, in fact, it's something that the team themselves can deal with.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm going to have to cut you off there but if you would be kind enough to table that document for the members. Ms. Whalen.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: Yes, thank you very much. I appreciate your being here today so that we can go back to the subject, which I think is of great interest to all of us and I know in our constituencies we often hear from parents who have issues around the accessibility of programs and supports and so on, so it's a big issue for us.

I had several issues and one is, you're talking about wait lists. I was interested in that because it's always great to hear that we've hit national norms or we're close to norms; we are 1 to 2,090, speech pathologists to students, for example. We know parents are waiting a long time and students aren't getting the help they need.

On the speech pathology one, I wanted to just reference that to begin with, because if a parent recognizes a problem with speech pathology when they've got a preschooler, they go on a wait list with the Department of Health - which can take over a year in Halifax - to get any kind of help. I had a parent come in whose child was within a year of starting school, so they go on this wait list, they never get help and they start school and they are off the provincial wait list and onto your wait list. Again, they have to be assessed, they haven't even been assessed with the school so they have to get assessed and then get on a wait list. These are critical months for children who need to get language skills, who obviously have a speech problem. So I'm wondering, how can you sort of coordinate better or what would you say about that lack of coordination between those two levels, Health over to Education?

MR. COCHRANE: Sometimes it's hard for me to criticize other agencies when I know that sometimes there's a bit of a transition between Grades 9 and 10, and Grades 6 and 7 in our own system.

MS. WHALEN: That you don't make.

MR. COCHRANE: But we have to work at that. I think - I don't want to make too many announcements in one day, or the minister will be . . .

MS. WHALEN: Go for it.

MR. COCHRANE: We are looking at a way to improve that significantly. I think you'll see something - I'm excited, but I get excited about a lot of things. (Laughter)

MS. WHALEN: So do I.

MR. COCHRANE: I think you'll see that there are a lot of things that we can do and we're going to do. I think you'll see that very soon. We do recognize that. One of the things we did look at, the average wait list in the Halifax Regional School Board for a high-needs speech-language pathologist is about a month. By the time it's brought to the board's attention - and this is a high-needs one - it takes about a month before the actual contact is made. That's not bad. We'd like it less. But I have some other boards, for example, it's three to four weeks in Tri-County. Some boards are as low as two weeks for a high-needs one in the South Shore.

MS. WHALEN: What's your average, your norm?

MR. COCHRANE: Across the board, for example . . .

MS. WHALEN: If I have a child with problems, I'd consider that a problem even if it was average need.

MR. COCHRANE: It's probably three weeks to a month. It could be two months in some cases. It also has to come through a planning process, so people recognize the severity of it and so on.

MS. WHALEN: That's right, so a wait to get assessed even in the first instance.

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: It's longer than that, it sounds better than it really is.

MR. COCHRANE: Well, nothing is instant.

MS. WHALEN: I just think there should be a seamless transition, if you're on a wait list provincially with the Department of Health, you should be able to have that recognized and the assessment recognized at the Department of Education.

MR. COCHRANE: We totally agree.

MS. WHALEN: I look forward to an announcement on that, soon, okay? That would be good.

MR. COCHRANE: We'll look for your help to wrestle Health to the ground on this.

[10:00 a.m.]

MS. WHALEN: Good. Quick question on guidance counsellors. Newfoundland and Labrador has introduced them at junior high school and says there's a tremendous improvement in sort of counselling and ability to intervene. In fact, even younger at elementary schools they've introduced them - I got a reminder from the Education Critic. I think this is really important. I know we have community police officers who work in our system here in Halifax and work through the family of schools, but they're in the elementary schools a lot, as well, and really doing a lot of counselling. I think there's a need for counsellors at that level, and I want to know, are you examining it, studying it, moving ahead?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes. Actually, last year we provided $500,000 for the first time, specifically targeted to guidance counsellors. So we've started now to track the ratios of students to guidance counsellors, like we are with speech-language pathologists, resource teachers, school psychologists and so on.

MS. WHALEN: How about elementary?

MR. COCHRANE: Our target is 1 to 500. Last year we added 12, and I think we primarily focused on elementary last year. Each year, we're providing more money and the board then looks at their need and decides who they can engage and where we put them.

MS. WHALEN: I think there's a real value there, value for money spent if you can move into the earlier ages. I would highly recommend you continue to do that, maybe in every elementary school that's of any size, or something. I think that's important.

The other question I wanted to go to was, again, an issue that has come up in my riding, and it was a student who had been in the family of schools in Sackville, and at the transition between junior high and high school, they moved to Halifax and are now in the Halifax West High School. Because she wasn't recognized in the Halifax West family of schools in Grade 9, where all through junior high she had 100 per cent support, she's now down to 80 per cent support in Halifax West.

Her mother is very unhappy, because she's not getting the kind of stimulation and help that she had before. In fact, from the parent's point of view, it's basically that she has been sidelined and isn't active at all in school. From the principal's point of view, she's getting 80 per cent help, it's just not one-on-one, constant. Why would they drop between the cracks simply because they've left one family of schools within the same board? Can you relate to that?

MR. COCHRANE: It shouldn't really be a transition question, from one family of schools to the other, feeding into Halifax West or feeding into Sackville High. But there are also efforts to move students to more independence as they get older, into a higher grade. We aren't anxious to provide 100 per cent all the time, not just as the financial issue, but the idea of independence and that kind of thing. Just on that, our ratio in the province is for every 75 students, there's one teacher assistant.

We have to be very careful, because we don't want to move from the professional dealing with our most demanding students to the para-professional dealing with our most demanding students. One of the boards in the Province of Nova Scotia has a ratio of every 55 students, there's a teacher assistant. The Auditor General criticized us a bit for not having some hard-and-fast guideline as to how you assign a TA, but we have to rely upon the professional staff in the school and the professional staff in the board, and the board to look at this particular issue.

We do have a huge number, and we are conscious of the fact that we don't want side-by-side, one-on-one all the time. If the child is ready for that degree of independence . . .

MS. WHALEN: No. In the case I'm referring to, they're not ready at all. They need - they're only able to do very simple tasks. If somebody isn't there with this girl to help her, she won't be doing any tasks at all.

MR. COCHRANE: I can't speak to it, but I would just assume the professional staff have looked at it.

MS. WHALEN: I'm very concerned that she would have had the 100 per cent had she continued on in the same school. I think that's very important. Again, there are students who will not ever find a place in our regular classrooms, and she would be among them. One of the concerns I had, as well, was - you mentioned that in every board there is a resource centre. So Halifax West does have a resource centre, and I believe many of our other high schools in Halifax do not. So students might be sent to Halifax West as the one centre (Interruptions)

MS. POWER: St. Pat's and QE both have them.

MS. WHALEN: Both? Because they're coming from around the city. What I was told by the principal was that they're planning to actually phase them out completely, there won't be a separate learning centre. The students are to be integrated. Can you tell me anything about that? Is that a board policy, or do you think it's an Education policy? (Interruptions) Otherwise, we'll get the school board in.

MS. POWER: That would be news to me, if the board had made a policy around that. That would be a surprise, given that we, as I explained earlier, do speak about a continuum of services and many options within that. It really would depend on need. They may be looking at providing more services to one place so that you can, when you have really high-needs children, bring the services there, rather than trying to split them up everywhere, where you really don't get economies of scale and you can't provide really good services. It may be more related to that.

MS. WHALEN: Well, we'll take it up with the school board, I think, just to see what the intent is there. I realize they have to make their own decisions. How many minutes do I have left?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The time's up. Mr. Chisholm.

MR. CHISHOLM: Thank you for coming in today to discuss this very important topic. I guess I go back a few years, 1988-91, I was on, at that time, the Guysborough School Board on behalf of St. Mary's Municipal Council in Sherbrooke. I go back to some very severe disabilities that some of our students had and how we worked with and handled those situations. They were very difficult situations, very severe disabilities. At that time, it comes to mind, just one student we had, we had to go out and buy a wheelchair accessible bus with a bed in it. There were problems with that. We had to go out after that and buy a car to transport the student to school for half a day.

I'm wondering, the budget allocations for very severely disabled students, is that a budget item, is there special funding that goes to school boards to deal with those types of issues?

MR. COCHRANE: Certainly on the adaptation of schools for accessibility questions, we're very involved. All of the schools now, of course, are built to code or renovated to code. Most schools have elevators, if it's a worthwhile investment. We wouldn't run out and put one in if we didn't need it at this particular point in time. We sometimes respond to the needs of the particular population. The boards have their allocation of resources, and obviously they have to distribute that in some kind of priority way.

MR. CHISHOLM: I think it's $1.3 million a year - is that the allotment, the allocation for all the boards across the province, the seven school boards that we have?

MR. COCHRANE: No, $117 million is the special needs allocation across the boards. I think there's a specific program that's $1.3 million. (Interruptions)

MS. POWER: For severe learning disabilities.

MR. COCHRANE: We assign centrally.

MS. POWER: Yes, that's a central allocation, so it's not in their budgets. It goes out to the boards, obviously, but . . .

MR. CHISHOLM: So the boards would request an allocation of that funding from the Department of Education?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. CHISHOLM: Visually impaired students, is there the ability for them to use Braille when they're attending class?

MS. POWER: Yes, and doing their exams and all that. All of those are done through APSEA, so the itinerant teachers who are working with them arrange for all those resources to be available at the school.

MR. CHISHOLM: There are a number of - I think three - private schools that take special needs kids and I believe the Department of Education, or through the school boards, pay for some of that. How many students do we have now that would . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Currently there are 116 students. This was a program started three years ago and it's to support some students who the parents felt, and the system kind of agreed, weren't having their needs met and they were enabled to go to a private school, with a certain process, by application. There has to be an IPP, there has to be a transition plan out and a transition plan back. There are now 116 students in the three facilities in Nova Scotia, and there are only three that provide this. Landmark East would be one and Churchill Academy and Bridgeway Academy. Those are the three that have special staff and special training, and so on, to deal with those particular disabilities.

A couple of the other schools might be able to, but they never applied for status, which is interesting in one case. We are now spending about $904,000 to support those 116 students in that system.

MR. CHISHOLM: Are there criteria that the Department of Education or the school boards have to determine if a student is eligible to go to one of these?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes. We try to recognize that - and this is again in the idea of inclusion - that every child cannot necessarily be treated or served in the school system every minute of every day. There are very rigid criteria by which the students are able to leave the public school system into this kind of environment and then a very planned process of bringing them back in. There are a whole number of guidelines and we can table them, if you'd like, which deal with the Tuition Support Program. For example, if

you arrived in Nova Scotia from Ontario, you just can't choose to go into this program because our system hasn't had a chance to assess your child or serve your child.

So it's a very specific program, a very strong set of guidelines, an application process, to leave the school system to get the support and then we expect a lot of co-operation on bringing these students back into a seamless transition into the public school system.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You'll table that document, correct?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. CHISHOLM: Is there a mechanism to evaluate the student when they are at, say, Landmark East or one of the other facilities? Does the Department of Education evaluate them?

MR. COCHRANE: No, that's one of the shortcomings that we're looking at. I trust the professionals in those three institutions are evaluating these children all the way through. We do want to measure clearly whether there is an improvement in their achievement levels and their outcomes while they're there.

One of the things we're looking at now and discussing with a group of interested parents, the government provided a third year automatically this year for the second-year students into the third year, so we now have 41 students going into the third year of the program. We are now discussing how people would access in the future that third year - like what kind of measurement can we put forward, what kind of an assessment should we have to determine that that child would benefit from a third year.

This will require the schools to co-operate but it'll also allow us to be a little more intrusive. Everybody thinks we're in their face all the time but we're really not. It does allow us to get more involved in what we would have to see in order to recognize that that child would benefit from a third year in the program.

MR. CHISHOLM: Okay, I guess that's it, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Porter, you can use the rest of the time.

MR. PORTER: How much time do I have?

MR. CHAIRMAN: You have until 10:14 a.m. - a couple of minutes.

MR. PORTER: No matter what we do, obviously with our kids in schools, as parents we always have concerns. I'm sure that with children with special needs there are

probably greater concerns with how things are progressing along. What are you doing to educate our families? They obviously have expectations coming into these special programs, is there a process now set up?

MR. COCHRANE: We just happen to have a book. I just happened to bring it along. This basically talks about a planning process guide for parents and it gives them information with regard to program planning. We also have a flyer that can go out to them which would cause them, of course, to request this. It really talks about what the programming process is, how they do a referral to that and to the program planning meeting and how they get their child to be looked at by that particular team in each board and the school. So we are actually doing a better job of getting information out to parents with regard to program adaptation and the other things that we're asking them to understand.

I had a list but I don't think I read it. We have some documentation with regard to IPPs and how you access an IPP and what it is - it's an individual program plan - a curriculum adaptation, transitions that should be taking place, the whole concept of inclusion.

The other side of special needs is the whole enrichment issue because there are a number of students who have special needs on the other end of the spectrum. We often lose sight of them but what kind of advanced programming we have, the IB program that we are going very aggressively about. A number of schools are offering advanced placement. So there are a whole number of pamphlets and information out there.

We also give funding to boards to work with parents. I think we have a $50,000 allocation in the province that boards get to actually create information sessions and documentation for parents.

MR. PORTER: So if I was to call your office or any parent was to call your office and ask the question, what about special education, what are the basic criteria, what would your answer be? Is it really a long, detailed answer, because if it is, we're probably out of time.

MR. COCHRANE: Probably from me. For the short answer, we'd send them over to Ann. (Laughter) Depending on the nature of the question, there's a lot of information we would send them. We would also give them very quickly the board staff person who looks after that because they're really the best ones to drill down to the actual individual needs in the particular board. We don't have access to all the statistical information, the assessment information about the particular students, although eventually we'll have more of that. At this point we would give them a general overview from the provincial perspective, kind of tell them what they're entitled to be able to access, and then send them on to the particular consultant at the board.

MR. PORTER: And that would start at the pre-Primary level, coming in, in the previous spring?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. POWER: We also have to give the boards packages of information every year for registration, so all of these fact sheets go out to parents, are available to the boards anyway, to give to parents at registration. So as soon as you register your child you immediately get information, whether you may use it or not, which will at least point you in the right direction. All our information is also on the Web site.

[10:15 a.m.]

MR. PORTER: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, is my time up?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Pretty well. Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. MACKINNON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to also thank you for coming in today. Deputy Minister Cochrane is here so often, I feel he's a member of the committee.

MR. COCHRANE: They tell me it's all pensionable time.

MR. MACKINNON: One of the concerns I have, I believe that most teachers buy into the inclusion process. You talked about the copping out: I believe in it if we had more resources. I'm concerned about the buy-in because I know there are teachers out there who actually believe - and I think they are in the minority - that where there is a severe, special need, even though there is a teacher assistant, that there is a distraction, that there is an interference and so on. I'm wondering if you're having enough in-services to get people away from cop-out and into buy-in?

MR. COCHRANE: We do a lot of in-servicing of teachers with regard to the programs and, for example, the code of conduct, racial equity, a lot of the issues with regard to autism and so on. You can probably never do enough. We are actually beginning to look at what our PD schedule on the calendar looks like because one of the most effective methods of PD is PD that's done on-site. In fact, there are some very discouraging statistics on pull-out PD and how effective that is, so we're looking at that end of it. The boards have had some really good discussions with us about that - maybe another announcement for another day.

I agree, and there are some people who want to teach math in the purest sense of math and have a difficult time recognizing that other people may not have that same learning process and so on. So we're trying to make sure that we provide the supports we

need. We have to talk to our universities as well because we do expect some pre-service knowledge of how to deal with adapting curriculum, special needs children in the classroom and so on.

So the whole system really has to take a look at how we serve these children and how well we prepare our professionals, who are enthusiastic, I think, for the most part, but sometimes the day-to-day recognition of what's out there is difficult.

MR. MACKINNON: I think there is a vast improvement. I was on the Colchester-East Hants board from 1979-87. During that period, the inclusion was coming along. I do see a vast improvement, so there is room for a bouquet there, for sure.

MR. COCHRANE: No question. I think it has improved, and the resources are certainly more significant. One of the things - the positive effect of the behavioural support program that we've put out, and I think someone was on CBC - do I dare say that? - yesterday, or the other day, for the three people who were listening - just teasing. I saw you puff up, and I couldn't let that happen. (Laughter) I'll get a bad editorial tomorrow, it's okay.

I think it was the principal in Cambridge who was talking about the reduction in the number of referrals to the office as a result of the new program that we've put in place. We're doing a lot of in-servicing with regard to that. PEBS, we call it. It's a very positive program that we think is having an impact. I think we've come a long way, but there's no question that we need to go further. I think the review the minister is asking for will give us a road map as to how we do go further in the future.

MR. MACKINNON: I've run into about three cases in Pictou East where the students have been taken out of the classroom altogether, or put out of the classroom altogether, because the needs are so severe. I'm wondering, first of all, when does the head count stop for that person, the funding involved?

MR. COCHRANE: September 30^th, but we're always funding a year in delay. For example, if your board had 1,000 last September, we fund them on the 1,000; this September, they may only have 900 but they still get the funding for the 1,000 for the year. We always have a year lag in our funding formula, so there's always a bit of a benefit to a board in that case.

MR. MACKINNON: That having been said . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Do you think they put them out after October 1^st to get the money and not support them?

MR. MACKINNON: No. These are severe-needs and are very difficult situations. What some parents are saying is, could that money be allocated to them to be used with specialists, psychologists, and so on?

MR. COCHRANE: They're funded - if they're in the system even after October 1^st, they're funded. The formula has money in there for them. We do make a great effort now with regard to home supports and home tutoring, particular programs and so on that we're trying to make sure we put in place. The board still has to provide for them, whether it's as effective as we might like, but it's more difficult. I think that's one of the things that you might see some progress on in the near future, too, in some areas. It's always difficult.

For example, I think there were some students who were put out of school up in the Tantallon area because of some allegations about Internet threats and so on. Once they were out of the school system, the board still had a responsibility to provide some home schooling and supports for those kids until they came back in.

MR. MACKINNON: Parents are saying, the head count is still there, although my child is no longer in the system.

MR. COCHRANE: That's right. The money is still there, and we're trying to provide a support for them. Again, you lose that critical mass, because if you're trying to do outreach and home support, it's much more expensive.

MR. MACKINNON: I had a series of questions in relationship to wait times, but I think you've done a good job in relationship to responding to the member opposite, Ms. Whalen. She sort of stole a couple of my questions. They are so important, because not only are we looking at a wait time after someone is assessed, we're finding that there are some people out there who are waiting a long time to be assessed. Now these are the ones, their needs may not be - they may be minor but there are still problems there.

MR. COCHRANE: They're still needs.

MR. MACKINNON: And these people are falling through the cracks, I believe, from what I'm hearing.

MR. COCHRANE: There are some, there's no question. To every parent and to every child, any need is significant, and the board, of course, has to triage a bit to look at the professional services and who they get to first. As we continue to build up that core professional service resource in our system, I think we're going to get to the national number and then we'll have to reflect on whether we have a circumstance that dictates numbers greater than the national.

MR. MACKINNON: I think we're addressing the problems and the numbers are there in relationship to specialists to students in some cases and so on, but I'm wondering, do we have enough people in the identification and assessment end of it?

MR. COCHRANE: That may be a question, I guess - the board assigns board office staff and so on to do that. Some boards or some jurisdictions use psychometrists to do the testing, as opposed to psychologists. I think in our case we're using the psychologist in most cases. So that may be a strategy that would enable us to test faster, but then we'd have to look at what kind of supports we can put in place quickly behind that.

A psychometrist is much more economically affordable than a psychologist, so we should look at those kinds of things as we go through.

MS. POWER: We have two guides coming out that should help with this process, in terms of trying to be more consistent across boards with regard to how we go about getting students into the identification and assessment process and then getting them for their referrals. One is on speech-language pathology and the other is on school psychology. On the school psychology one the draft is complete and we're just fine tuning it. The speech-language pathology one is underway. Those are the two areas where you often get wait times and that's part of those guides, looking at the best practice for doing that more quickly and efficiently.

MR. MACKINNON: Just a comment. I think we're seeing improvements and I think you should be commended for those improvements, but I think we have to stay the course and see what we can do in relation to those wait times for the actual assessment and identification. Thank you.

MR. COCHRANE: We will.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Maybe, Deputy Minister, if you're answering we could agree to have short responses. I love my long conversations with you, when we have the time. Today we don't.

MR. COCHRANE: I never miss an educational opportunity.

MR. GLAVINE: I know that. I'm just going to make one comment and you can respond, if you wish. I still think inclusion is the great illusion of failing to deal with our highest needs children in the system. We put them in the classroom and that's great, we take them out a couple of times a week but we don't deal with their real problems. We should have a centre in each of the seven boards, like Landmark and like Churchill

Academy, to deal with children who simply will leave the school, only perhaps a small amount better than when they entered. I believe that and I'm witness to that with my years in the system.

Going on, however, I think one of the great mistakes when we did bring in inclusion was to eliminate the general program in the school system. It's there creatively in a few schools - maybe I shouldn't mention those but maybe you know about them anyway. I found that the general program did address the student who, for a whole myriad of reasons, performed below the academic expectations. Wasn't there a need for that? I feel we just have not addressed that group of students, especially in our larger high schools, where you have a defined group that could both do some integration but also have the benefits of a program which targeted those students.

MR. COCHRANE: The general program in Nova Scotia wasn't a special needs program, it was a recognition of some of the layers of achievement at high school. Most of our students, with the right course selection - and I think we're going to make some gains in OPP, well, we have OPP, we have a number of career access programs in the Valley and so on - O2 will help some but it's not meant for all that strata because a lot of kids would be in O2 who were quite successful in school and will continually do well.

I think with the right course selection - for example, I was looking at the documents, and I can show you the book, it's phenomenal, Math Essentials 10 and 11, just a fantastic book that a student of general ability would have no trouble doing, talked about car insurance, planning a trip, mortgages, really good stuff. So I think with the right guidance, and that's always a question, and the right support and the right view toward what the student is able to achieve in high school, they can choose most of the courses that will give them that kind of level of programming.

MR. GLAVINE: This is from the Strait area, September 27, 2006. A board member was reading from some letters to him, and he said, "'Teachers say to me that inclusion is the single biggest challenge,' Van Berkel said, concluding with a comment from one teacher who said to him, 'I go home guilty every night because what I need to do for those children I can't do.'"

Some of the most memorable moments were in my classroom, since 1991, when we brought in inclusion, and in the first week of school in a class of Grade 12 global geography, 35 students. The student would say to me, please do not ask me questions this year. In other words, they're in a class that's just not suited for them. I remember them at the Grade 9 and 10 level when they were in a general class, and they were in a comfort zone. So inclusion certainly doesn't make everybody even socially comfortable sometimes.

MR. COCHRANE: No, and it's meant as a principle, and then, obviously, we believe students should be socially, emotionally, educationally engaged, but then they should go to where they're best served. For example, a student may have a great ability in language arts but not in math, and they should be encouraged to take the right level of language arts and a more appropriate level of math.

I think the pendulum may have swung too far for some people too fast. I think we're catching up quickly - not quickly, but we're catching up now on the core professional services that are needed to serve our population. The special needs child will never, in the Province of Nova Scotia, be back in a classroom in the basement by the furnace room. God help us if that's what happens.

MR. GLAVINE: Agreed.

MR. COCHRANE: However, there are places between there and the graduation stage where these children may be served better. That's what we're trying to do. We're going to go out, at the minister's initiative, and take a look at what we're doing and how we're doing it. Not to cancel programs, but to take a look at the efficiency of what we're doing, are we meeting the outcomes, are there things that we could do better, are there other resources that we might need to meet those outcomes, and is there an impact on the educational learning environment in a classroom as a result of what appears to be, in some people's definition, total inclusion?

[10:30 a.m.]

MR. GLAVINE: I believe that when the class size, too, is proper - as a former teacher, and as teachers - we know we can meet more individual needs. If I were in your position as deputy minister, the one commitment I would make to Nova Scotians this year is that in Nova Scotia next year, there will be no classes 35 and over. I absolutely believe that we have to move in that direction. The research is showing this.

I think that's what's having an impact on our overall standards. Before 1990 and inclusion, on national testing scores, we were generally in the middle of the pack. In the last 10 or 12 years, we've been far from the middle of the pack.

MR. COCHRANE: Actually, we're still very close to the middle of the pack. We brought Tom with us, who is a consultant.

If I could just take a moment, we do have to deal with this. We are always looking at where we are and what we can do to do it better. In 1990, we never tested high school math, so we didn't know. We had our heads stuck firmly in the sand, and believed that we were doing all things that we should. Our testing results have shown us that, hey,

all kids in Nova Scotia aren't getting exposed to the curriculum to enable them to have the same level of achievement, and the same level of an opportunity for success later on.

We've done a number of things. Just for example, the SAIP results, the School Achievement Indicators Program, for 16-year olds, Nova Scotia was sixth out of 13 in the country; between the provinces and the territories, we were sixth out of 13. We were ahead of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, New Brunswick and Northwest Territories. That was 16-year olds. When you look at our tests on international testing, the OECD and these would be the PISA results, Canada did very well, but on those tests Nova Scotia was well ahead of other provinces in Canada and a number of other countries in the world.

We always want to do better, and we always strive to raise the bar. We can't accept mediocrity, and we have to constantly drive our system to perform and to do better because we owe it to our kids, so I think we're making some gains.

We're now buying a larger sample in some of these tests because before we didn't necessarily know. You know I get criticism about whatever money we might spend in the testing program in evaluation, but you can't not diagnose or assess what you're doing and what the outcomes are because our children aren't an island and we're going to be out there in that world and the world is smaller every day.

MR. GLAVINE: In terms of going to the other end of the spectrum and the programs of excellence, and you say you're moving aggressively there, what is the plan there, Mr. Deputy Minister?

MR. COCHRANE: We had some presentations to the superintendents, and I look on the superintendents as the management team for the system and I think they like that, believe it or not. We had presentations from advanced placement and we had presentations from IB, which is the International Baccalaureate. We encouraged the superintendents to visit the sites and at that time we had only two sites for International Baccalaureate, one was Parkview and the other one was Sydney Academy. We decided to aggressively go into International Baccalaureate programming. We rather stole 60 per cent of the time of the former Principal of Halifax Grammar School, which is an all IB school, so we were telling the system we were serious, so he's our consultant in the department.

We have now, I think, 12 schools going through the process because this isn't instantaneous, you have to have PD for the staff, the library has to have so many resources, the science lab has to be a certain standard and so on. Then we're adding six more and boards actually funded two on their own, so we're going to be up to 20 when the program is fully implemented. It's a very rigorous program but it's not the only program. We are also doing some advanced curriculum, advanced English and advanced

math and so on in Nova Scotia, and we're encouraging advanced placement. An advanced placement is more of an examination-driven part of the system, but we're recognizing that we have to spend some money on that end of the spectrum because these students are going through our system and not being challenged to the abilities that they have. They are phenomenal kids, most of them.

We are actually the fastest jurisdiction, I think, in the world right now with regard to International Baccalaureate, such so that they're having their international conference here in 2008, I think. Anyway, we've made some big gains. It's hard to believe that at that time, with 150,000-some students, we had two sites, none in metro, with the population and the diversity of our population here. So we're making some really good gains. It's not a huge investment but a very huge investment by our teachers, because this level of instruction is very difficult and very complex. Thanks for the question.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, I have to interrupt you there, time's up. Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to something that we were talking about a while ago, it was support for parental support. I want to start with the verbage you use - socially, emotionally, educationally engaged. Is there an expectation that this all takes place in the schools?

MR. COCHRANE: No, I'm a big fan of saying that - I better not say it the way that I normally say it because I'll get myself in trouble - you're going to warn me. We do the best we can and when you look at 142,000 students in over 400-some locations, I think our teachers and our professional staff do a very good job, but we do have to have engaged parents.

We have school boards and you pay a premium for those. We have school advisory councils and we encourage those; in fact, we're preparing a school advisory council resource book and so on, to help them do their job.

This isn't to encourage parents to go out and sell - I was going to say cookies - to go out and sell apples and Christmas wrap, this is to get parents actually engaged in school improvement planning, talking about behavioural activity in the school, that kind of environment. We're trying to make parents feel comfortable coming to school. We have parent-teacher interview situations where they're invited in. We try to engage them in discussions about their children and their success and the needs of the children.

Most parents respond very well, Unfortunately, like in every issue in life, there are people who do some things better than others. I'm not a great driver; however, there are some people who aren't great parents, and we can't make it up. We try the best we can to engage them in that whole child and their development, but we can't do it all in the system. We deal with Community Services, we deal with the Department of Health,

Health Promotion and Protection, all those agencies, the social agencies you asked me about earlier, to try to make up for what some of these children need. I think our professionals are doing a very good job. It would be easier if everybody came from that kind of engaged home.

MR. PORTER: I guess I can speak from experience with four children now having gone through the system. There's an awful lot of time at home that you spend on all of those things that you spoke of. I guess I was just looking for that clarification, too, from you. It almost made it sound like these are total expectations by someone, and I guess maybe some think that's where it does all happen. What about at the school, what I'll call teams, EAs, staff, principals, are there regular meetings, especially with these students, discussing their progress? Are there benchmarks that we have set in Nova Scotia to say that a student with autism should be at this level? Just as an example.

MR. COCHRANE: We have outcomes that we've determined. An IPP really brings that right down to the individual child. An IPP, an individual program plan, adjusts the outcomes for that child. It may not be the same outcome as every other child, but it's that child's specific needs, limitations or skills, and it recognizes their outcomes and it may take longer, it may not be at the same level. That's a specific one.

We have outcomes and achievement levels across the system . . .

MS. POWER: Also, just a few other things related to that. We have put in $500,000 to the system specifically for program planning so that teachers have time to meet during the school day, and to team around ensuring that the child is receiving consistent instruction across subject areas, and to develop individualized program plans. Also, there is a new report card for IPPs, which is a provincial report card developed by a team of educators with the Department of Education to track the outcomes for each individual child. We also have extensive data on students in Reading Recovery. So we have individual student data, which leads to board data, up to provincial data and national data on how children are doing in Reading Recovery, and we also have very good data tracked at the department level on students in the SLD programs, severe learning disabilities.

Then the school boards themselves, of course, track individual data, and we're hoping that the IPP format for the report card will further provide consistencies so that if you go from school to school or from Grade 6 to Grade 7, you can expect the same type of reporting format for parents.

MR. COCHRANE: One of the other initiatives is the Council of Atlantic Ministers of Education and Training. They are in the process now of setting standards at key stages, Grades 3, 6, 9 and 12 in reading and writing, so that it will be the same standard, actually, across Atlantic Canada. Some of our curriculum is developed, by the

way, across Atlantic Canada, it's a common curriculum. You should be able to pick up a math book in New Brunswick that's somewhat similar to the math book in Nova Scotia. We develop a lot of them jointly. That's efficiency, but it's also recognizing the mobility of our population. There are some standards set at that level, as well.

MR. PORTER: When we talk about those standards, and there's no minimum level, I guess. I can think of some children who go to school with, maybe your term was severe disabilities, but maybe a more severe disability than others, there's no minimum standard there - level, standard, call it what you want?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, the outcomes, and of course those outcomes would be adjusted for a severe special needs case, and so on.

MR. PORTER: We continue to use the word outcome, okay, I can understand the outcome, that's fine - maybe I can articulate my question better. The outcome is easy enough to measure, we know what the outcome is, you pick a time period and you measure the outcome, but what about the incoming, there's a level there of ability that has to be met. That's my question.

MS. POWER: To come to school?

MR. PORTER: To come to school.

MR. COCHRANE: We take them all. Parents aren't keeping the best of them home, either, they're all coming. We try to recognize that there will be some students we know are arriving in our system who aren't able to meet the minimum outcomes we'd like to see, and that's when you create an IPP. You try to get the most you can, you try to give the most you can to that particular child. One of the criticisms we had last year was the 18- to 21-year olds. There was a gap. We are working with Community Services to make sure that after you've accomplished your outcomes, as they may be adjusted through an IPP, to make sure there's somewhere for those children to be supported from 18 to 21 to continue bringing them on and so on.

With our assessments in Grades 3, 6 and 9 that we're working on, the testing program, we do have minimum kinds of data that we're looking at - in other words, if you don't meet this minimum, there will be an intervention strategy put in place to deal with that particular child.

MR. PORTER: Maybe these children are some of the more severe who require that EA with them throughout the day or part of the day.

MR. COCHRANE: Definitely. We're finding that, for example, we're testing all of our Grade 6s in literacy. If they don't meet a certain standard, then we recognize that.

There's a lot of diagnostic information in that assessment that the system then uses to support that child in Grades 7, 8 and 9. We're spending about $2.8 million now in special resources in Grades 7, 8 and 9 to follow the results of those tests. So there is a minimum we expect. Now, when there's a huge difference, then that's when we really get into the IPP planning and so on.

MR. PORTER: With children who are visually impaired, going to school - I guess it's probably safe to say there are some visually impaired children going to school in regular classes - are all the mechanisms in place to support these kids?

MR. COCHRANE: In Atlantic Canada, we probably have one of the strongest support mechanisms for children who are visually impaired and hearing handicapped. It's call the Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority. At one time, they had residential schools, and we're still dealing with lawsuits. However, we got out of that, and these children are in the public school system, but occasionally are pulled out for short-term programs or for short-term assessment. The headquarters is over here on South Street in Halifax. It's owned by the four Atlantic Provinces. We have a number of itinerant teachers out into the system, including a number of interpreters for children who are hearing impaired. We have a number of supports with regard to the visually handicapped.

Actually, we've done a very good job of integrating most of those children into our system. The other issue, of course, is that many times the children may have multiple disabilities, and therefore they're getting support from APSEA along with our special needs support network and so on. But we do have a very good program. Some of the consultants we have working at APSEA, none of us could afford them alone, as provinces, but together we're able to draw some of the strongest people in to support our students.

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I have to cut you off there. Your time has expired. This leaves about three minutes apiece, if you would like to continue that way. That will bring us to 10:53 a.m., and we have a document we have to discuss. Do you think that's enough time to discuss that? Okay.

Mr. Parker, you have until 10:47 a.m.

MR. PARKER: Thank you.

MR. COCHRANE: I'll try to be good.

MR. PARKER: We've been talking about inclusion, we've been talking about the whole spectrum of special needs children, whether they're seriously challenged right

through to the very gifted. I think that's roughly, maybe, 20 per cent of the school population, is it, or less, or somewhere close to 20 per cent?

MR. COCHRANE: About 20 per cent are getting some kind of support.

MR. PARKER: But that leaves about 80 per cent of the "ordinary" regular students who are in there. I'm wondering, with inclusion, it's a good thing, but is it also having some effect on all the rest of the students? I'm thinking of children who start in Primary, they're very keen, they're well ahead of their grade level, perhaps they're reading already at a Grade 3 level, and their numeracy skills are really up there, and they want to go to school, they think it's great. Then they get into Grade 3 or Grade 4 and maybe they're becoming a little bit bored with the system, and by the time they get to junior high, they're quite bored with the system.

Are they getting the skills taught to them, are they getting challenged enough? Some of them are not gifted but they're not far from it. They're good students. Are they being left behind in some respects with inclusion, looking after all the special needs - the teacher can only do so much? How are we addressing that challenge of regular students, so called?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, the vast majority of our teacher time and our resources and so on are devoted to that mainstream population that you're talking about, whether it's 80 per cent or whatever. When I say 20 per cent, that may only be, for example, resource help for reading, that may be Reading Recovery in Grade 1. I think, somewhere IPP is between 3 per cent and 4 per cent.

I think most of our programs do provide for those students. We do have a whole Challenge for Excellence guide that our teachers can use to work with some of the gifted children, or some of the children who are able to accomplish those. A number of school-wide enrichment programs exist out there, where they put programs in place for children who are able to perhaps progress at a faster rate and so on.

One of the things that has been said, and statistically there is no significant difference on the academic levels of children in a classroom where there may be the presence of a special needs child - now that will come out a little bit in the work the minister's going to have done. One of the things that we've been able to make huge gains in is the whole question of social inclusion. We all used to kind of stare. Kids are so amazing now when you see a special needs child, particularly physically handicapped children and the support they get from our kids. We've done a great deal on that. I think our biggest challenge now is to deal with the behavioural issues that some of the children bring to school.

MR. PARKER: So we're not going towards the lowest common denominator with our regular stream children?

MR. COCHRANE: No, I don't feel that we are and that's one of the reasons we do our testing across - well, we're going to Grades 3, 6 and 9 and exit, to make sure that we aren't seeing that happen and that's where our national testing and our raising the bar and closing the gap initiatives through Learning for Life II.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has expired. Ms. Whalen.

MS. WHALEN: Yes, thank you very much. I was looking at the financial stuff that was given to us here as well, which shows the $117 million under special education, but you haven't given us a breakdown on what you actually include in that - where that's spread among different programs. How much of that would go to school boards directly for support in the classroom? How much are special education teachers and so on and so on?

MR. COCHRANE: We can table that.

MS. WHALEN: I would really like to have that and I think other members of the committee should, as well. I notice you had done it for special initiatives and that included special education projects underneath, in the lower part. So I would like to see what goes in that.

My next question is, do you consider ESL part of your special education?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: Okay, and you've only begun funding that in 2005-06, am I right?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes, this is our second year of funding. We're up to $550,000 now, the vast majority of which goes to the Halifax Regional School Board. You have to differentiate, though, between ESL and international students who may be in our classrooms.

MS. WHALEN: No, not the international, I want to go to the people we've invited and urged to come to Nova Scotia, their children arrive in our communities and we aren't giving them the ESL help that they require. I think we're going to lose a lot of them, and I think that's why we retain only 30 per cent of the people who come here because if they come with not enough English, they're not getting support.

MR. COCHRANE: I think our retention issue is about adults not getting the support they need from the federal government to let them learn either official language.

MS. WHALEN: Well, I think it's both because people choose Nova Scotia, I think partly because of the educational opportunities here and the universities and they see it as a great city to settle in, but when they come to the schools - and I raised it in the House about one of the schools in my area that is able to provide 45 minutes a week to a student who comes in; if they come in as non-functioning in English, they're going to get 45 minutes a week. That's not enough support for our classroom teachers and it's not enough support.

I can give you another one. Park West School has 80 students in ESL, 30 of them are non-functioning, and they get 30 minutes a day. They have 1.3 teachers for 80 students requiring ESL, and that's one of the most intense schools, that - maybe Duc D'Anville school as well. Halifax West has a lot of students, but that area, that Halifax West school of families probably has more students requiring help than any other.

I just feel that when you see it on the ground, first-hand in the schools, although you have begun to fund, that's great, I'll tell you that supplementary funding is paying for 12 of the 19 teachers that we have in the Halifax Regional School Board. So supplementary funding is still paying more than half.

MR. COCHRANE: And that's a good use for supplementary funding as well.

MS. WHALEN: It's very good, given that we have it.

MR. COCHRANE: And we're working our way to that.

MS. WHALEN: But it's not. What I'm really saying is even with the supplementary funding and even with your coming in at $550,000 a year, it's not adequate on the ground, in the schools. In boards in Ontario they give full-time ESL training to get the kids up to speed to go into the classroom.

MR. COCHRANE: We track the numbers back and Halifax claimed 500 students eligible for ESL, with varying degrees of support. Of the first 350, 302 went to Halifax, but more is coming.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'll have to cut you off right there, time is up.

Mr. Porter.

MS. WHALEN: It's really important, that's all I wanted to say.

MR. PORTER: We have three private schools designated for special education in this province, as we're all aware - Bridgeway Academy, Churchill Academy and Landmark East. In 2004-05 there were 108 applications received in these three schools; 31 of them were rejected. In 2005-06, 128 applications were received, but only 10 were rejected.

I guess the question should be, why the big difference within one year, or do you see this as a big difference?

MR. COCHRANE: One of the reasons for some of the rejections would be that many people didn't have an IPP, or hadn't done the work they needed to do in the board before they actually applied. As people caught on to what the acceptance criteria were, you saw some activity at the board level to make sure that they were ready to go. And some, for example, will have applied and never were in Nova Scotia schools. That's not part of the criteria. We want to give our system a chance to try to deal with these particular children, and we do have a huge investment in our system to support them.

So it varies. Right now, we have 116, only 33 in the first year. So the extrapolation of that would be 99 over the period of time. It comes and goes. We are working our way through what kind of criteria have to be put in place for that third year.

MR. PORTER: You mentioned a moment ago, behavioural issues. What are we doing for students with behaviour problems in our schools?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, the PEBS reporting and the documentation associated with that, the guidance initiative is also to deal with that. The support we have for the teachers and principals and vice-principals in their time available - principals, for example, and vice-principals, teaching time is an issue that's associated with that. We also have a number of TAs who are assigned to some of the behavioural issues and so on that the children have. And we do a fair amount of work with regard to a code of conduct and teaching teachers how to deal with some of these issues as they arise and so on.

So we've made some changes and some significant in-service support for our teachers. We do have some situations where we have in-school suspension rooms, home supports and so on for some of these children. We do what we call training our teachers now in some functional behaviour assessment work, to see what these children need. Unbelievable, some of the issues that are coming to school.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Time's pretty well up, just a few seconds, so we're going to stop it at that. I'd like to thank you for coming in today. As always, it has been very entertaining and very interesting. We have some other committee business we have to talk about. We have a letter here from the Executive Council that we have to go over.

Then we have to have a short discussion on our next meeting. Again, thank you very much for coming.

MR. COCHRANE: Thank you. We're always pleased to have a chance to talk about what's going on in education, and it's always a value for us and MLAs understanding clearly the needs of our system, and not only what we've achieved but what we also have to do in the future. I appreciate the chance for myself and my professional staff to be here.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. On your table there's a letter from the Executive Council, and it was circulated prior to the meeting, as well. It's brought about by questions that were asked by the committee on the appointment process for the agencies, boards and commissions. Does anyone have any questions or comments they want to make on this, or do you want to go through - how do you want to handle this?

MR. MACKINNON: I think the letter is quite clear; however, I'm wondering, Mr. Chairman, what is the process in changing Rule 60(3) of the Rules and Forms of Procedure of the House of Assembly?

MR. CHAIRMAN: That is, again, a process that would probably start in the House of Assembly. Maybe I can get legal counsel to answer that.

MR. GORDON HEBB (Legislative Counsel): Any member can initiate a rule change. It would require a resolution of the House, a Notice of Motion. Getting the House to then decide to spend some time on it and deal with it is something else again. There has to be the will of the House to spend the time on whatever debate is necessary and negotiations necessary to make the rule change. Actually, the legal process for doing it is quite simple, it's just a question of a Notice of Motion, debating the motion, and passing it by the House.

MR. PORTER: I guess my concern is, how far do we want to go in managing the system? Do we want to do the work that's being done? Do we have the time? We talk about how long it takes now to get appointed to a board and the process, are we going to be slowing that down? That would be a concern that we have. Screening panels are in place for a reason, and I think we should continue - personally, to be going there, I don't think I want to see every single person who applies coming to this table, if it doesn't really need to. I think there's quite a bit of work to be done prior to getting here.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Chisholm.

MR. CHISHOLM: I'm just wondering, I'm replacing somebody on the committee today, so I'm not really up to speed. Most of the information for today I just got last night for the first time. Just exactly what are we trying to change?

MR. CHAIRMAN: There was some concern from some of the committee members on how the process works and the information we do get and how all the information flows, and what the responsibility of the committee, in detail, was. That's the idea of this letter, to sort of answer those questions. Also, there was a request to see all the names who applied for particular positions. This letter is in reply to that.

MR. CHISHOLM: There's something in the regulations or the mandate of the committee - no, it wouldn't be the mandate of the committee - to release the information of any person who applies for an ABC if they're successful in getting the position. If you're not, that's not public information.

MR. HEBB: Again, I believe what you're referring to is actually - in this, every time it's set out just inside the front cover of every one of these, it's provided to the members, each meeting.

MR. CHISHOLM: I guess it's pretty straightforward here, the way that the process takes place. Everything is outlined there. I sat on this committee for about seven years, and I think the same question was being asked seven years ago. I know, now that I'm minister of a department, the applications do come to the department, but I have absolutely no idea who screens them. There are people within the department who do that. I think the process is that Executive Council gets the applications, they turn them over to whatever department is involved, and the screening is done there by staff within the department. It was probably a previous government that set up the process. Since we've been in government, we've stayed the course and kept that process in place. I think the process works.

[11:00 a.m.]

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, contrary to what Minister Chisholm is saying, I understand from the last meeting that changes have in fact taken place, that there were some progressive changes, the numbers are actually listed now, the number of applicants, and the number by gender is listed, which didn't used to be the case. This is just taking it one step further. I'm encouraging people to apply for boards, and I have no idea whether they are in the system, whether they have in fact applied, and so on.

As I said before, there are a number of people who are - I'm not promoting people politically, I'm promoting, in one case, a person who is trying to find reasons to stay in Nova Scotia, and is substitute teaching and not getting a full-time job, and is getting so annoyed she and her husband and family members are looking at going to Alberta. I'm saying, look, maybe if you got more involved in the community and applied for a board or agency or something or other and so on.

We have no idea. Even if we could - as someone said last time, your package would be too thick. Well, maybe the next step is to just get the names and not all the application information. That would be something in itself. If 12 people apply and there are six appointments, the other six names are just listed. People apply for things all the time, for jobs, and they know they're not successful. If you're willing to apply for something, you should be willing to suffer the consequences of not getting the position. That's not public information, it's still private. No one is saying throughout the province, you didn't get it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.

MR. PARKER: I was just going to add, the process as we know it, and I guess we don't know exactly how it works because even Minister Chisholm has indicated that he's not quite sure who is making these decisions. I guess it comes back to the minister at some point for sign-off on the names in his department but it seems to be still shrouded in secrecy, really, the process. Maybe the process works but in the end, this committee here has to approve or not approve those names and we don't know how many others applied or how qualified they are. Perhaps we know the number that applied but we don't know how qualified other applicants are that we don't see.

So I think this committee is at a disadvantage and we're just told that this is the name, approve it or not approve it, and we're like a rubber stamp in many ways. I haven't seen us yet turn down anybody but we just go through the motions, we approve the names as recommended and it's hard for us to do that, I find. You know you just yea it as it comes through but it's based on lack of information. So we assume the process is working right up till now and we just rubber stamp it, really.

I feel that we're doing a disservice in some respects to Nova Scotians, in not having the full knowledge of who applied and therefore recommending the best person for the job. Regardless of political affiliation or anything else, it should be the best person who ends up with the position. Somehow all we're doing is giving the final approval but it's not based on full knowledge.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey.

MS. MASSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, the longer I sit on this committee, the less I feel that really we even have a role or that this committee really even needs to exist, to tell you the truth, the way it's set up now. We see the ABC appointment process; it's lined up here, it's quite obvious that it says, "If approved at Cabinet the appointment is forwarded to the Standing Committee on Human Resources for review at their next meeting." How can you review something that you're at the end of the process, the decision has been made, you have only seen the resumé of one of the applicants? We're not talking about hundreds of thousands of applicants, we're talking

about a hundred in our last ABC bulk advertisement from April and May 2006, there were 213 applicants, but some of those were the same people applying for different ABCs.

So I just don't see what the point of this committee is, put it down to that. I've been doing this since 2003 and I feel there's a need to stay on it because as the honourable member opposite has said, even in the short time he has been on the committee he has recognized that we have made some strides in getting the number of applications - you know, we now know how many people have applied, but we still have no right to see that.

What we asked for at the last meeting was, where in the Rules of the House of Assembly does it tell us that we're not allowed to see these resumés? That has not been shown to us. As far as I can see under Rule 60, if you read that it says, "The purpose of the Committee review is not to replace the function of Government Departments and Ministers in making appointments. Its function is to approve or not approve of the name before it, not to consider or recommend alternative names for appointments."

Something could be slipped in there that says, approve the name before it while reviewing the names of the other applicants. Do you know what I'm saying? That can be rewritten to make this happen.

What I'm saying is the way it's written now, just because it's not in there doesn't mean we can't see the names of those applicants, I don't think, because before, the way we were doing this, we didn't know how many people applied, right? It doesn't say in the rules anywhere that you can't see - prior to that change being made it didn't say in the rules anywhere that you can't see the number of applicants, or you can't know how many were female, or you can't know how many were male.

So we have made changes even under these rules, so I don't really see how these rules are stopping us because it's the ABC appointment process that's lined up on this sheet of paper that I think that what we want done could be put into that process. I don't know if I made myself clear, but I guess that's about all I can say. Thanks.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Can I go back to the solicitor again to comment on that?

MR. HEBB: I don't have the Rule Book, the entire Rule 60 in front of me, so I don't know that I can answer fully. I don't want to enter into the debate about the merits of the role of the committee. All I can say is what I believe the rule contemplates is a process whereby the initial applications are screened, the qualified applicants go to the minister, the minister makes the selection from the qualified applicants, and then the selection of the minister comes to this committee for the committee to decide whether they agree with the minister whether that person is qualified or not, but not whether that

person is the best candidate. You're not being given that information, so the role is limited. I make no comment on what the role of the committee should be, but that's the process, I believe, as is outlined in Rule 60.

MR. CHAIRMAN: And that's under legislation.

MR. HEBB: No, it's under the Rules of the House.

MR. CHAIRMAN: In effect, as you said earlier, the House would have to change the rule then?

MR. HEBB: Yes, there's some question in my mind as to the validity of the Rule of the House, and I don't want to go there at this moment.

MR. MACKINNON: But we'd like you to. (Laughter)

MR. HEBB: But that's how I would read the Rule of the House.

MR. GLAVINE: I just wonder, in terms of putting a little bit of flesh on the bones here and having a couple of people come before the committee, like Bob Abbott, the Executive Director, and Paul LaFleche, Clerk of the Executive Council, would they be able to shed some light on the process that they engage in? That may even be, again, another step in helping us understand the process. They, in fact, may feel there are some limitations and so forth that they may like to present to us. Again, I agree with my colleague, we've made some progress here, and as a minority government I think they've been positive steps. Maybe a little further investigation here of the process would be worthwhile for the committee to make a recommendation or two as to how we may relate better to the Rules of the House or the need to change the rules, would be my recommendation.

MR. CHISHOLM: I guess I probably agree with what Mr. Glavine says, to bring those two people in to do some review on it. Having said that, the process was put in place back in 1995-96 . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: No, 1993. I remember it very clearly.

MR. CHISHOLM: You were probably part of the process at that time. I believe at that time what government attempted to do was take the politics out of these appointments, because at that time the government of the day made those appointments. There was no such thing as a Human Resources Committee that would sort of be in a position to be able to review, at least, the process.

I think the process has, over the last number of years, worked reasonably well. There are a certain number of people who do apply for these positions who don't want their names released unless they are appointed to a committee. I have them in my own riding, people I know who have applied. If they do get the position, well, they have no problem, but other than that they don't want their name out there.

We have to be very careful here, I think, as to what we're really doing. Is this the wish of the committee, or the wish of the Legislature to change the rules, well, so be it, those are the rules of the Legislature. I guess that's my position on that.

MR. HEBB: I just wanted to clarify, just so there's no misunderstanding when I explained the process vis-à-vis Rule 60. Although I explained there's a three-step process, the rule doesn't actually spell out the first part, there's no reference to the screening panel in the rule, the rule is only dealing with the point when the Cabinet or the minister sends the name forward. So I was partly explaining the process - it's only the latter part that concerns the committee that's actually set out in the rule, just to clarify that.

MR. MACKINNON: The minister is saying that in 1993 a move was made to take the politics out of the system. I don't think the politics are out of the system, because when you look at a lot of the appointments to the Liquor Corporation or wherever the appointments are made, I think politics is still a very integral part of the system. I think in all kinds of levels of government, we are moving away from it.

Like Ronnie, I served on two different municipal councils, and I remember the days when the council members used to get together and caucus to select, and whoever had the majority ended up with the warden and the chair of every committee. We've moved away from that in municipalities, and I think we are moving away, there are changes and there have been recent changes, I understand. So this is just one more step in a progressive move toward eliminating some of the politics - and there will still be politics involved in it, let's not kid ourselves.

MR. CHISHOLM: I certainly don't agree with everything that Mr. MacKinnon has said, but the way I see it, when the application does get to Executive Council, it in turn goes to the department directly. The minister or the minister's EA or the deputy has nothing to do with it. It's dealt with, I think, by the HR people in that department, to assess the applications, to determine who is qualified, and then in turn make a recommendation to the minister. I think the process works, I think it's a lot better than it certainly was prior to 1993, and I'll defend the process.

MR. GLAVINE: I'd like to make a motion that Mr. Abbott and Mr. LaFleche come to the committee just to shed some further light, perhaps, on the due process.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion is on the floor. Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

We'll make that arrangement.

Ms. Massey, is there anything else you would like to say?

MS. MASSEY: No, that's good.

[11:15 a.m.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: There's just a couple of things I want to say about this. I remember before 1993 - and this is a major step forward, this process - at that time, basically if someone knew a minister, they got appointed, and usually it was some pretty high-profile political friend. I've seen that change quite a bit. I think, as members here have indicated, I think there's always room for improvement. There's one thing that the committee is missing here, and it says reviewing, and approving or not approving candidates. So if you feel that your candidates are not appropriate, it's up to this committee to say so and vote against them.

MR. CHISHOLM: And that has happened.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That has happened, and there have been names, I can remember from 1993 forward, there have been several names not accepted. Therefore, we do have the power to not accept candidates for whatever reason you desire. Reviewing the resumé and identifying a person who may not be as qualified as you think they may be may be a good reason, but whatever. I think the committee members should keep that in mind. I think if they did not approve some of the candidates that it would send a real strong message to the government to maybe make changes.

There were no objections today at all to any of the appointments, so I assume everybody was totally satisfied. (Interruptions) It's a situation that if you're not, this committee is there to listen to those, of course. There's one thing that I will say, if we start talking about individual resumés, we will definitely go in camera immediately, because we don't want to see what happened before to an individual who was, not disgraced but embarrassed by this committee. We will do that. So anyone who has anything like that, or at any time anyone thinks we should go in camera, just indicate it instantly, and we'll make sure we do that. We want everyone's privacy protected.

With motions on the floor, we'll ask our clerk to move forward as quickly as possible with that. Our next meeting is going to be the Dexter Training Institute. We'd

probably have time at that meeting to discuss that, would that be appropriate, on December 12^th, if we can get the people in from Executive Council? Would that be satisfactory to everybody?

MR. GLAVINE: When Dexter was in the last time, it wasn't a really lengthy session.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, and we could extend the meeting, like we have unofficially done today, but this is an important topic, I feel. So we'll try to schedule for December 12^th, we'll get some more answers and go from there.

MS. WHALEN: Motion to adjourn.

MR. CHAIRMAN: An adjournment motion is in order and I have received that. We stand adjourned.

[ The committee adjourned at 11:17 a.m.]