HANSARD

and

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

Mr. Keith Colwell (Chairman)

Hon. David Morse

Mr. Alfred MacLeod

Mr. Chuck Porter

Mr. Charles Parker

Ms. Joan Massey

Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon

Ms. Diana Whalen

Mr. Leo Glavine

[Ms. Diana Whalen was replaced by Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay).]

In Attendance:

Ms. Rhonda Neatt

Legislative Committee Clerk

WITNESSES

Department of Education

Mr. Dennis Cochrane

Deputy Minister

Nova Scotia Teachers Union

Ms. Mary-Lou Donnelly

President

Mount Saint Vincent University

Dr. Jim Sharpe

Dean of Education

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2007

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Keith Colwell

MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning, I will call the meeting to order. The first order of business is Agencies, Boards and Commissions appointments.

The first one we have is from the previous meeting, the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation. What is your wish, is there a motion or discussion? Let's start with a motion, do we have a motion on the floor? Do you want to do these one at a time or all together?

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: One at a time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Could we go around the table and introduce ourselves.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Porter.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: Mr. Chairman, I so move Peter McCreath as chair and member of the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any discussion? Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I don't want to go through everything that was stated at the last meeting when it was put off for a month, but there is still a concern in relation to the politics of this appointment and the politics that existed when the appointment took place five or six years ago.

1

First of all I have to say that this is a person that I know, like and respect many of the things that he has done in his life. However, having said that, under his watch there have been some large bonuses paid out consistently in recent years . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: Could I just make a caution. If you are going to discuss anything that's not public in this forum, we have to go in-camera.

MR. MACKINNON: Certainly, this was very public at the time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm just cautioning, so you've been cautioned, that's all.

MR. MACKINNON: There were severance packages for people who were not there for very long durations, the head hunting took place and there was no success in a few cases and there were severance packages that were quite high. But there's another fundamental concern, the MLA for Pictou West and I are currently dealing with a situation which we've asked the minister on two occasions to investigate and we still haven't heard back. It's an allegation that the politics within the corporation is actually filtering down to the local store level, at least that is an allegation we are dealing with, and it's a real concern. The manager has recommended a person who has been there for 19 years for a promotion and that person is being bypassed. The allegation in Pictou County is that it's a political appointment that is, in fact, taking place.

Having said that and also the fact that this is a board that is so skewed gender-wise, with one female on that board, we feel that there should be some real searching done on a gender basis here as well. There should be some catch-up on a gender basis on this board.

Having said all of those things, the three members of the Official Opposition will, in fact, be voting against this appointment.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Does anyone else have any other comments?

HON. DAVID MORSE: Again, I have to point out that the Liquor Corporation has gone through an incredible evolution during the time of Peter McCreath's chairmanship and has significantly improved its bottom line for the benefit of all Nova Scotians. While I would not want to see the sort of activities that our colleague is talking about go on in any government agency, board or commission, or corporation, I do have to defer to the record of Peter McCreath during his time as chairman, as evidenced by the performance of the corporation, which has been extraordinary by historical standards.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any other discussion? Mr. Parker.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: I just want to reiterate what my colleague, the member for Pictou East, has said. You know, we do have some concerns about some of the hiring

practices within the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation and really it should be the best person, the most qualified, who should be hired. There is some evidence that that is not happening, you know, there are other criteria entering into the equation here, political or otherwise, you know, and it's not right. The best person should be hired - not other things. So that's just my comments on it.

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

The motion is carried.

Do you want to do the next three together or all individually? Together, okay. I would entertain a motion for that. Mr. Morse.

MR. MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I would move that John Biddle, Peter Green and Joe MacDonald all be appointed as directors to the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation.

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

The motion is carried.

The next one we have is the Department of Education - Cape Breton University. We will move those en bloc, any objection to that?

MR. MORSE: Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, I think perhaps because of the discussion surrounding the appointment of the chair, I just want to confirm who seconded the appointment of the . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: I would move that Sandra LeBlanc, Allan MacPhee, Roland Thornhill and Tuma Young be appointed to the Department of Education - Cape Breton University.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Seconded by Mr. Porter. Any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The next one is Department of Environment and Labour - Fuel Safety Board of Examination. Do you want to move these as en bloc or individually? En bloc, okay. Could I have a motion to move all those?

MR. PORTER: Mr. Chairman, I would move John McCormack as the chair and a member; James Wilkie, member; J. Robert Briggs, member, oil industry representative; Ronald Gillis, member, oil industry representative; Arthur Irwin, consumer/end user representative; Richard Nolan, member, propane industry representative; Colleen Rollings, member, natural gas industry representative; and Robert Sampson as a member and education and training representative.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Could I have a seconder for that?

MR. LEO GLAVINE: I second that.

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

The motion is carried.

The next one we have is Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage. It's the Sherbrooke Restoration Commission. Will we move those en bloc? Any objection to that? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Morse.

[9:15 a.m.]

HON. DAVID MORSE: Mr. Chairman, I would move that Ian Cameron, Darrell Harris and Derek Hayne all be appointed commissioners to the Sherbrooke Restoration Commission.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Could I have a seconder for that?

MR. GLAVINE: I'll second the motion.

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

The motion is carried.

That's all the appointments we have today.

MR. MACKINNON: Could I make a comment, please?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, it's interesting that we were mentioning gender in relationship to the Liquor Corporation. We have just moved 19 appointments of which

three are female. Does that send out some kind of a message in relationship to gender? Of 19 appointments this morning, three are female.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, that's been duly noted. I know we've sent letters off at the request of our committee to see if we can get this corrected over time. I don't think there's any objection from anybody from this committee that that will take place.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: I guess, as we'll find out a little bit later in this meeting today, the subcommittee is working very hard with regard to communications and postings for such ABCs, and hopefully that will have some impact on male/female numbers applying for different boards and commissions. I'd like to think that we're taking a positive step in the work that has been going on and will go on in the future.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any other comments? The next thing on our agenda is Nova Scotia Teacher Supply, and we have three presenters and we'll start with the Department of Education.

[ The witnesses are brought into the room ]

Okay, let's get underway. I want to thank all our presenters for coming today and I'm waiting to be enlightened by the deputy Minister of Education, as always.

First, we are going to start off with introductions of our guests. Then what I am going to do, with the concurrence of the committee, maybe I will get all three presenters to make their presentation and then we will have questions after that. That way we can sort of hear all three before we start and they may answer some of the questions we have before we start asking for answers.

I guess we will start off with our guests introducing themselves and the people they brought with them so we have it for the record.

MR. JIM SHARPE: My name is Jim Sharpe. I'm the dean of education at Mount Saint Vincent University. I have Dr. Robert Bérard who is the director of teacher education at Mount Saint Vincent University with me.

MR. DENNIS COCHRANE: I'm Dennis Cochrane, the Deputy Minister of Education. With me, Brett Woodbury, who is the registrar of teacher certification; Shannon Delbridge, director of corporate policy; Mike Sweeney, senior executive director of public schools; and Peter McLaughlin is with our Communications Division.

MS. MARY-LOU DONNELLY: I'm Mary-Lou Donnelly, president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and I have with me today the executive director, Bill Redden, and our Communications staff officer, Paul McCormick.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, everyone, for coming today. We always enjoy - I was teasing the deputy minister first when I came in, but it is always a pleasure to have him here. He always gives us really enlightened answers and brightens our days.

MR. GLAVINE: And some entertainment.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes. (Laughter) With that, you can go in any order you wish with your presentations. I would ask to keep them reasonably short because we have a lot of stuff to do today.

MR. COCHRANE: Mine will be very short, believe that or not. I'm going to try to give you specific answers because we have - actually the story is a fairly good one and I'm sure that the president of NSTU may want to dispute and discuss that, but we have some pretty good statistics that show our situation is not vastly different than other provinces but improving significantly. We have done a supply and demand study in 2001, we did one in 2004 and we are conducting one in 2007 which will do projections for us out until 2015.

I'm sure your questions will bring out the actual numbers behind these statements, but our supply and demand question is almost in balance at this point. Now, there are areas of the province and some subject areas where we have an issue with the supply. However, on whole, our supply and demand is almost balanced. In fact, we are looking at an excess supply in the near future. That is probably contrary to some of the other statements that either may be made or you have heard.

Actually, teachers aren't leaving the province in great numbers. We hear that too - that is not true. There are more teachers coming into Nova Scotia than are leaving, which is interesting. The teachers supply list is growing; the number of substitute teachers right now, is growing. The problem with that, as there are more teachers on the list, there is less work and that's a complication that is difficult to deal with. We do have issues, as I said, with regard to subject and some geography and we have more teachers teaching in Nova Scotia in the system in 2005-06 than we did in 2002-03. I think that is significant. Interestingly enough, in that same period we lost about 8,000 students and the number of teachers, FTEs, is up by 208. If you adjusted the teacher pool by 16 to 1, which is the pupil to teacher ratio, you would cut 500 teachers and instead of cutting 500 teachers in that four-year period, we actually added 208.

So the story is a fairly good one and not necessarily what you might believe. It's quite evident our budgets have increased and we have added a fair number of people. As you look at the class size initiative in Primary, Grade 1, Grade 2 and Grade 3 - all added teachers to the system. The core professional services and the efforts we've made to bring more resource teachers, more guidance counsellors and so on, have all added teachers to the system as well. So I don't think the situation is bad. I think it's getting better.

The projections in 2001 were tempered a bit in 2004, but it doesn't mean we don't have challenges. We are going to continue to work to solve and deal with those challenges. A couple of things on the horizon with regard to that are the review of teacher education in Nova Scotia - the bursaries in the French language program that we offer for people who want to go into French teaching, first or second language - and the fact that we negotiated an agreement with the federal government for a $7 million merger agreement when Sainte- Anne and Université Collège went together, and Sainte-Anne now has a campus here in metro. We've also allowed them to do the concurrent program in teacher education, and those two issues with regard to the first language of French, second language teachers have actually caused an improvement in the projections with regard to that. However, our demand in that field is still pretty aggressive. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Who would like to go next?

DR. JIM SHARPE: I can go. My name is Jim Sharpe. I'm the Dean of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University, and just a few remarks which I can hand out. All the government-funded B.Ed. programs in Nova Scotia - that's Acadia, Mount Saint Vincent University, St. Francis Xavier University and the Université Sainte-Anne - received far more qualified applicants than they have funded positions for. At Mount Saint Vincent, in the last three years, we've received between 550 and 600 applications for 135 positions. So it's quite competitive - applying and being successful getting into a teacher training program funded in the province.

This limitation on enrolment is the result of the rationalization of teacher education in the 1990s, where Nova Scotia's capacity to train teachers was reduced from 1,100 graduates per year to 450 graduates per year. At that time Nova Scotia training institutions argued that although few B.Ed. graduates were obtaining teaching jobs in Nova Scotia - it was estimated at that time that, of 1,100 graduates, only about 150 were getting jobs. Nova Scotia universities were training teachers who worked throughout Canada. The external review that was called the Shapiro Report, rejected this mandate for Nova Scotia universities. The report stated that the status quo enrolment, over 1,100 graduates, seems more than a little irresponsible considering the oversupply in other jurisdictions and the fact that accurate labour market planning is almost impossible.

The government also accepted the recommendation from the 1995 review to close the only Ph.D. program in education in Nova Scotia, the program at Dalhousie University. This has reduced our capacity in Nova Scotia universities to contribute to research and education, and train highly qualified administrators and academics in education.

As a result of the limitation on the B.Ed. programs in Nova Scotia, the universities in nearby provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and certain universities in Maine, particularly Presquile and Fort Kent, have actively

recruited Nova Scotia graduates for teacher training programs - some of these programs place their students in Nova Scotia schools for practice teaching.

[9:30 a.m.]

One Nova Scotia university, Cape Breton University, is offering a B.Ed. program from an out-of-province university, from Memorial University, while another university, Saint Mary's, developed an articulation agreement with a Maine university at Presquile. Currently, over twice as many Nova Scotia initial teacher certificates are given to graduates of out-of-province universities as are given to the graduates of Nova Scotia universities.

The 2005 teachers' pension agreement resulted in a large surge in retirements in June of 2006, causing shortages in speciality teacher areas like Mathematics and French, which were mentioned, and substitute teachers in certain geographic areas. The current age profile of the teachers will result in sustained number of retirements for the next few years. When the retirement bulge is completed - probably by about 2010 - declining school age population will result in a decrease in the number of new teaching positions in Nova Scotia.

The national and international demand for teachers will continue to be very strong - this is evident by over 35 school boards and international schools attending our teaching job fair that was sponsored by the universities in February.

Teachers trained in Nova Scotia have excellent reputations. We have a two-year B.Ed. program after degree, and it's a very strong program. So excellent reputations among western Canada, northern Canada. Graduates go to the Persian Gulf-Emirates area - there's a large number of international schools there - and to Asian ESL schools.

Mount Saint Vincent University and the other universities, as well - although I can't speak for them, but I know them personally - are willing to work with the Department of Education and the Government of Nova Scotia to respond to the interests in teaching and the need for teachers. We participate actively in the inner-university committee on teacher education with the other university funded teacher training programs - that's Acadia, St. FX and Sainte-Anne - and are working on the development on a joint proposal for a Ph.D. program in education. We're willing to consider expansion of our capacity to train teachers at our university, which will require additional faculty and space resources.

Mount Saint Vincent University and the other Nova Scotia teacher training programs have shown innovation and responsiveness with the development of international programs, international placement opportunities, and specialized training and upgrading programs. Mount Saint Vincent University offers Bachelor of Education and Master's of Education programs in the Caribbean, in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad - and trained all 700 primary school principals in Jamaica in innovative administrative practices.

We have demonstrated our ability to respond to identified educational needs in Nova Scotia, throughout Canada, and in many foreign countries. The low quota and limited funding for teachers trained in Nova Scotia has resulted in not accepting students from other provinces and countries in our local teacher education training programs - because of the limit, our preference, obviously, is for local graduates.

This limits the diversity in our classes and the impact of our programs. In an increasingly global society, it does not make sense to set training quotas only for local needs; in fact, the development of distance education and Web-based instruction makes it possible to contribute to education from any location. I ask that the Nova Scotia Government work with the universities to increase our capacity to train teachers and educate highly qualified administrators and researchers. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Dr. Sharpe.

Ms. Donnelly.

MS. MARY-LOU DONNELLY: I won't totally disagree with Dennis because it is true that we are graduating or issuing about 1,000 teachers' certificates - ITCs, Initial Teacher's Certificates - per year and over the next five years we will be retiring approximately 500 teachers per year. So, on the surface it would certainly seem that we have enough in that whole supply and demand figure.

What happens though, of those 1,000 people - and some people are coming back, as Dennis referenced, into our province - I would say through experience, not statistics, that these are mostly people who had moved away because during the 1980s they couldn't get a job in Nova Scotia. They moved away to Ontario, to Quebec and other parts of the country and they're now moving back because the jobs are available - but that makes it difficult for our young teachers to get jobs when people are moving back in.

However, new grads, when they cannot get a job, they leave the province and they go overseas to places like Korea or England. As Dr. Sharpe indicated, there's a huge demand for international teaching and a lot of our new grads go there. As well, we know that our stats show us that, within the first five years, more and more teachers are leaving the profession for a variety of reasons.

We've identified shortages in the teaching profession and I know the Department of Education has done that as well. Areas in which it is more difficult to get teachers would be in seemingly specialist areas like French first-language, French second-language, resource, fine arts, and the higher level math and sciences. Although we can still - to this date, mostly around the province - get people to fill those positions as full-time teachers, it's much more difficult in the rural areas to do that because most of our teachers, of course, want to come

to the urban areas, being the Halifax area and the Sydney area in Cape Breton. We know that's where most of the teachers go.

However, it is a different story in rural Nova Scotia. It is often very difficult to find, for example, French teachers. I'm sure you've all heard that in the Valley they were almost going to eliminate their French Immersion Program because they just cannot find the teachers to sustain that program.

As well, in the schools I visit, it's very difficult - sometimes we have to give out permits to teach. With permits to teach, those are unqualified teachers going into the schools. You have to meet a whole list of criteria in order to obtain a permit to teach, but we have two school boards in which we give out permits to teach, and these are for full-time positions in the French board, as well as in areas such as music, and fine arts in one particular school that I'm thinking of.

What that brings it down to is we have a real challenge with our substitute teachers. Although we seem to be filling those positions on a full-time basis, and it is getting more and more difficult to do that in the specialty areas. Where our challenges really lie are with substitute teachers. It is almost impossible to get substitute teachers in some of the more remote areas in Nova Scotia and it's a real issue.

The fallout from not being able to get the substitutes - and there are many reasons for that, if I have time, I'll get into them - you have teachers, first of all, using their marking and preparation time, which is very minimal anyway as it is now, and so they're using their marking and preparation time to fill in for teachers who are out sick. You have teachers coming to school who are sick and who shouldn't be in school because they realize that it's going to be very taxing on the rest of the staff. You have teachers being denied professional development opportunities and once you deny your teacher professional development opportunities, you are therefore denying the student the results of those professional development opportunities.

So if there's a PD experience that a teacher wants to take part in but if the principal cannot find a substitute, then that teacher doesn't get to go and, as I mentioned before, we have to give out permits to teach in order to accommodate that. So we have some ideas on reducing the demands for substitutes and on enhancing demands for substitutes as well so that substitutes will stay in the province. What's happening is, a lot of our young people are leaving because they cannot support themselves on a substitute's income and although there is lots of substitution out there, they could on a daily basis substitute every day but they're still not getting enough to support themselves and especially to support a family which many of our young people have, so they do have to move away.

We also have a paper which I can give out to you with a lot of these ideas in it. First of all, we see school boards providing flu shots for all of the teachers. Some school boards

already do that by the way but not all. We see enhanced cleaning services in the schools, hand washing stations in the schools, increased marking and preparation time, and paying metrage for substitutes to travel. This is an issue that is really - when you look at the geography of Nova Scotia and you take, for example, Guysborough County and you have people living in say Antigonish, they have to travel quite a ways to go to some of the schools in Guysborough County. It's often not worth their while to do that, to get in their car and to travel an hour or so to get there and to get back. So we are suggesting to boards to, over a certain distance, pay metrage for the substitutes.

The other thing that's very important is that our retired teachers are going to be making up our substitute force. Pretty soon there are going to be more retired teachers in the province than there are active teachers and a lot of those retired teachers are going to want to be substitutes but we have to make it attractive for them. We have what's called an Early Retirement Incentive Plan and very few boards are giving that out to retired teachers, but if boards were funded properly so that this was included in their budget so that they could offer those ERIPs to retired teachers, then that would certainly help with our substitute challenge that we have, especially in the rural areas because people who are retired, most of them are staying in their communities and they would like to substitute.

So those are some of our ideas, some of our challenges. We do recognize that we have areas in Nova Scotia that are very difficult to get teachers in those areas and I know that the department has recognized that. I have this if you want it later, or now?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Actually now would be good. We'll have someone pass it out, that's fine. Thank you very much for the three presentations. What I'm going to start with is a 10-minute session from every member and then we'll keep going around the table until we've got all your questions answered. I'm going to start with Ms. Massey but what I would ask you to do today, the committee members, is to direct your question directly to one of the presenters rather than getting a question and answer from each one. After they give their answer, if you want to redirect a question to the next one, if you would do that, please, and name who you want to answer the question. So I'm going to start with Ms. Massey and you have until 9:50 a.m.

MS. JOAN MASSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Certainly there was a lot of information provided to us in the last week. It's quite interesting when you read through that, it's a learning experience. Then coming here this morning, I can't help but notice that a couple of things that were said sort of conflict or take opposite stands on a couple of things that are happening in the province. For example, Mr. Cochrane, I think said that there are more teachers coming than leaving, which sounds on the surface like a good thing. Then, Ms. Donnelly, you explained that teachers who have moved away are moving back and taking jobs away from our new graduates - so that's looking at the same numbers in two different ways. Part of this job is trying to dig your way through all the facts and figures to try to come up with some sort of an answer, I guess.

When I went through the information, what I saw was a lot of problems that we definitely are going to face and we are facing now. The substitute teacher issue certainly is alarming and I know it does impact some parts of the province more than others, and when you look at numbers that say in each year a quarter of our substitute teachers from the previous year do not sub or teach in our public school system in any capacity, and five years later, after they have become a teacher, half of them aren't even in the education system - I mean it's a huge loss of young people, it's a loss to our economy. Our population base is shrinking so it doesn't only affect our students, it affects the whole province and I see it as a huge issue here.

I did like some of Ms. Donnelly's ideas on the flu shots and those sorts of things. Apparently there are things that the Nova Scotia Teachers Union are looking at that we can do to address these issues. Again, I think that's one of the biggest problems that I saw when I looked at it - the substitute teacher issue.

The second problem, because I only have so much time, I want somebody to reply to or talk about is the lack of teachers in certain subject areas and how are we going - because I don't think I heard anybody talking about that this morning.

[9:45 a.m.]

When you look through that information we've gotten in the report, on Page 30 it shows the majors of the teachers qualified over a 10-year period, from 1994 to 2003, and there are some really shocking numbers here. Only 180 math teachers qualified since 1994, and that's less than 3 per cent of total graduate teachers - and we've seen some pretty bad figures on how our students are doing in math.

So what are we doing to make sure that the graduates who are coming out are qualified in the areas that we need them the most? We are producing four times as many English teachers than we need, yet we are only bringing out 450 French teachers. Those numbers have reduced drastically. With Phys. Ed., now we are saying we are going to go with mandatory Phys. Ed., yet the numbers there have been reduced by about 90 per cent. So if I can direct questions, I would have to direct my questions to Dr. Sharpe on what are we doing to make sure that the graduates - or I don't know if that question should go to you - who are coming out are the ones we really need? Do we really need four times as many English teachers? So that question goes to you.

DR. SHARPE: That's kind of an internal problem of supply and demand. We always have more applications for social studies and English, many, many more in that area than in the hard sciences and math. We have a small French program. What has been happening is that certain special programs have been created. The deputy referred to the program at Université Sainte-Anne where at the Halifax campus of the Université Sainte-Anne, the former Beaufort School, they have started a 16-month - and usually our programs are two

years, two eight-month semesters, but this one runs straight for 16 months to produce French teachers. I think they are in their second class of that, and it's been very successful. There is expansion in other areas of French. I know Sainte-Anne itself is getting more French teachers, St. FX trains French teachers, and we train some as well.

In the math area, there has been a special initiative at Acadia University to do an integrated program - a five-year program - of a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Education in Mathematics. At Mount Saint Vincent, we have been working with our local math department. Math has not been a popular major at universities in the last 10 or 20 years, partly because a lot have been attracted away to computing science, but the numbers are going up in that and this year we are getting more applicants in that area. We do accept pretty well all qualified in that area that pass the interview, so the word has to get out that if you want to be a teacher in Nova Scotia, math and French are the areas that you should train in for your undergraduate education.

I think the more we can do in specialized programs toward those - the demand for that is not just in Nova Scotia, internationally there is a huge demand for math teachers. There are some very innovative initiatives that have gone on in this province for teaching mathematics, some that use Web-based instruction and that type of thing, and we can be a real leader in the world in terms of mathematics education. I think we have the capacity to do it, we just have to put the programs in place that get the critical mass to go ahead.

MS. MASSEY: Are we not getting people entering these programs because they simply feel that they're not qualified to enter? Is that part of the problem too, because we've gotten such poor showings in math here in the province?

DR. SHARPE: In order to get entry into the math program you would have to have five full units or 30 credit hours of mathematics for your undergraduate degree, and there just have not been a lot of math graduates from Nova Scotia universities. It is improving, but we haven't had the numbers there.

There have been other initiatives - Saint Mary's put a certificate program in place, more for existing teachers, where people who are out teaching but may have been assigned math and don't have the background can get those 30 credit hours, those five full units, and that program has been quite successful in upgrading math teachers. There has been a lot of professional development, working with existing teachers, but we need to do much more to improve the culture of seeing math as an area to teach in. When people think of teachers they think of an English teacher, a history teacher, a phys. ed. teacher. It hasn't been a high interest area, so we need to get that word out.

MS. MASSEY: I'm just wondering, Ms. Donnelly, if you can make some comments further about substitute teachers, and what are your suggestions - other than what you already talked about - on how we can address that issue? Also, how does it connect with this "term

teacher", the term teacher number seems to be quite high, especially in the Halifax Regional School Boards?

MS. DONNELLY: In terms of the number of term teachers?

MS. MASSEY: Yes and if you are a term teacher, does the time add up and you become a full- time teacher?

MS. DONNELLY: Yes and no - there is a whole process for that retention and working your way into a probationary contract. We have different contracts out there so if you have 100 per cent term, you can have a one-year term and a two-year term and then you go into a probationary permanent contract - and there are reasons why there are terms, but that's a whole other story. That's just the way it is and it has to be so.

One of the issues with substitute teachers is that, unfortunately, their substituting time doesn't count for any of that term time. So if we could have something - and that's something that would be negotiated through our provincial agreement - where some of that substitute time could be counted as time that would be worth something in terms of getting people into a term contract, and then therefore more quickly into a probationary permanent contract, that would also be beneficial. Some teachers are substitutes for a good number of years, and every year they have to compete with more and more teachers, younger teachers coming into the system, and that's always an issue as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey, your time has expired.

MS. MASSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the guests, Dr. Sharpe, deputy, and Mary-Lou for being here today. I think this is a very, very timely and relevant occasion for us to be looking at teacher education and the demand for certain specialty areas. So I appreciated the overview. I will start with the deputy minister. He's been known, at this committee, to sometimes pre-empt the minister with an announcement or two so I will go in that direction a little bit.

MR. COCHRANE: Thanks for the warning.

MR. GLAVINE: Has the government formulated a committee to review the B.Ed. programs in the province?

MR. COCHRANE: Yes.

MR. GLAVINE: Okay, so has it officially announced who are the committee members involved in this?

MR. COCHRANE: No. (Laughter)

MR. GLAVINE: It hasn't been launched.

MR. COCHRANE: No. The terms of reference are pretty much available and we haven't announced the names of the individuals. We have a bit of work to do in that I have to meet with them first. I also have to inform the universities as to the complete terms of reference. The things that Dr. Sharpe mentioned are all really good topics for that committee to discuss. We really have to have a philosophical discussion: Does Nova Scotia want to train teachers for the world? Because, quite frankly, we are training enough with what's coming in for our own jurisdiction - maybe not in the right areas - but we have to get back into what Shapiro discussed, is that our mandate?

So there are all kinds of things and you know we do have a couple of rogue relationships right now, CBU through Memorial and Saint Mary's through the University of Maine. We don't find either one of those and there has to be a discussion in Nova Scotia, do we need to do that, or how do we do that and how does that impact upon the other four institutions? So we haven't announced the terms of reference but I would guess, member, that in the next week and a half, we are probably ready to go.

MR. GLAVINE: I know there will be certainly nothing, or perhaps little in place, prior to the next university year. Is there a time line for this committee and at least a general frame of reference that we can be talking a little bit about at this stage?

MR. COCHRANE: The minister is looking for a report in December that would enable us to have some consultation on the report and, should there be any budget implications, would give us an opportunity to prepare that for the budget process which would be presented in 2008-09.

MR. GLAVINE: In terms of, if we take a look at the pattern, especially of the last three years, where we had upwards of 800 retirements due to that pension impact....

MS. DONNELLY: Let's leave the pension part out of it. (Laughter)

MR. COCHRANE: Okay. We each have our sore points.

MS. DONNELLY: I have a lot to say about that.

MR. COCHRANE: So does Rene Gallant, unfortunately.

MR. GLAVINE: But anyway, it is a reality and if we take a look at the numbers currently coming out of the three degree granting institutions - actually four including Université Sainte-Anne's - the number being trained outside of the province, the number that move from our programs to other parts of Canada, the United States, the U.K. and beyond that, as we know, are we making a real and relevant forecast for our replacements that will be required, especially over the next six years or seven years out to 2012 and 2013? I know the review is coming and it may very well fine-tune, be very specific and indicate where we are, but what is the general thinking at the moment? Perhaps I will start with Mary-Lou on that one.

MS. DONNELLY: I'm sorry, I was thinking about something. I was still on the pension thing, which I will comment on before the day is out, but just give me the bottom line question, again. I apologize.

MR. GLAVINE: In terms of the mix of numbers there - graduates within Nova Scotia, numbers trained outside of Nova Scotia, returning teachers, and we also know a significant number leave the province who are trained here already who are Nova Scotians - is our forecast real and relevant that graduates and incoming will meet the demand based on a very heavy teacher retirement? The next five years to eight years will actually see about 40 per cent of current teachers leave the system. So are we on track to at least meet these demands?

MS. DONNELLY: I would say that, given the statistics of about 500 teachers over the next five years retiring, and we are issuing certificates of about 1,000 per year that, yes, we would be meeting that demand. However, that's just in pure numbers. The reality is, as we've talked about, if we don't have the math teachers who can go into those positions, if we don't have higher course science teachers, if we don't have the French teachers, that's where we get into a problem.

So in terms of numbers, it would seem that we're putting out more than we're losing - yes, I would agree with that but we are not meeting the demands in terms of the areas in which we need the teachers. There's one area that I would like to talk about and that's the O2. We have an O2 program - Options and Opportunities. It's a wonderful program but that's going to be another area where we are not going to be able to fill those positions because people need to be qualified in those positions to be teaching trade-like courses and although we used to have something with the old vocational certificate, we no longer have that with our B.Ed. program. So I see that as another challenge for our future.

The other thing that I want to caution is in terms of, you know, saying to people here's what we want you to teach. Teachers go into teaching because they have a passion for teaching and often they have a passion for a particular subject area. So if we're taking somebody who really wants to teach English and saying you have to teach math, then there's going to be a difficulty there. So I think that we have to be cautionary there. We want to take

people who are passionate about math and who are studying math - most of those people are going into business education. As Dr. Sharpe said, they're not coming out with math degrees and then coming into university. So we have to do something to attract those people into our profession. We've started to do it with the nine French positions that the Department of Education has identified and there's some tuition support there. I think that we need to look at things like that.

MR. GLAVINE: I thank you for that, Mary-Lou. One of the comments or part of the comment you made there - I mean, isn't the current contractual agreements with teachers with school boards creating a bit of a problem, if you wish, with the specialty areas and the kind of qualified teachers that we need, especially at high school math and science? I know that as a former administrator, it was unbelievably frustrating to get that list from the school board of who I must interview for a Grade 10 math/biology combination because they had had so many terms and they had a probationary contract in another field totally divergent from the specialty area. Isn't that also an area that we may have to address?

[10:00 a.m.]

MS. DONNELLY: Well, certainly you didn't have to hire anybody who wasn't qualified and that was your decision on whether they had the years of experience. We go by two things in our contract and it's seniority and experience. So if they have the years of experience but they had never taught math before and they were not capable of teaching math, then they wouldn't get the job. You shouldn't have hired them.

MR. GLAVINE: Well if that's all, you would go back to your rural areas, right, and if that's all that's available, in an area that the school board is filtering into a particular school, is this list of people . . .

MS. DONNELLY: You still don't have to hire unqualified people.

MR. GLAVINE: Well, I'll still say there's something there in terms of that contractual agreement that is problematic for school boards. So we'll move away for a moment. Dr. Sharpe, in looking at the current B.Ed. Program . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine, you'll have to hold that thought, your time has expired.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to our guests for coming in today. It's always a pleasure to have education before us, a very interesting topic, and I'm sure it will be for some years to come. I find it interesting and I'm going to take a couple of steps back from where others have been.

In high school, our kids are generally thinking about where they're going in life, trying to make decisions through guidance counsellors, or their parents, or whatever guidance that may be. What are we doing at that level to start our kids who want to be teachers thinking about, or are we doing anything to say, you know, we have a need, it's math, it's French, or whatever that is, are we focused at that level, or we're letting our kids decide they're going to go, they're going to take their degree, and then on to. How is that working right now?

MR. COCHRANE: I think that it's taking awhile to follow the change. At one time, there were virtually no teaching jobs available and we had people on the substitute list for five and six years doing kind of yeoman service, trying to get in, and I think that's turned around and I'm not yet sure that people understand that there are significant teaching opportunities in Nova Scotia and education. As Dr. Sharpe has said, we have three applicants for every position. We also have some institutional issues that we've got to look at capacity to train math teachers and other ones as well. I think there's a fair number of people now looking at the teaching field - obviously, from three times the applicants, compared to the positions. Whether they're in the right fields or not, I guess, is something that will level out.

We have found, in the last couple of years, more people who have requested certificates, who had a math background, who had a science background and so on, but there's still a huge number of people in education programs coming out who are looking for the English and social studies in elementary. In fact, I have the breakdown of where they were from last year, and we still have - I try to go to a job fair every year, and I kind of work the crowd at the reception and say, you know, what's your background? You can tell by the number of interviews that they have, because the eight boards are there. We have a great setup. And they'll say, well, I've only got one. I'll say, let me guess what you're teaching? Your teachable is elementary social studies or English. And they say, how did you know that? Well, because I just talked to the student who has six interviews, who is the one graduate we had this year from Tech Ed, and Mary-Lou is right, at Acadia. And similarly, when I was St. FX, the kids who had the number of interviews were the French Immersion and phys. ed. kids.

It's coming, but we still have a lot more people going into elementary and that lag is going to take longer to pick up the need for. It will be there someday. But what often happens too, is as people move through the system, they'll sometimes go to elementary, teaching social studies or English, and therefore, fewer people are getting an opportunity to come into that field as well. So there's a whole number of factors going on out there, but we are getting more applicants now who have a background in some of those specialities that we need.

MR. PORTER: Thank you for that. I'm going to jump to the other extreme to that. You talked about an increase in the people coming back to this province to teach? Mary-Lou, you talked about them taking some of those jobs instead of - and I'm not agreeing or disagreeing either way because I don't know specifically the stats to what that is - are these

people coming back qualified to take those spots, or are they coming back, totally, and given jobs because of experience in the teaching field?

MS. DONNELLY: No, they're qualified. If they're coming back in and getting a job, they're qualified for the job that they're applying for or that they're given. I didn't mean to insinuate that it was a bad thing that it was a bad thing that these people are coming back - it's a very good thing. A lot of these people are coming back to their own rural communities. But what I meant by that was that, what it does was it's a way in which we are losing our younger teachers and if we have older teachers coming back, they're only teaching for a certain period of time. We want to get younger teachers into the system who are here to stay and teaching for longer periods of time, but we're seeing that they are leaving.

MR. PORTER: And I definitely took it as a good thing with them coming back . . .

MR. COCHRANE: And statistically, last year, we had 659 people come from other jurisdictions to get certification in Nova Scotia. Only 397 people left Nova Scotia to get certification in other jurisdictions, so 262 is the net gain. For example - the one that's interesting - in New Brunswick, 109 applied for Nova Scotia certification and came in, and 21 from our jurisdiction asked for the certificate for standing for New Brunswick. So I'd have to assume that of that 109 - given the fact that they're coming from New Brunswick - a number of them are probably going to be able to teach French first language, or French second language. So it's a good thing, and as the member for Kings said, if they're here, you don't have to hire them if they're not as good as a new graduate, or if they don't have the qualifications, but the fact that we have a choice. We issued 1,079 teaching certificates last year, for people to teach in Nova Scotia. That's good news. And then let the system pick the ones that we want and whose qualifications match what we need.

MR. PORTER: I agree, it is good. It's nice to have those numbers. There's no question. But there are a couple of issues and you talked about, I think your words were, unqualified people, you don't have to hire them, and I'll just use Mr. Glavine's comment that he was kind of going on there, sometimes there are no other choices in this province. That's a reality and I think we're working on that, no question.

Why wouldn't you take that person - and I know in a former life, we would hire people and then we would train them for what we needed. Why would we not take that person and, if it was math or English, or pick the topic, why wouldn't we be saying, okay, sir, you want to teach in - whatever the name of the school is - thank you very much, we're happy to have you but we're going to send you . . .

MS. DONNELLY: And that's a very good point. When I talked about unqualified, I'm talking about say, for example, higher level math and science. So if you're an elementary teacher, if you're a social studies teacher and you've never studied physics and you're expected to teach physics, that's an impossibility there. But if you're an English teacher and

you get presented with teaching a social studies course, teachers know how to teach. It doesn't matter what they're teaching, unless it's specific. They have all these strategies to know how to teach the material.

Social studies, I'm sorry, is not rocket science; English is not rocket science. You can have people who have more courses and more background to be able to teach those, but they're still able to teach those. So you have to be very careful of the word "qualified". Teachers are qualified to teach and once you get into teaching as a general spectre, then teachers are able to do that, unless you get into something like French. If you've never had French, you can't teach French; if you've never had physics, unless you take some courses, or if you've had a science background, then you can take some courses or do some prepping to teach the physics, but not if you've never had that. So I would say that principals are not hiring teachers for physics who have never taught physics before.

MR. PORTER: Let's use the same teacher as an example, or any teacher for that matter, in a school. There may be a need in a school and you want teacher A to teach some French or teach some math and they're saying, well, you know it's not really my strong point. Is there an option, based on collective bargaining, that says you know what? I teach English and I don't want to do French, thank you very much, I'm not going to do it. Is that something that's out there or am I missing - am I off on that?

MS. DONNELLY: You mean teachers refusing, is that what you're saying?

MR. PORTER: Exactly, that's where I'm going.

MS. DONNELLY: An administrator doesn't want to put somebody in there who doesn't feel confident or capable of teaching so it's a little bit more complicated than that, I think. There would be discussions and there would be a plan laid out how you were going to do this. Sometimes, yes, teachers get into a situation where they would prefer not to teach that particular grade level or subject but the reality is yes, they do have to do that.

MR. PORTER: Generally speaking, other than the physics, or if you've never taught French, generally that goes without a lot of trouble? Dennis, you have something you want to comment on there . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Well, one of the things that happens in our system is you can be hired to teach a certain subject and, after being there for a while, because of the way the system works, you end up maybe not teaching that subject.

We did see a phenomenon for a while, a lot of people who had some background in French got into the system and then, as soon as there were opportunities, because they weren't as comfortable as they'd like - for example, there are 240 people right now out there in junior high who have math credentials and could teach math, well qualified - only half of

them are. So they, for some reason, have chosen not to and, because of the movement of staff, positions open up and they've moved themselves out.

The corollary of that is, do you force someone to teach something they don't want to teach? That's not a good thing either. So somewhere in there there's a happy medium and I think Mary-Lou is right, that there should be a plan that you develop with that individual, you know what do you need to make you feel comfortable.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time as expired, Mr. Porter. Mr. Parker.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, folks, it's always interesting to talk about education. In a former time, I used to be a teacher and certainly a substitute teacher as well. I want to ask first of all around the substitute teachers. We have a lot of them, certainly in the province although in some areas we're short on them.

I guess the biggest complaint that I get from substitute teachers is that it is very difficult for them to get hired on full time. They're working as a sub and year after year they're still a substitute teacher - they've applied every year, I guess competing with new graduates hoping to get a permanent job. Some of them are leaving and some of them are going to other jurisdictions, other parts of the country or the world to get a job. Some of them have been in there for 10, 15 years as a substitute. So I guess they're saying, am I so good that they want to keep me forever as a substitute? Am I being held back because I'm good at this and they want to keep me in the system because if there is a scarcity of numbers of subs - Ms. Jones or Mr. Smith, they are good subs, let's keep them available in the system. So that is my question, first of all, are they too good to go on to be a full-time teacher and are they being kept in the sub roster for that reason?

MS. DONNELLY: That would be very unusual, that would be extremely unusual. I don't see anybody ever keeping a substitute teacher back for that reason. If there are positions available and it's a very good teacher, then that teacher will get that position, so I wouldn't see that as the problem.

What happened was - it was very unfortunate, but it was all the baby boomers who were keeping their jobs and there weren't more jobs being created with declining enrolment through the 1980s and 1990s. We were into a situation where there were not a lot of hirings and we know that and it was about a 15-year time span, so unless they were specialists in an area it was very difficult for them to get a job. With the baby boomers retiring - not because of the pension plan, contrary to popular belief - because what the pension did, only the people who retired last year would have retired over the next couple of years anyway because you couldn't just retire because you wanted to; there are rules and regulations around that. So it is the demographic, it's all of the baby boomers retiring and that is still happening and will happen right up until 2010 or so. What that has done is, that has opened the positions.

We do have some ideas, however, that are included in that paper for substitute teachers. One of them being that boards would hire substitute teachers as full-time teachers under contract so that every day they would know that they would have a job to go to, but it wouldn't just be on a substitute pay rate - it would be a contract. So we have some of those ideas that will help substitute teachers move along and that will count for time and then the next year, they could go into a term contract or something like that.

MR. COCHRANE: On the question, I agree with Mary-Lou. If someone has been substituting for 10 years and they have a background in math, science or physics, they are hired. Most of the people you are going to find probably are in that area that we don't have a demand for right now. They may be social studies teachers, they may be elementary English teachers, language arts and so on. I don't think you would find anybody held on the list against their will.

[10:15 a.m.]

Interestingly enough, in spite of the fact that we talk about a shortage, the average supply teacher in Nova Scotia last year taught 51 days and we're doing some things as well that are changing that. We cut by 40 per cent the amount of pullout by the department of bringing teachers out of the classroom into various things that we do - it wasn't an expenditure question it was a question of trying to keep our teachers who are well-qualified in their classrooms.

We often create our own supply problem. If you have a workshop with all the French immersion teachers in the province, I can tell you that day there will be nobody teaching in a French immersion class who is probably comfortable or they would have been hired to begin with, so we sometimes are our own problem.

We are looking at what we call PLC which is another discussion that we'll be having in the future which is a professional learning community, which changes the model of pullout and how we do that. Automatically, one aspect of our professional development model causes a shortage on that particular day because we pull all the people out to do certain things. I don't think you are seeing that there are people out there on the list that are being kept there, only because of the fact that they probably have an area.

Interestingly enough though, last year - and this is one of the signs of something that is not getting better - 40 per cent of the people who applied in the early job fairs had a background in elementary English. So we are still seeing that mix coming out of the institutions that doesn't quite reflect the demand that we see out there in the system. So that's a little bit of an exercise.

On Mary-Lou's point about retirements, we had a bump last year, there is no question. Only 45 per cent of the people normally retire in the first year they are eligible

because they don't want to go, they're not ready. Last year, we had a reaction to something that probably never will happen because the performance of the pension fund is better and it is doing well and the worry that they had, but nonetheless, a number of people went. The number of people this year so far, is down significantly. For the first time, maybe 60 per cent of the people that were eligible went. I think we're going to see a decline in the number of retirements this year and probably as Mary-Lou said, that will level out.

MR. PARKER: That concern about substitutes being permanent, always on the sub list and not moving up - I have heard that, maybe less so in the last year or two, but it certainly had been a major issue. I had substitute teachers coming to my constituency office with that very concern, but it's been a couple of years since I've heard it as much.

The other issue then for substitutes is the amount of pay they receive. They only get, I think it's less than half of what a regular classroom teacher gets. One time, they got the same as a regular teacher - I know when I was subbing, that was the case. Today, I think since 1993 or somewhere, an agreement between the department and the union that the subs get less. That too is a reason that some give, I can't afford to work 51 days a year, I have to go somewhere to get a permanent job. Is there any consideration being given to putting sub salaries back where they were that might attract more people into the classroom?

MS. DONNELLY: Certainly from the NSTU point of view, there's a big consideration to putting those substitutes' salaries back to where they were. They were not - just to clarify - exactly what a full-time teacher, there was a formula, but it was much more, you're right, it was much more.

Right now, at the end of this contract, 2008, they'll be up to $140 a day. Well, Mr. Cochrane just referenced that the average sub substituted 51 days. That's not a whole lot of money to sustain yourself and your family. A lot of graduates that are coming out of university, are older rather than younger and they have families and they have to support them so they do not stay in those substitution positions.

So, yes, indeed, it's something that, since we lost that in 1993, it is absolutely something that the NSTU has been trying to achieve or to regain through our negotiation process, but as you know . . .

MR. PARKER: Do you think that might happen?

MS. DONNELLY: (to Mr. Cochrane) Do you think it might happen? I think it might happen.

MR. COCHRANE: Certainly I'm willing to talk about it. I mean, $140 isn't, quite frankly, reasonable in this day and age. It's always a management issue. There are benchmarks where the number changes, though, depending on how many days you've been

in a certain position, it bumps up as you go. We negotiate those a bit too and tweak that a bit. After x number of days you'll go to a different rate, but the base entry rate is $140, which I would admit, is not attractive.

MR. PARKER: It's open for negotiation by the sound of it. I want to ask quickly about the permit to teach. In other words, there are not enough subs in some areas and you're going to people that are in the community that might have some qualifications, but not recognized as a teacher. How many of those do we have in the province and where primarily are they?

MS. DONNELLY: They're primarily in the CSAP Board, which is the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial - that's the French board - and the Tri-County board. They cannot get the French teachers. We've developed together a list of criteria. We don't just take anybody off the street and say, come on in and teach. They have to have a degree, they have to be pursuing something in education. I'm off the mark there, but there's a whole list of criteria that they have to meet.

MR. COCHRANE: And, as a department, we have to agree, and the union, with the board.

MR. PARKER: How many do we have in the province, do you know?

MS. DONNELLY: I'm sorry, I don't have that. I'm looking to Bill.

MR. REDDEN: Twenty, I believe.

MS. DONNELLY: Twenty is significant.

MR. COCHRANE: We probably wouldn't have 100 together, would we?

MR. REDDEN: No, my guess would be probably 70 to 80.

MR. COCHRANE: In the whole province.

MR. PARKER: Seventy to eighty. Okay. One other quickie here. I saw an ad in the paper over the weekend where French tuition is being offered free to students who want to study French at a recognized institution. Can you give us any details on that?

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're going to have to hold that question until the next round.

MR. MACKINNON: It's great to have such a great number of distinguished guests here this morning. Since there's not a Cape Breton member here today, I want to talk for just

a moment about Cape Breton University and the rogue arrangement that exists there, that the deputy referred to.

Out-migration is one of the most important concerns that I face in a rural riding. But no area, absolutely no area of the 18 counties in Nova Scotia - Cape Breton County has the greatest out-migration and the 18- to 24-year-olds who have been identified, phenomenal numbers leaving. Why would we not, and the obvious answer, I suppose, is that the new committee that the deputy announced for the minister a few minutes ago. . . .

MR. COCHRANE: No, I didn't. (Laughter)

MR. MACKINNON: . . . would look into this. But why do we not have a B.Ed. program there? We are sending so many students away and Memorial is getting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars out of this arrangement. Why not end that rogue agreement now?

MR. COCHRANE: Good question, and we felt that in order to take a comprehensive look at it, the review committee was the right way to go. When Cape Breton University expressed to me an interest in getting into teacher education again, I tried to send them to St. F.X. and said, why don't you have a discussion with St. F.X. about a relationship, first year at CBU, et cetera. That process never was successful. I think there may be some issues from way back that entered that and, as a result, CBU got into the arrangement with Newfoundland and Labrador without any concurrence by the department.

We fund about $5,500 a seat, I think, so we have 400 and the Shapiro Report said, this is the number. So, as a result, if I just jumped out, or the minister jumped out and said oh, we are going to fund that, there would be a fairly strong reaction from the other four that are in the business. So we felt the best way to do that was the comprehensive review. Interestingly enough, of that 659 requests that come back into Nova Scotia, 88 were from Newfoundland and Labrador in 2006 so they are the students who are probably getting their certification there coming back. So if you look at it strictly from a very rather self-centred point of view, we are not paying the subsidy but we are still getting the students. That doesn't make it right. Interestingly, also, 254 people applied from the United States, which obviously is the Maine influence; zero applied to go from Nova Scotia to the United States, which is interesting.

So that will be part of the review and that is one of the questions we said we would really like them to take a look at and come to some conclusion. We understand the issue in Cape Breton but we also understand, in the Shapiro report, they divided the goods amongst four (Interruption) three, that's right, and if you change that, it's going to have an effect. Three, that's right, it's going to have an impact on that, so better to do comprehensive than ad hoc.

MR. MACKINNON: Thank you. I have a question for Ms. Donnelly. I was involved, last week, in reading to Grade 1 students in an Adopt-a-Book program. I was talking with the principal in relationship to the numbers in classrooms today. The principal was talking about the increased numbers of students with disorders, the increased numbers of students who are living in households that have become dysfunctional. The ratio, although it sounds good - often you have a Primary being put in with a Grade 1 to make the numbers, to make the fit. So you are dealing with two classes, really, in the same class.

To go one step further with the special needs requirement, I guess there are two questions here: recruitment and retention in the special needs area and also keeping up with the new methods that are coming forward all the time in relationship to special needs. CBC Radio, today, was dealing with a story on special needs and some people feel that there is almost segregation through the back door that is developing here in relationship to special needs. I understand there is a committee working there, as well. Two questions: the first one is to Ms. Donnelly and that is, are you satisfied with these ratios that exist?

MS. DONNELLY: Well, in a nutshell, no. What we have right now is class sizes capped from Primary to Grade 3, which is a very good thing. Unfortunately, this year it didn't make it into the budget so it is not going to go forward for next year, and the cap is 25 unless it's a split class. So what we have seen happen is that in order to fill those classes, we have a lot of split classes throughout the system and the cap on the split classes is 20.

However, when you get beyond Grade 3, there are no set numbers. We try to keep those numbers down as much as possible because of the class composition and it's one of the things, once again, that we talk about in our negotiations. We try to get something in there to deal with not just class size but class composition as well, because you can have a class of 20 students that can be much more difficult to handle than a class of 35 students depending on the mix of the class.

So there are all kinds of challenges that come with having special needs in the classroom and it's not just the special needs and the disorders that you talked about, it's also different levels of students. Gone are the days when we were in school when you taught to the whole class. Because we are an outcome-based education system right now, we teach to students individually. So students are achieving outcomes individually and because of that teachers have to be working individually with their students. As well, the expectation has increased and the demands have increased just in terms of what the teachers need to do with the students. So it's a very big issue out there.

So are we satisfied? No, we're not. We have to achieve something for class size and class composition but, once again, it's difficult to put that into language because something that may work for one class will not necessarily work for another class. So you have to have a lot of flexibility in that area and we're still working on that.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, to the deputy as a follow-up on that, what is the real work that's being done by this committee in relationship to special needs right now, and I do have a question for Dr. Sharpe.

MR. COCHRANE: They're out - and one of the hearings I think last night was in Halifax and that's probably why the follow-up today by CBC - they're having a series of hearings across the province and we did a review of special education back in 2001 with what we called the SEIRC, Special Education and Implementation Review Committee, and there were 22 partners that took part in that and gave us a whole series of recommendations, many of which we've implemented.

One of the big ones was more core professional services - more resource teachers, more guidance counsellors, more speech language pathologists, more psychologists, all that, and on top of that we have put together about $11.2 million on the class size cap in the last number of years. They're out reviewing the special education programs to see if what we're doing is working, if the model we're using is the best, and also to take a look at the impact upon the system, not only our service to the special needs child but the other children in the classroom and how they're served as well. A pretty comprehensive review - not an easy task - and we're expecting them to have a report to us I think late in the Fall or early in the winter.

We've got about four committees on the go out there. I don't think we can get any more balls in the air or not but, you know, the nice thing about that, it's a moving system and we're looking all the time at what we do. So they're doing some good work. They're going to hear from everybody out there who wants to have an opinion. The minister will take that information and look at the recommendations and decide what kind of action we're going to take.

[10:30 a.m.]

MR. MACKINNON: Dr. Sharpe, you mentioned about increasing our capacity to train. I would just like to give you an opportunity to make a bit of a case in relationship to that, to elaborate a little bit more on that, because you had indicated that sort of 550 to 600 applicants at the Mount of which you take 130.

DR. SHARPE: Yes, 135.

MR. MACKINNON: Yes, 135. St. F.X. maybe even a higher ratio?

DR. SHARPE: That's right.

MR. MACKINNON: My daughter who got in there a couple of years ago, in B.Ed., two years ago in fact.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon, I'm going to have to cut you off. You'll have to hold that thought until the next go-around. Mr. Glavine.

MR. GLAVINE: Mr. Chairman, I was going to ask a question to Dr. Sharpe when we finish off here. You know, regardless of all the philosophy of education and the rationale, there's no question that when the Shapiro Report came out, as was happening across the country, there were some provinces that moved to a two-year program, some did not go to the two-year program. Was a lot of it to control the number of teachers that indeed were coming out in Nova Scotia? We know we put out a good quality teacher here - we have historically through the Teachers' College, and we have through our institutions.

Do we need a two-year program? I'm waiting with bated breath to meet a B.Ed. student who says they needed the second year at university. Would you comment, please.

DR. SHARPE: Yes, the two-year program actually existed before the Shapiro Report, Acadia had already gone to the two-year and it was chosen on quality, for two reasons; one, it is difficult for a high school student, while they may know what they want but they may not have the experience to choose, so it was felt that you get a more mature choice after the first degree. So that was the first decision.

The other was to extend the time in the classroom. Our two-year program has 25 weeks in the classroom, so 15 is the minimum - we're well beyond that. It is also spread over two years. There is talk of a one-plus-one program where you do all your university courses - you go in the school for a year. It's far better, I think, pedagogically, to start by observing the school, start with some practice teaching, go back into the university courses and have the discussion, have the reflection on the practice. We use that reflective practitioner model that kind of builds that professional learning community that can go on. You can't do that if you just do all your academic courses and no experience in the school, which would be a one-year program that is divorced from the practice teaching, and then a one-year internship where there is no connection with the university and no real opportunity for reflection from an academic position on it.

So I mean the two-year program, I think, has been proven across the country. People say we're four years plus two in Nova Scotia. That's not necessarily the case. Most of our Halifax universities have a three-year degree and we can accept graduates of the three-year degree for elementary education, if they have the right topics. They can be accepted for secondary. So if it's carefully planned it can be a five-year program, which is the new standard being pushed for in the United States. There has been a new commission there that calls for a five-year program for teacher preparation. They say it could be two degrees, it could be a master's degree, so there is that idea, master of arts in teaching, there's different models out there for it.

I think the quality of that instructional program is very strong and it has been shown by our graduates doing well in other jurisdictions.

MR. GLAVINE: Well, certainly that can be argued with because many of the universities have a full one-year program, September to August in some of the jurisdictions. So they have lots of time as well to be out in the classroom through the school year.

DR. SHARPE: And again, we have some 16-month programs here, which we could expand.

MR. GLAVINE: So there are different models, there is no question. I personally like the one-year and an internship that I think is great and here's why, because right now when we see about 40 per cent of our teachers who will leave over the next five to eight years, and I look at some teachers who are really the cream of the crop, who have those years of experience and are identified as master teachers - for a student to spend a year with them in the classroom, I think, is modelling and instruction that cannot be duplicated in the university setting. This is why young teachers are saying, it was in my first year teaching, it was the cumulative 15 weeks or 16 in the classroom over the years that I really gained the most from.

That's why I advanced the idea of a year internship, or an integrated program, and the integrated program where you take five years, I find that I can't find an argument for six years for an elementary teacher to be trained. So I'm just wondering whether or not we have the best fit in the province now and that's why certainly I welcome the review.

DR. SHARPE: The Shapiro Report didn't allow the integrated program. It has been brought back, Sainte-Anne's has it, Acadia is bringing it back for math teachers and you know through counselling we can advise teachers of that as well, so I think that five year integrated would be a good model to consider.

MR. GLAVINE: I'm outnumbered here by my colleagues today three to one, so I have to get questions in quickly. One of the interesting phenomena, certainly being familiar with 130 graduating at Acadia, is that there are 100 female teachers and 30 male teachers. Is that a bit of a skewing as well, that is worrisome?

DR. SHARPE: It's true in education. It's actually true in universities overall. Over 60 per cent of university graduates are women, every professional area except for engineering and computer science. Law, medicine, accounting, pharmacy, there's a majority of women. So it's not surprising. Now, again, with the question of boys in education and boys' role models, the achievement of boys in education, those are some very important issues that have to be addressed by the system. Especially men in elementary, we really have an affirmative action program there to try to get more men in elementary. It's desperately needed.

MR. GLAVINE: Mary-Lou, one of the areas that my colleague, Clarrie MacKinnon, referenced, of course, was the number of high-needs children in our classrooms. That has dramatically changed. Last year, I had those calls from a couple of schools, in particular, that had extraordinary situations that ended up with teachers asking, of course, for a transfer. Where you had that perfect alignment of 30/30/30, you had 30 in French immersion, then another 30 who were taking perhaps core French and a music program, and then you had the 30. And you had 8 to 10 high-needs children in those classrooms. Generally, do you think our B.Ed. programs are truly addressing those needs of the multiple challenges that some individuals have, plus the multiple over the span of learning disabilities, physical disabilities that are certainly now part and parcel and welcomed in our schools, but provide an immense challenge for the average graduate of a B.Ed. program?

MS. DONNELLY: Well certainly over the last number of years, the B. Ed. programs have incorporated those courses into their programs and I think that Dr. Sharpe perhaps could speak a little bit more in depth on that particular issue. But we feel that the students are getting - you can only get so much in a theory course, but as you said, you've got to get out there and you have to be working with these students and you have to be learning how to do the IPPs, and you have to be learning what the different disorders or disabilities are. Once students get into their practice teaching, they're working very closely with the co-operating teacher to do that. So you're never going to be 100 per cent prepared coming out in the first, second and third year of your jobs, because in any job there's a learning curve. So you have to take on that job and learn through experience but in terms of the B. Ed. program they are addressing that situation. They recognize that's a very big part - every teacher out there will experience special needs students in some regard over their teaching career and so they are providing them with courses.

The other thing is that because a lot of these disorders are new to us they're still being - for example, autism - I mean there's so much more work that has to be done in autism, or with autism and so a lot of these disorders, as I said, we're still learning as we go along because the research out there isn't always readily available.

MR. GLAVINE: The other question I had - and I was wondering about a comment from the deputy minister on this and maybe also from Dr. Sharpe - we have some degree of specialization in our B. Ed. programs now, where you have physical education at St. F.X., and music and art, I believe, at the Mount. Would you be a proponent of a more specialized thrust for each of our institutions where you create a centre of math excellence for instruction or math science, and then technology at another institution? Would you be a proponent of that, deputy minister?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine, your time has expired.

MR. GLAVINE: My gosh, you're cracking the whip.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Today - there's a lot of questions here. Mr. Porter, just before you start - any of these questions that have been asked, you can answer these in a wrap-up, if you don't get back to the particular member. Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and just a couple of questions. One, when we talked about the - I'll call it the rogue agreement - how are the schools different, and I'll use the U.S. schools like Maine at Fort Kent and Presquile? Is there any difference in the U.S. schools - the way they're teaching? Obviously we agree with their methods, or do we?

DR. SHARPE: My understanding is that they have to get certification in their home jurisdiction and then apply for it here. So basically they have to teach a U.S. curriculum in the United States, they have to learn U.S. history and they have to complete the practice exam. So they are getting a different education than in Nova Scotia.

MR. COCHRANE: In most of the cases, the universities in Maine have adjusted to our demands. In other words, they know they have a significant population from Nova Scotia so they're making sure that our students there get basically the courses that will allow them to qualify in Nova Scotia.

A number of them, or some of them, may be short in some areas and therefore they get a bridging certificate when they come into our province. The Praxis exam is an interesting one and we've had a lot of students who have had difficulty with that because our history in our system is primarily Canadian and world and, of course, Praxis involves a lot of American and we've had some issues with students having difficulty with that.

Dr. Sharpe is right, you have to get your certification in the jurisdiction where you took your teacher training, thus our Cape Breton University students will get their certification in Newfoundland and Labrador and then transfer it to here.

There are some issues but they've actually upgraded significantly, I think, their offerings to match our certification demands.

MR. PORTER: That leads into my next question and maybe Ms. Donnelly would be more appropriate to answer this follow-up that I have to that - how does that impact the hiring process, or does it? Is there a percentage of those kids who go, say, to schools outside of Nova Scotia who get hired versus those who go to school inside Nova Scotia?

MS. DONNELLY: There's no quota there, no, not at all. It's by their qualifications, but I did just want to add that although they are schooled in the United States, a lot of these students during their practice teachingcome to Nova Scotia and do their practice teaching in Nova Scotia, so they get to learn our curriculum.

The other point, and it's a point that I made before, a teacher learns how to teach. So if it's an elementary teacher and they're doing a different science or social studies program, for example, in the United States, they will have those strategies to come to Nova Scotia and be well qualified and well capable of teaching the Nova Scotia curriculum. They just have to learn the material, but in terms of the teaching strategy, that's what they get in a B.Ed. program.

MR. PORTER: Maybe a quick question to Dr. Sharpe with regard to your comments, Ms. Donnelly. A teacher goes and learns the basics in how to teach - it is years after that, they go and they're learning specific to math, specific to French, et cetera, on a topic?

DR. SHARPE: Yes, we take in 135 a year in the B.Ed. program. We actually have 1,000 students upgrading their certificates with Master's Degrees, including specialized programs in math education, in supporting learners with diverse needs in literacy. So there are a lot of good opportunities out there for upgrading qualifications that the universities are offering.

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. PORTER: And maybe a question to either the deputy minister and/or Ms. Donnelly. We talked here this morning about special needs students. I know it was a few years ago that I was in school, but I remember in those days classes were fairly good-sized classes. We didn't have split classes in those days that I recall, but we still had special needs children - they may not have been diagnosed at that point in time, but those kids still existed. I do realize today that we've dubbed them with names, diagnosed them with certain disorders, or whatever you want to call it, and in a way I see that as unfair personally because I think that was there always and the teachers always had to learn how to work with those students.

I see the EAs today - TAs or whatever we're calling them now - in the classes a lot. This seems to be something of great benefit - is there any increase in those numbers? The qualifications are more of what I guess I'm getting at there. Where do they qualify in regards to a teacher who has gone to school, done the B.Ed., maybe their specifics and then how qualified are these folks - or what are the minimum standards, maybe is a better question?

MR. COCHRANE: We've raised the bar. At one time, high school graduation was what you needed, and looking at the specialty of the work that they do, because at one time a lot of the EAs were involved with physically challenged children, more so than the other issues, now we see the other issues probably becoming more prevalent.

Actually there's a two-year program, I think, in most jurisdictions. Cape Breton has done some work through some private career colleges doing that and so on. We've had a significant number increase, we're up to about 1,700 EAs in the system, and with the

declining enrolment, it's going the other way. There's no question, it's a growing industry and we've asked for better qualifications and more qualifications. It doesn't mean that those that are there aren't qualified; it means that we've changed the kind of student that they're working with, so we've actually upgraded the initial entry point qualifications.

MR. PORTER: I guess I'll look at the French, the math, and get some background in those areas - are there ever substitute teachers that do those jobs?

MR. COCHRANE: There would be a mixture of people that would go to that, some would be teachers, others could be early childhood development workers, others could be human resource counsellors. A lot of people who go to the system bring with them a certain level of qualification.

MS. DONNELLY: And certainly sometimes substitute teachers are on the list - in the Halifax region, we call them EPAs - and they like getting those jobs because they pay more than a substitute teacher on a daily rate.

MR. COCHRANE: Particularly in Halifax.

MR. PORTER: Is that something that happens outside of the city, outside of HRM as well? Do we see that in Cape Breton? Do we see that down in the Valley?

MR. COCHRANE: There would be some people who go on both lists.

MR. PORTER: Interesting. I think that's really about all the questions I had. Again, I want to thank you very much for your time here today and the answers provided.

MR. PARKER: Mr. Chairman, I guess I want to return to the subject of too many teachers in some areas, like English teachers, social studies and so on, and not enough graduates coming out in math and science - and phys. ed. now is a mandatory course so we're going to need many more of those types of teachers. Is there any actual work being done to try to match up those with an undergraduate degree - getting their B. Ed. for the needs that are there in the maths and sciences and so on - or is it pretty well left to the board to try to hire the people they need out of the graduates who exist? Is there any matching up done before they are entered into the program to try to balance it out a bit better?

MR. COCHRANE: I have an opinion, but Dr. Sharpe may not like it.

DR. SHARPE: Go ahead, I'll respond.

MR. COCHRANE: I think part of every university is driven by tenure. I think there has to be more flexibility in who we bring into our institutions so that it can be more responsive to the needs we might have - and that's not my problem, it's the problem of the

universities. I do think in the future - and one of the things I would like to come out of the review of teacher education is that the minister signs an agreement with the various institutions to provide that service for Nova Scotia, and we have a little more to say then about the corridor, the number of students who may be in a particular area of training. It may get to Mr. Glavine's question about specialized in certain locations and so on.

I know it is a difficulty and I know it's a bit of a problem. We have to get into more relationships with our universities where we do secondments of our master teachers into the university for a year or two and back out. Now that always causes collective bargaining problems for the university, and I know that - and quite frankly my concern is that we have an institution that is able to meet the needs of our system and that's what the minister is paying for and that's what Nova Scotians would expect. I know there are difficulties associated with that, but I think the universities are doing a good job given a number of limitations and making sure that they do recognize that these corridors need to be adjusted.

They are doing a lot more work in special needs, they're doing a lot more work in math and science, they're doing better recruitment. I think the study and review of teacher ed. will have a chance to have a good discussion about that and how we're able to do it and can we do it differently and better.

DR. SHARPE: Can I respond? We can get into a philosophical discussion on tenure, and universities are facing similar problems with teacher supply and professor supply and demand. In education, once we completed our hirings this year - we are hoping to hire three - we'll have had 15 hires in the last five years at Mount Saint Vincent. That's half our faculty will be hired within the last five years, so it shows you how dynamic our new hires are.

We do have seconded teachers, I have a seconded teacher this year in the area of technology. We do have term teachers, people who are recently retired, who bring a tremendous amount of experience back into the B. Ed. program, so we're really quite flexible in terms of who we want there, and we'd have the flexibility to respond - we'd have flexibility for special programs. The irony is, we're doing more of this outside of Nova Scotia than we are in Nova Scotia. We have the flexibility to respond to the needs that are there. Math teachers would be a good example - Acadia has responded, we could respond in that area, it will take a while to do it, but those teachers can be trained.

MR. PARKER: Do we need quotas - like 30 per cent need to be math teachers, for example?

DR. SHARPE: The problem with quotas is that it's so hard to predict where you are going to be in five years when you're training - that's common in Shapiro, the difficulty in training. We'd need, I think, areas of focus. We need more focus on math and science. Well, French - there has been a focus with Sainte-Anne. For instance, Sainte-Anne was given a quota for French in 1995 that they were never able to meet. So just giving a quota is not

going to solve the problem. It has to be a much more proactive system for encouraging graduates to do the program.

MR. PARKER: Now, reading through this report, there was an audit to be done, I guess, to determine the ratio. Obviously, that hasn't happened yet. I'm just wondering why it has been delayed?

MR. COCHRANE: Well, it has happened and we haven't released it. We found some flaws in some of our assumptions. We did do an audit of the number of teachers in the various fields and so on and I'll give you a good example of the kind of interpretation you can't make. We might have two teachers, one teaching nine sections of math and one teaching one section of math. The teacher teaching one section of math may not have a math background. So the assumption was made that, wow, of those two teachers, 50 per cent didn't have a background whereas, really, only 10 per cent of the math courses were being taught by someone who didn't have a background.

So we really had to go back and look at the numbers. We went to the superintendents and we showed them the numbers that we got and the assumptions that we made. They reacted and now we've done a fair amount of detailed work in each of the boards about that issue. We expect, and at one time I had said I thought it would be December and I think I indicated later - particularly to Mr. Estabrooks who had looked for it - that we weren't able to give out the report at that time because it was questionable and the statistics were being reviewed and we're now looking at probably June or early summer with some summaries as to an audit of the professions and who's teaching what and where.

MR. PARKER: I had asked a question there previously about free tuition for French graduates. Can you give us the details on that and is it being looked at for any other sciences or math, or O2, or physical education, or whatever?

MR. COCHRANE: It's not right now but the French one, and I'll say this because the deadline is April 30^th, so there are opportunities for nine people in Nova Scotia. We'll pay the last two years of tuition for six students in French second language and three students in French first language. They must have a contract with a board, a place to go, but they also have to agree to teach in Nova Scotia for two years which is great, I'm a great return-for-service fan, and this will allow us to give a bursary to pay their tuition completely for the last two years of their program. So there are nine of them. The deadline for applications is April 30^th. So your question is timely. We're quite excited. We'll see how this goes. There may be a market for some of the other specialty fields that we want to get into but this is the first one of those in our province.

MR. PARKER: Would physical education then be another possibility? I know with mandatory physical education coming on, you're most likely going to be short physical education teachers.

MR. COCHRANE: We've actually hired, our goal was to hire 60 physical education teachers in a four-year period. We've got a significant number in place. I'm not sure that the same shortage exists there. There are a fair number of physical education teachers in the system who aren't teaching physical education who might like to get back into it in a very professional way. So it doesn't have quite the same difficulty because we do have a significant number out there. There is a large corridor in - I think they call it kinesiology, actually, at St. F.X. So I'm not sure that that's going to present the problems that maybe could be anticipated.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, a very quick question for Ms. Donnelly before moving on to Dr. Sharpe with a question that he had. First, I have to clarify this question. I believe that I would be one of the last people in this room to take a shot at a union contract, okay. Having said that, in relationship to the 69 days that retired teachers have to teach, we heard that the average substitute is getting about 50-odd days, right. We know that a lot of teachers when they retire, it's game over, they never want to go back into the classroom again. But we have so many others who are looking at those 69 days, and I already know people who say, you know, I have 50-some in so far and I'll get my 69 before the end of the year. What is this doing in relationship to keeping young people here? Is that 69 fair is my question?

MS. DONNELLY: We need those people to do the 69 days in Nova Scotia because our shortage of substitute teachers is at a crisis level and the teachers, the retired teachers in rural Nova Scotia and principals will tell you that they depend on those retired teachers to come in and to do those 69 days. I know teachers who are calling our office and are saying, can I teach over the 69 days? There are big consequences, financial consequences, for going over those 69 days and we are trying to work something out within our own organization that we can expand that because some jurisdictions across the country have more than 69 days but that is a whole other issue. We are doing that because we need to keep those substitute teachers. Young kids are not sticking around here to substitute. They cannot support themselves and their families to do that. So we are, as I said, in a crisis situation.

The other thing is, we have a lot of new, we have a whole new generation of teachers that has come on the scene with the baby boomers retiring. These teachers are young and they are having families and they are taking maternity leave, which is far longer than maternity leave was in my day or your day, and they have a whole year of parental leave. We need substitutes to come in and to take their place. Unless we have those substitute teachers to do that, then we are putting unqualified people in the classroom. So the 69 days, I would say, is not taking away from younger people who want to stay on and substitute.

MR. MACKINNON: Just as a very quick comment, I know that there are some who are staying in the province who are, in fact, in a crisis mode. I can think of a couple of single-

parent situations and those people are staying in Nova Scotia and they are not getting very much teaching time. Having said that, getting on to the other really important question that I believe that Dr. Sharpe has to expound a bit on, was his comment that we should increase our capacity to train.

DR. SHARPE: I say that not just for Nova Scotia, though. Obviously, if there are 500 positions and we are only training 300 teachers, there is a deficit there, though it is being matched by out of province. The need for teaching is a global need for teaching, and there is a very fundamental shift that happened in the Shapiro report that goes really against the whole tradition of Nova Scotia higher education. My grandmother, in 1905, went from the Maritimes to Wetaskiwin to teach. There is a really deep tradition of training teachers who teach wherever and then they come back. She came back after five years. It's not bad coming back. Teaching is often a first profession that people take on that go on to multiple other professions and that's not necessarily a bad issue as well. It is a profession that has a good pension and is good to stay with. I'm not trying to take away from that but we have to get beyond our parochial vision of just training for Nova Scotia. Our universities are training for the world. The jobs are in the world.

That doesn't mean we are leaving Nova Scotia. We could be teaching here by distance. We could be working in the Carribean as consultants. We could be training teachers from the Carribean. We could be training teachers from Africa. If you look at the worldwide need for education, it's one of the prime development needs in every UN report and we have a tremendous contribution we can make to that. If you just say, oh, we are only training teachers from Nova Scotia, it cuts that off. We have to focus on beyond Nova Scotia.

MR. COCHRANE: And I think that would be a good discussion to have before the review committee. Again, it comes back to those of you who sit in the Legislative Assembly - how much money do we put into a field where we may have our own demands met and that's a good philosophical discussion for the role of Nova Scotia universities? I think it's a timely discussion and a reasonable one for us to have.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If I could ask the presenters to give a wrap-up and any questions I cut you off on, you have the opportunity now to answer them. Sorry about that, but we have to keep our schedule tight. We can start with Mr. Cochrane.

MR. COCHRANE: Just a clarification of the 69 days. It's really a pension implication. It's not imposed by the department. I did survey the superintendents last Thursday and we had a discussion about that. Only two out of the eight felt that we should try to do anything about the 69 days. There is a bit of a balance and we don't want - I mean people retire for a reason and we want their expertise for a period of time but it is really the new person coming into our system to make a job, bringing up a family, living, spending, existing happily in Nova Scotia. So there is a balance out there. Quite frankly, I'm not interested in seeing the 69 change. I said six out of eight superintendents weren't interested

in us tinkering with that either but we do need the expertise of those individuals and that's a good thing.

Mary-Lou used the word "crisis" and I have some difficulty with that kind of emphasis. We have 2,578 people on the substitute teachers list in 2005-06, which is 279 more than we had in 2002-03, and we issued 1,079 certificates last year, which is about 300 more than we issued back in 2002-03.

Whether they're the right people in the right place, subject-wise and geography, is another issue. But we can do all kinds of things. We do have two boards now that have permanent substitutes on their list and they've actually engaged them full-time to do that kind of thing. We do have some ERIF opportunities. Yes, boards are using it less. We are trying to reduce our pullout and we are looking at the professional learning community which does do PD in a different way. I do think we all recognize there has to be some better benefits for people in that particular field and that's a subject of negotiation, and we're always interested in looking at that.

One of the things I want to comment on in closing is that we do have good institutions and good training is going on. The review of teacher education is really a reflection of the time and the fact that we have to take a look at how we do things and is there a different way to do it. Also, we have some peripheral problems out there that we have to deal with and we felt, as I said earlier, better to do that comprehensively than kind of ad hoc deals between the department and various institutions and so on.

I think the exciting thing is we have good teachers in Nova Scotia. If you look at the jurisdictions that are lining up to come to your job fairs and looking at our teachers, that's a good sign. What we have to do is make sure that we keep a vibrant system, and we have done that. We've actually added, significantly, 208 more teachers now - more FTEs than we had in 2002-03, so there are teaching opportunities in Nova Scotia. We now have to match up the opportunities for the qualifications, and I think that's coming.

The good news is we have a lot of well-qualified individuals working in our school system with our children and we'll continue to do all we can. We've made great gains since the supply and demand study of 2001, and the study in 2007 will give us more information. Quite frankly, I think we've kept ahead of the curve and everyone working together has enabled us to make some progress. I don't see it as a huge problem in Nova Scotia. I see it as a problem we have managed so far, and we will continue to manage in the future.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Cochrane.

Ms. Donnelly.

MS. DONNELLY: Yes. I would agree with a lot of what Mr. Cochrane has said, but one area I wouldn't agree with was in the substitute area. Although we may have that many number - 2,500 - on the substitute list, that may happen in September but it does not happen in June. That list is changing constantly and people are leaving the province and people are leaving the substitute list, yet their names don't get taken off the substitute list necessarily. They're going into other professions because, as I said, the work isn't there for them, therefore it makes it very difficult for areas such as rural Nova Scotia to find substitutes.

I know that because I visit the schools, and when I go into the schools and the principal is in the classroom teaching and not being able to do the administrative work or deal with parents or deal with things that are going on at the school because that person has a teacher out sick and they could not get a substitute because they only have two substitutes on their list - that is a reality in rural schools in Nova Scotia. It's actually very difficult this time of year, and as the year goes on it's more and more difficult to get substitutes. Even in Halifax, it's very difficult - administrators can spend a lot of time trying to get a substitute to come into their school.

I would suggest that, yes, it is in a crisis mode and that we have to do something to keep our substitutes. We've made some suggestions in the paper in terms of giving them a full-year contracts, increasing their pay, paying for their mileage - things like that. I would agree that we have good teachers in Nova Scotia - we have good teachers in Nova Scotia because we have very, very highly thought-of teacher education programs, across this province.

The two-year program is a fabulous program, although it is a long time and perhaps there is room for flexibility there. I know that because I work with the B.Ed. students coming out of the program and I can see a difference. I can see a difference in their maturity, in their knowledge level, and in their confidence going into the classroom. So I would say that Nova Scotia has done a fine job and that is recognized across the country in terms of our teacher education programs.

We do have challenges within the education system and we have many ways to work towards solving those challenges with the Department of Education and one of them, of course, is through our collective agreement which just isn't a union contract but it is a collective agreement between the Department of Education and the NSTU, and we look forward to working towards things that will make our system work.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Donnelly. Dr. Sharpe.

DR. SHARPE: I would like to just comment on two things - one is the B.Ed. program, the two-year program, and the second is the mandate of university and teacher training programs in the country. In terms of the two-year program, I think the review will show that it's a leader in the country. It's not the only two-year program. Out West, they've

gone that way. They've had a very strong tradition of integrated programs and they're moving towards a post-degree model. Other jurisdictions that have recommended it have not gone ahead for various administrative reasons but I think it will be shown as an excellent model.

I really do like the idea of the extended practicum or the internship. I think that can be integrated into the two-year model. I know the students would love to be paid for that work they do in the classroom and I would support that as well as I support caps on . . .

MR. COCHRANE: Give them their tuition back and pay them. (Interruptions)

DR. SHARPE: Well, caps on tuition or caps on other things. What I call for is the integration between the internship and what happens in the classroom. I think we would be going back if we started a new model, and this has happened in other places so there will be a place to review, but where I say the school boards have total responsibility for the internship - and I mean not that the school boards can't do a good job - but school boards are doing so many things and so many immediate priorities that it's very hard for them to focus on teacher education where you have institutions on teacher education that are focusing on that, that are cut out of that supervision of the internship.

I think the supervision goes very well right now. We use a lot of retired teachers in supervising our practice teachers. I know the improvement - you know, there's a lot of pressure right now just because of so many students coming in from other jurisdictions, and including paying the teachers from other jurisdictions. So there are issues there in terms of how the placements are being made but I think we have a very, very fine model to work with.

Just in closing then, I want to reiterate that we have to look at local supply and demand issues, those are critical, but that's not the whole reason we have universities. Universities are far more than training for jobs, they're training for life. They're training for a society. They're training to create a culture in the province. We have a real strength in our universities and it has to be recognized that part of that strength is the teacher education program. We have gone backwards. I think the two-year program is an increase but losing the Ph.D. is going backwards. We've lost capacity in institutions in this province. That has meant that we haven't been able to take part in research and development opportunities in the new economy that we could be playing a much greater role in. I really encourage the Legislature to take a look at that bigger issue of how the new society requires education and education is the key to the learning society.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Dr. Sharpe. I would like to thank all our presenters today for very direct answers to many varied questions. It's truly a pleasure to have you here today and, hopefully, your comments will make a difference down the road as we move forward, a balanced difference. Again, thank you very much for coming.

Just to the committee members, we have two other things we have to discuss and we'll do that as soon as our next guests come in. Our next guests are from Communications Nova Scotia.

[11:12 a.m. The committee recessed.]

[11:16 a.m. The committee reconvened.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, now that we have a quorum again, we're going to call the meeting to order. We're getting copies of the presentation run off right now. First of all I'm going to ask the committee and our guests to introduce themselves as we go around.

[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we had a subcommittee meeting, as directed by the overall committee. We've approved this plan - pending, of course, on the overall committee agreeing with us on that and we're having copies of the whole presentation made right now and we'll have it out to the committee as soon as they're ready.

So we would ask you to give us the short version and then we'll give members a chance to ask any questions.

MS. MIRIAM MURRAY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Basically the subcommittee has presented us with a challenge to encourage more Nova Scotians to come forward and apply for positions with the Agencies, Boards and Commissions. So we set up a small committee, Communications Nova Scotia prepared a communications plan, developed what we felt the objectives of this initiative should be and they are outlined there in that Communications Plan that you have a copy of.

We identified the issues we anticipated would be presented as we tried to accomplish what we were asked to do. Those issues are outlined in the Communications Plan on Page 2, as well as our audiences and our key messages. I think in the interests today the best thing for me to address is what our recommendations are on the strategic actions and rollout plan, based on the direction the subcommittee has expressed that they would like us to take.

As we looked at our strategic actions and the rollout plan, the first thing we identified was that perhaps we needed a different look to the advertising that had been previously done to attract people to the Agencies, Boards and Commissions. So we wanted to make the campaign more appealing and to get right to the heart of Nova Scotians and to show people how they could be reflected and how their views could be reflected within the various Agencies, Boards and Commissions.

We have some samples of the ads that you will get soon, to look at - that's our recommendation, I guess, on how we would accomplish that, so that people could look at these, see themselves in it and be called to action.

The tag line that we thought we would need a compelling tag line to get people to say yes, I do want to make a difference. So I think the one that we are recommending right now is, "Make a Difference" or "I'm Making a Difference . . .", which is more action-oriented, ". . . and You Can Too", and we would include pictures of current people from Agencies, Boards and Commissions in this advertising and it would be them saying, "I'm Making a Difference and You Can Too."

Our campaign includes media releases, so our recommendation is that we issue a release before an advertising campaign that lets people know what their opportunities are to make a difference, that we tailor them to attract coverage by community papers, by featuring members from local communities. Then before we do the paid advertising in newspapers, we run ads which - one week before we run the ads we do a feature-style news release that we hope would be picked up by daily and community newspapers to call attention to the advertising that would follow the week later.

While many departments currently contact their stakeholders by e-mail regarding the availability of positions on Agencies, Boards and Commissions, we hope to work with communications people who are placed in every government department to ramp that up a little bit and to have the communications people involved with the program and policy people in departments to be able to reach key target audience by e-mail, to let them know that this call for action is going out.

We're recommending a little revamp of the Web site, so that would be, hopefully, just around the time we're going out for this call we would have a button on the home page of the government site to say, here is where you can get more information. We'll tailor that and put it into plain language. That Web site work we would do at Communications Nova Scotia so there wouldn't be an external charge associated with that.

We'll develop a brochure that would explain the roles of ABCs, why they're important and how participants are helping their fellow Nova Scotians, and that brochure would be designed using in-house resources at Communications Nova Scotia, and then we would print it at the Queen's Printer, to save on costs and try to keep the campaign within a reasonable dollar figure.

We're recommending that we develop fact sheets, and I guess the way that I could best break that down would be to mention the fact sheets that are done around budget. So our communications people in departments - we would do a template and they would do fact sheets for all of the various positions on the agencies, boards and commissions and letting people know why they'd make good candidates. We would look to develop a speaker's

bureau, which would include you folks from the HR committee members and then we would enlist current ABC members to be part of this speaker's bureau, and we would provide the speakers with print materials and information which would direct people to the Web site and other areas to get more information.

We will develop, at Communications Nova Scotia, an electronic presentation and handout material that will assist speakers as they're going out and talking to community groups; or assist various MLAs in their constituencies when they're talking to people, to have presentation material that they can refer back to; we'll ask departments to develop targeted mailing lists to professional associations and community groups to encourage applications from specific stakeholders; we'll look to identify a high-profile and well-respected Nova Scotian who could be the cheerleader for this initiative; we'll work with EastLink Magazine and other cable providers to highlight and profile ABC opportunities on their local cable programming; and we'll make submissions to partner and stakeholder newsletters. We can do that by news release and other information pieces to ask people to include this in their newsletters, for instance community news letters or professional association newsletters.

Our editors at Communications Nova Scotia will work on the application form to make sure that it's done in plain language and a little bit easier to follow - what we heard back from the committee was that people sometimes face challenges in actually applying for the positions, or applying to have their resumés considered.

We recommend that the spokesperson on this initiative be the committee chair and other ABC members. You currently are advertising now in the old format - those ads are running, looking for people to apply now. So we'd be looking at this initiative starting in the Fall. Before we go out in the Fall with that, we'll develop the evaluation criteria and we will evaluate based on calculating the number of applicants, the number of hits on the new Web page. Also, what we will do is get a question on an omnibus survey to determine a baseline measurement of the general awareness of the ABCs now so that we'll be able to, after we do the campaign, go back and measure and make sure that our efforts have been successful.

I'd just like to say that Communications Nova Scotia is completely onside for this initiative. We're all very excited about it. We very much appreciated the feedback and the direction that we've received from the HR subcommittee as we moved forward in putting this plan together. It's important for me to say that Cathy MacIsaac, who is a Communications Director at Justice, is the major architect of this plan and this is the type of work she's known for. I'm a go- forward after you accept or tailor this plan. Steve Bornais will be the person moving it forward and working with one of the managing directors at Communications Nova Scotia, to make sure that we're following up and adjusting as necessary and evaluating all the way through, and we will look forward to coming back in a year's time to see how successful we've been, and addressing any changes or opportunities you'd like to address at that time.

MR. MACKINNON: It's a great pleasure to have you here today with such a good report and I commend you for it. I certainly have an interest in your work because one time I was at the old Nova Scotia information centre - Nova Scotia Communications and Information it was called at that time, and I worked as a public relations liaison officer, as we used to call that position back a number of years ago.

Having said that, I would hope that the Nova Scotian who is selected as the cheerleader is female. Today we had 19 appointments made, of which three were female. We have a tremendous, tremendous imbalance in the number of females who are serving on the boards and agencies and commissions in this province. What can you do to address that specifically?

MS. MURRAY: To address having this particular spokesperson, or to address . . .

MR. MACKINNON: No, to encourage the applications from females and to do something about this injustice that exists. It's certainly a grave injustice that we have had for many, many years. Only in recent times do we get the ratio of female applicants to the total number.

MS. MURRAY: Let me just say this. I kind of breezed through, and if you look in the objectives that's one of the key objectives that Cathy has outlined in the plan. I kind of breezed through the objectives, and the background there, Cathy will speak to . . .

MR. MACKINNON: How do we get to that objective, is my question.

MS. CATHY MACISSAC: We think there's a real opportunity if we can put the right tools in place, the brochures, the fact sheets, the Web site, to build on the networks that are there now and to get the information into their hands, not just for female candidates, but candidates from minority groups and people with disabilities and that sort of thing. We know there are commissions and the Status of Women and women's centres and family resource centres and other networks that exist - we just need to get the right information into their hands to make the process easier, and right now that just doesn't exist.

[11:30 a.m.]

That lack of awareness is a big roadblock for those audiences, so that's where we'd see forming partnerships with those organizations and making it front and centre for them. It's top of mind when the ads go out, that we hit them with a package of information. We directly solicit applications and encourage them to get applications from the people they work with and the people they know who may be leaders or contributors in their own communities. We think there are lots of opportunities to build on what's out there now.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Any other questions?

MR. PORTER: First of all, I want to say, having been through the subcommittee process with you folks, personally I'm very pleased, and I know our caucus is very pleased with what has come about. One of the comments that I did not hear you speak to, but I think I know the answer, was cost - you might have touched on cost a little bit - where does this take us compared to that lovely black and white strip we see coming out most recently again for advertising?

MS. TERRI AKER: Last year the cost for each campaign - the Spring campaign, which included cable and printing, newsprint advertising - was approximately $16,650. With this new launch, we're looking at around $13,000. The teaser ad is going to be eliminated -with this new format there's no need to have a teaser ad, so you're saving costs. The large ad is no longer, so we have a reduced ad that's going to be much more attractive.

MS. MURRAY: So with the money we're saving in the advertising - the brochures will cost about $1,500 for 10,000 brochures, the fact sheets, we're looking at minimal costs because we're going to look to departments and the Communications Nova Scotia people and departments to work on this. So we wouldn't see this costing any more than what's currently being paid.

MR. PORTER: And are you proposing one or both of what you've given here, you've given me three examples here.

MS. MURRAY: They're both roughly the same lineage size, measurement sizes, and what we'll do is we'll design a variety of examples, of course using different members of the committees or, you know, the boards, agencies, commissions, in the photos and both formats will be used.

MR. PORTER: Certainly the We are Making a Difference one is maybe a little more attractive just because it shows more people from more different types of backgrounds versus a specialist in one thing or another.

MS. MURRAY: A group of people, right, exactly.

MR. PORTER: But again I just want to say that we're very, very pleased with what has come about so far. So thank you, folks, all of you, for the work that you've put into that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.

MR. PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is good material, it's the first time I've seen it. I'm not on the subcommittee, but it looks very good and is a new way of trying to reach a broader audience out there. I guess, as MLAs, you can post the list that comes to us - I guess you're sending it to us - and similar to what's advertised in the paper, but it's just nice to be able to post it in our constituency offices, again just trying to reach more folks. But

I notice in here that you're hoping - I guess members of this committee, or just MLAs in general - would have the opportunity to, you know, and I guess from time to time we do get asked to speak to groups, or organizations, or whatever. For example, I'm speaking to a seniors' group in a couple of weeks at our local library, but what materials then would be available to us other than just the posted list to promote it a little bit better?

MS. MACISAAC: We've envisioned a few things. First of all, there's the brochure and that's really high level general information but does talk about the role and purpose of ABCs and high level, the kinds of opportunities are there. The next level of detail would be the fact sheets and we're talking and anticipating probably grouping those by sector. So you might have your Health ones one color and just a one page description on each, and your Tourism ones and Agriculture and things like that. So they would have a common feel and look to them and then also revamping the Web site which is a way a lot of people like to receive their information now. So you could direct people who are interested and want more information to them. So, hopefully, with enough tools and knowing people like to receive information in different ways, then we'll make that available through these things.

MR. PARKER: I see you've mentioned here an electronic presentation. Are there slides or CDs, or something?

MS. MACISAAC: Hopefully, what we want to come up with is a whole package of speaker support so that when you do go out, there's a common slide presentation. So everyone is getting the same information, also armed with the brochures, the fact sheets, and we've included the Web site on all of that information so that people could go and visit that. As Miriam mentioned, posting that right on the front page of the government Web site as well and then advertising and building on all of those things together.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine.

MR. GLAVINE: Yes, certainly I want to compliment the committee on the work that they have done. This is a committee that I've been on for four years now since coming to the Legislature in 2003. There were a lot of new members at that time and I know some of the ideas that were first talked about a few years ago, you know, have been evolving and are finding their way to the communications people and certainly the ads have taken on a very different appearance from what they were just four years ago. So I think there have been some very definite steps and stages that communications have gone through and will probably continue to go through.

What I was wondering is whether or not in terms of getting the basic ad out, you know, I know the daily newspaper, cable and generally the media is a means, but I was wondering if you have ever looked at communities of people, like the universities, hospitals, or the teaching profession, for example, which again can often attract people who want to make a difference, want to engage in some of the development of policy and board decision

which really, you know, a connection to government and people. So I'm just wondering if you had ever looked at that particular area?

MS. MACISSAC: You've hit a nail on the head of one of the key components of this plan would be - not to be all jargon-y - but segmenting the audiences, just to make sure we are tailoring the information to those who may be interested. You mentioned education and university and the academic community - any ones we'd want to have a comprehensive mailing list and contact list that would include the organization's umbrella for those student union organizations, things like that. So when the mail-out goes out, they're getting a package of information that also includes information that's specific to them through those fact sheets, for example, and links to the Web site.

MS. MURRAY: And then the other note that was in the plan was to try to get articles in their newsletters.

MS. MACISSAC: Exactly.

MR. GLAVINE: That's really all I have. Thank you.

MR. MACKINNON: Just a comment, Mr. Chairman, to get on the record again on an issue. A lot of the good work, the excellent work that has been done here may, in fact, be done in vain unless someday we come to the point where we get a full list of every name that applies for a board or a commission or an agency, and that we don't just receive the names of those who are being put forward for the appointments because this is a Mickey Mouse process. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. MacKinnon. Unfortunately we've gone through that before and you know the answer.

MR. MACKINNON: For the record.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, I'm glad you restated it. Any other comments? I will entertain a motion at this point to give our committee the authority to go forward with that, so would someone like to make that motion?

MR. PORTER: Mr. Chairman, I so move that we move forward with the recommendations put forward by the committee.

MR. MACKINNON: I second it.

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

The motion is carried.

Well, you have the go-ahead to put this fantastic plan in place.

I just want to put on the record as well that we came here to the subcommittee and had three or four very sick people here in front of us, but they made an effort to come in and really did an excellent job on this presentation and put it together - and it is a widely faceted one. I've been on this committee for many years, actually from the day it started, when I was here originally, and this is the first positive step - major step I should say, there have been other positive things happen - a major step to really try to attract Nova Scotians. I want to congratulate your committee. And just for the other committee members here that may not know it, they all volunteered for this job. (Applause)

When you're ready, we look forward to you coming back to the committee with your rollout plan, what you're going to do and when, that sort of thing. But we'll leave that to you to work on and, when you're prepared, just let the clerk of the committee know and we'll schedule you in for another presentation to the full committee.

MR. MACKINNON: We also like your gender balance. (Laughter)

MR. CHAIRMAN: We have one more topic as a committee we have to discuss. Our next meeting is May 29, 2007, from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. We have Agency, Board and Commission Appointments, I believe, to make at that point, but we have no presentations scheduled. We have a list of potential presentations. Is it your wish - I think we better hold it here for a second, we don't have a quorum, that's our problem. Actually if we could just hold you guys up for a second, if you just want to wait you can stay for this part of the meeting because we will just be two minutes and then you can spend some time, because it would be nice if you did get some time to spend with our committee members. Our problem is, we don't have a presenter scheduled for our next meeting on May 29^th. We can either decide not to have one or we can have one - what is the wish of the committee?

MR. PARKER: I think we should have one, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. We are presented with the list here from the different caucuses. I don't know who suggested the last one, what caucus suggested the last presenter we had today or what order we are in.

MR. GLAVINE: Certainly, it may have been two, but we were one that pushed for having the post-secondary, the Ed. program reviewed and people to address it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: So are there any suggestions who you would like to bring forward next?

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, as long as it doesn't involve the Deputy Minister of Education. (Laughter) No slight to him, but he has been here at so many recently, he has become my new best friend.

MR. PORTER: And what a good friend to have.

MR. MACKINNON: Just kidding.

MR. PARKER: Mr. Chairman, I guess, timely, this time of the year the construction business, we recommended the residential construction sector, Atlantic Home Building & Renovation Sector Council - I wonder if that might be a possibility?

MR. MACKINNON: That was going to be my suggestion as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Does anyone have any objections to that?

MR. PORTER: No, it sounds good.

MR. PARKER: As our first choice, if they are available on that date.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Let's say that's done, then. Does everyone agree with that?

MR. MACKINNON: Agreed.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If anyone has any particular witness you would like to come in for that, if you could please get in touch with the committee clerk and she will make sure those individuals or organizations are invited.

MR. PARKER: I wonder if we should have a backup, just in case.

MR. GLAVINE: I was going to suggest the Nova Scotia Home and School Association.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That would bring in the deputy minister again.

MR. GLAVINE: No it wouldn't, because home and school is separate from the Department of Education.

MR. MACKINNON: Certainly that's a good choice, Mr. Chairman, but also at some point - and I see it was a Liberal recommendation - the Black Cultural Centre. I think we should be leaning in that direction as an option at some point as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Why don't we do it this way? We will put the first choice we have as the construction association, the home and school association - without the Department of Education being invited - and the Black Cultural Centre for our next three meetings. Would that be satisfactory?

MR. PARKER: Sounds good.

MR. GLAVINE: Very often the home and school bring a different perspective to education and it's very, very informative for the committee.

MR. CHAIRMAN: A motion to adjourn would be in order.

MR. MACKINNON: So moved.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We stand adjourned.

Thank you very much, and thank you for your patience.

[The committee adjourned at 11:44 a.m.]