Archive for the ‘Education Delivery System’ Category
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Tax breaks leave gaping hole in federal budget
Friday, January 13th, 2012
Jan 12 2012
Every year Ottawa gives up billions of taxes in deductions, exemptions, deferrals, credits, rebates and concessions. Because no money actually goes out the door, these tax breaks don’t count as spending. But they cost the federal treasury billions… here is the value of all the tax expenditures in the 2011 report, released this week: $152 billion. To put that in perspective, the government’s total program spending in 2011 amounted to $248 billion.
Tags: budget, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Education Delivery System, Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Tuition rebates for 310,000 Ontario students to begin in January
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Dec. 27, 2011
The majority of college and university students in Ontario will be eligible for 30 per cent tuition rebates starting in the new year… rebates of $730 to each college student and $1,600 to each university student from families with incomes under $160,000 a year… but the Canadian Federation of Students says all students should get a tuition cut. The students’ group presented a 40,000-signature petition to the legislature asking that the $423-million annual cost of the rebates be used to pay for a 13 per cent across-the-board reduction in tuitions.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
A winter of aboriginal agony must lead to action
Friday, November 25th, 2011
Nov 24 2011
Wednesday, more than two dozen aboriginal communities in Manitoba and Northern Ontario filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit accusing the federal government of underfunding aboriginal education. “At some point you have to say enough is enough, too many of our children are not reaching their potential,” said Grand Chief Diane Kelly, who represents the 28 Anishinaabe bands that filed the suit… The enormity of the problems with First Nations across this country is gaining widespread national attention. It’s time, says Shawn Atleo, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, to stop lurching from crisis to crisis.
Tags: budget, featured, Indigenous, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | 5 Comments »
Start school at 2, study urges
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011
Nov 22 2011
Early Years 3 is the second update of Mustard and McCain’s groundbreaking 1999 Early Years Study. The first update was in 2007… Provinces have embraced the overwhelming social, economic and scientific evidence favouring investments in early-childhood education and are steaming ahead with plans and programs, says the report. McCain said “the message echoes from one coast to the other,” adding that “if the federal government jumped on board, Canada would be ready to explode in this area and be a model for the world, certainly for North America.”
Tags: standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
Grim state of native education comes as a surprise to no one
Friday, November 18th, 2011
Nov. 18, 2011
There are places in Canada, specifically Nova Scotia and to a lesser extent British Columbia, where native schools are working and where graduation rates are climbing. The common denominator seems to be Indian control of Indian education – not just within individual schools but also in terms of the administrative functions normally handled by school boards… There is an urgent need to fix what’s wrong with native education – not just for the children who are being left behind but also for the rest of Canada, which will have to pay the enormous price incurred by doing nothing.
Tags: budget, participation, rights, tax
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
No quick fix for universities
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
Nov 14 2011
The amount of per-student funding provided to universities by the government of Ontario has declined by 25 per cent since 1990, adjusted for inflation. Since 2001, enrolment has increased by 60 per cent… Our student-to-faculty ratio is now 27-to-1, the worst in Canada. In 1990, it was 18-to-1. So let’s be clear: the problem is not that faculty are not teaching enough.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | 1 Comment »
New universities for Ontario
Sunday, October 16th, 2011
Oct 14 2011
The new campuses will be badly needed. Over the past decade, Ontario’s universities have made room for 50 per cent more undergraduate students… What might the new universities look like? Here are some features to look for. Their mission should focus on student learning. They should aim to teach skills like critical thinking, problem-solving and effective communication… The programs would include a mix of professional and general arts degrees, any of which would prepare graduates to enter the workplace or pursue graduate studies.
Tags: standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Post-secondary education in Canada ‘dysfunctional,’ report says
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Oct 11, 2011
… problems in the education system begin at age five, with research indicating that one-quarter of children enter school without the skills needed to learn to read, write and perform math…. “The absence of common, or shared learning outcomes among Canadian provinces and territories is the most important weakness of K-12 education in Canada… Canada is unique in the developed world for having no national strategy for [post-secondary education], no acknowledged and accepted goals, no benchmarks, and no public reporting of resulting based on widely accepted measures,” the report says.
Tags: standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Federal government could do much more to help universities
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
September 14, 2011
Just when the nation’s most pressing need is economic recovery, austerity is the name of the game in Ottawa, including grants to research agencies and postsecondary institutions vital to the developing Canada’s long-term social, cultural, and economic strength… The funding agencies are just one part of the federal government diminishing support for universities. Support from the Canada Social Transfer program, which flows money to the provinces for postsecondary education, is more than $400 million below what’s needed just to bring back 1992-93 funding levels (adjusting for inflation and population growth).
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
Teaching the Khan way
Monday, August 29th, 2011
Aug. 27, 2011
Salman Khan is a nerdy 34-year-old American with a genius for explaining things… he started to make a series of short instructional videos that explained the basic concepts. Then he put some of them on YouTube, and they took off… To date, he has turned out 2,400 low-tech mini-lectures on everything from basic addition to vector calculus and organic chemistry… The Khan approach shows how technology can be used to truly customize education and allow students to proceed at their own pace.
Tags: ideology, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
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