EDUCATION AND TRAINING

* (1000)

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This morning we will be in the section of the Committee of Supply meeting in Room 255. We will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training.

When the committee last met we had been considering item 1.(f)(1) on page 37 of the Estimates book. Shall the item pass?

Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Chair, we are looking at Management Information Services still, and I think at the end of last time my colleague from Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) was raising a number of issues about a line that is to come later.

I want to go back to the questions I was asking about the relationship between Student Information Services and Management Information Services and to ask the minister whether she could give us an idea that when and if the Student Information Services is on-line and running, what will be different about Management Information Services?

Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, the MIS concept in the whole evolution of communications and collection and storage and retrieval of data is an old concept still being used, but it is becoming outdated in most organizations. So as society and organizations that utilize information systems move away from that concept and more into the current technologies to the new innovative technologies, of course, we are moving along with that as well.

We may even some day see the name of the branch changing to reflect the new order of things, but the role is to be responsible for all aspects of information technology in order to allow managers to use all available information, software, things like that, as well as being able to access information from a wide variety of sources, Internet, schools, school divisions, and to have that on a network that can be accessed and utilized without having to go through a whole series of separate communications to compile it all. So it will be swifter, and it will be more encompassing.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, what I am getting at is, how will the role of this section of the department change if and when Student Information Services becomes workable? What will change about the purpose of this section, and given the information the minister just added in her last response, it seems to me also that MERLIN will be taking over some of the responsibilities as outlined by this department, that is, technology, advising the selection and use of hardware and software, that sort of thing. So we are looking, presumably in these Estimates, at both of those, MERLIN and the EIS systems being up and running by the end of this next fiscal year, so how should we expect that this department will change in the next fiscal year?

* (1010)

Mrs. McIntosh: Not just in the technical things but in the purpose and the way in which information is used.

I am just going to do two things here. I have a sheet that staff has handed me that might be of interest to the member, and I will pass that over. If she would like to, we could maybe--and I will give another one for the others that are here.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: Honourable minister, would you wish to table this?

Mrs. McIntosh: Sure, we could table it. I thought it just might be useful for the member.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: For the record, the minister will table, and the Clerk will distribute.

Mrs. McIntosh: And the heading at the top of that, it says MIS Relationship with other Organizations. It is a very simple little sheet.

In answer to the member's question, how will the role change in terms of how will we use all this new way of gathering information, I give one example that kind of sums up the types of things that we will see happening. It used to be that MIS would scan all the exam sheets, for example. But with this kind of technology, the local areas will be able to do that. So you will see more of a decentralization with the central people training and preparing and assisting the local-area people in how to do some of the functions that were previously done centrally. So it will lead to more ability to work at the local level, and MIS, you will find, will be involved in training and preparing and assisting local authorities with assuming some of those tasks which will now be easier for them to assume. Right now, a lot of the stuff is done centrally because it is awkward and inconvenient to do it any other way.

Ms. Friesen: Yes, this table is helpful. What was concerning me is that we are adding MERLIN. We are adding the EIS or have been adding EIS for some time, and, yet, I know that the budget for this line, for Management Information Services, has remained pretty stable for about the last three or four years. It has been approximately around $1 million, and I do not see it diminishing.

I see material and additions being made which seem, at least in the short sentences that are given in both annual reports and in the Estimates, there seems to be overlap. Anyway, those are the reasons for my question, and I will have a look at this, and we will have a chance to come back to it at 16.1(c).

I wanted to ask about the Internet, to ask whether the Department of Education had a box on the Internet, whether it was providing information to others through the Internet. I see from the chart that it does enable others to use the Internet, that is, to have access to other data, but does the department, as some departments in the Manitoba government do, have its own box there.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, just checking with staff, the way we get on to the Internet is--Internet through the School Programs division which has now moved to MERLIN, through that, we have an agreement with the University of Manitoba, and the University of Manitoba provides us with an Internet server, and it is called MINET, and the department can use that through the University of Manitoba.

The University of Manitoba is very interested in this kind of liaison, so we can utilize Internet through that vehicle.

Ms. Friesen: That was not exactly what I was getting at. I assumed, as most people do, you can use the Internet through the U of M, although it does raise the issue of who is paying for that. The U of M is now charging people for that service in ways that it was not last year, and I wonder where that is reflected in the department.

But that was not what I was going to ask. My question is, is there--for example, does the department have an E-mail address? Is there a section on the Internet where people can speak to the department and summon up information from the department? What are you putting into the Internet that people can access?

The example I might give is, I believe, the Department of Natural Resources. I know Culture, Heritage and Citizenship has one that was recently reported in the paper, that dealt with immigration issues.

So where is the Department of Education taking out material through the Internet to any citizen in Manitoba?

Mrs. McIntosh: We operate somewhat differently from all of the other government departments because our department does not utilize the Manitoba government server. We do, from that, take labour market analysis, but that is all, so we will get a labour market analysis report from the Manitoba government server, but other than that, we have our own MB service and that is the MINET that I mentioned earlier.

That is specialized to the department and the schools out in the field. On that, we do not pay an annual fee. We have a subscription. We pay a fee-for-service which is much less costly than what the public uses. I do not have an exact figure here, but it comes in a lot less expensive than what the public might pay for that type of service. We do have an E-mail number and it is, the person's name, then MINET.M.CANADA.

* (1020)

The other question about how it is used, what information people can access, right at the moment from the department there is not a lot they can access right now because we had the pilot going last year. Schools have a fair amount of information on that and we anticipate having things like blueprint information, that type of information available for people to draw out, and MERLIN will be giving us assistance. That is one of the ways in which MERLIN will be assisting the whole education realm in terms of helping us set up things for this.

There are about 150 staff on that MINET service right now, so it is beginning to bloom.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell me what the cost of the subscription is, and is it on this line or should we be looking at another line for the cost? Is it included in this?

Mrs. McIntosh: The information for all of this sits on the MERLIN line, and we do have a small piece that we pay as a department all based on the time that we use on the equipment. All the staff people who are on it will bill their time or identify their usage individually and that will go through their own branch, so we do not have it here.

It will show on the MERLIN line that we do have some direct amount that we pay, but by and large, if it is going through the branches and through school divisions, school divisions will pay directly. It goes through the Manitoba Textbook Bureau, all of the billings. They do not come through the department. They go through the Manitoba Textbook Bureau and they pay direct to the university. So school divisions will pay but they pay the Textbook Bureau. It goes through there to the university. We do have some direct costs which will come up on the MERLIN line. It is not a large amount for that specific, direct central function but each staff member will identify their usage through their own branches.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, as I understand it MERLIN pays the university, for what? Could the minister identify what that bill is from the university to MERLIN? What does it list?

Mrs. McIntosh: There are some fixed costs that will come with MERLIN, and I do not have the exact figure here today, but we will get them when we get to the MERLIN line. Without being held to this figure, I will tell you it is in around the $30,000 mark, give or take. That is a very approximate ballpark figure.

We will get the exact number when the MERLIN people are here. Those fixed costs that we pay will give us the benefit of a lesser rate, which is ultimately a cost saving to us in terms of use of all of this technology.

Ms. Friesen: I recognize these are approximate costs. MERLIN is then billed by the Manitoba Textbook Bureau on behalf of all the divisions within the Manitoba Education department.

Mrs. McIntosh: MERLIN sets up the agreement that school divisions and--the Textbook Bureau is the place where divisions will send their cheques. The Textbook Bureau then will forward it to the university.

So MERLIN is like a broker. I do not know if that is the correct term, but in my mind, that is how I envision the function. They will bring the parties together, help them develop an agreement, but then the money will go from the school division to the Textbook Bureau to the university.

Ms. Friesen: I understand that. So that is dealing with the agencies outside the department.

What I am looking at, if you remember in the beginning, was how is this division going to change? How should we anticipate the budget of this department changing as a result of adding MERLIN and having a student information system that is on-line and running.

The use of the Internet and the expertise of this department, it seems to me--and I accept the training aspects for a year. What is going to change as a result of those presumably two new, able, hi-tech, dedicated agencies? They seem to be dedicating themselves to areas that have been here before.

Mrs. McIntosh: This was never a function previously of MIS. It was with the School Programs division and transferred over to MERLIN. That is a new entity to deal with these kinds of emerging capabilities. The Internet has only been around for about a year on a pilot basis, so this is still a relatively new--it is in its infancy.

* (1030)

Ms. Friesen: The minister referred to a pilot project on the Internet, and I assume that was done through this section?

Mrs. McIntosh: It was done through the School Programs division.

Ms. Friesen: Maybe I could give notice to the minister then that I would like to ask about that pilot project and if there is an evaluation of it, if it could be tabled when we come to the School Programs division.

I wanted to continue then to ask about the future of this division of this section of the department. The minister indicated that there would be, since there are new technologies--I forget how it was expressed. Does the minister anticipate any change in the focus of this division or in the kinds of activities that it is involved in at the moment, will there be any changes in the MIS?

Mrs. McIntosh: The short answer to her question is yes. A little detail surrounding that, just looking at the history of what has been happening in the last half decade, five years ago there was no network at all in the department, there were about 70, 75 PCs now. There now is a network that is department wide, it has about 500 PCs in it. Most of that growth has come on stream in the latter part of that five-year period. It is really growing.

What the functions will do, we will be going from scanning and direct service into preparing those in the field to be able to do those functions themselves. An analogy I could maybe use that puts it in terms that are layman-type terms would be that, prior to this, we used to do the fishing for people and now we are going to give them the equipment and teach them how to fish. That kind of switch in assistance.

Ms. Friesen: Are we now speaking, when the minister says "them," are we still speaking within the department? Are we expanding the department's computer literacy? We are not talking about the scanning of materials for school divisions or school programs or that kind of thing?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, the role of the MIS is departmental.

Ms. Friesen: Will the MIS still continue to collect the information on the independent study programs?

Mrs. McIntosh: That flow of communication will not change, in essence, because we provide the services to Winkler, not to the independent study. That is the way it was and that is the way it will continue to be.

Ms. Friesen: The service to Workforce 2000, could the minister describe how this section of the department interrelates with Workforce 2000? What kind of information is collected, what accessibility can be provided through information services to Workforce 2000?

Mrs. McIntosh: MIS is not the information gatherer now on any of these things. They have worked with Workforce 2000 to help them develop their own data base, but it does not have its own data base for Workforce 2000.

Ms. Friesen: In the Workforce 2000 area, what kind of assistance has the department rendered in the past year?

Mrs. McIntosh: MIS will help with Workforce 2000. They will help participating companies, for example, in an analytical capacity to--not the companies, I am sorry--help the Workforce 2000 staff who are working with companies--I beg your pardon, that is a big difference there--they will work with them in an analytical capacity to make sure that their systems are accurate in terms of commitments and timing and those types of things. So it is, again, not doing the work for them but giving them systems advice, systems assistance.

* (1040)

Ms. Friesen: The schoolnet and the department, I assume part of that can be dealt with under School Programs, but I want to look at it from a policy and planning issue, which I assume would remain with this section of the department, Management Information Services. What I am interested in is, does the department have representation on government-wide committees dealing with the Internet, and does this section of the department deal with that or is it another?

Secondly, what is the connection of the department to the national--I would not call them planning--but certainly the national co-operative organizations dealing with schoolnet? Is there a connection there and where does it come in the department?

Mrs. McIntosh: It was through the programs division. It is now through MERLIN. Those things are still going on but in a different entity.

Ms. Friesen: Will the CEO of MERLIN be assisting the minister later on in Estimates?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, he will be when we get to the MERLIN line. We will have him here. He will have detailed information that I do not have at my fingertips at this point, and will be able to assist us.

Ms. Friesen: I wanted to look at the expenditures in this department and the increase under Equipment Rental from 132 to 151.

Mrs. McIntosh: Two basic reasons, Mr. Chairman. One is that we consolidated office space and added some more space that was lacking. The other is that the telecommunications network has grown and we have been adding components so that we can have the electronic communications between various bodies.

Mr. Assistant Deputy Chairperson: Item 1.(f) Management Information Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $597,000--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $537,900--pass.

2. School Programs (a) Division Administration (1) Salary and Employee Benefits $244,100.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, the two professional and one managerial people in this department, I wonder if the minister could outline the three jobs that exist there, the job descriptions and how they relate to each other.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, there is an ADM, a program analyst, a financial co-ordinator and two secretaries.

Ms. Friesen: Could the minister indicate what the work of the two analysts has been over the past year?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the program analysts have been responsible for the co-ordination of the renewing education, the achievements there, the co-ordination of the writing of documents in that regard. The financial co-ordinator has been responsible for all financial activities across the division and realigning all the financial activities for the entire division.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I noticed in one of the renewal documents that the government anticipated a video. I wonder if the minister could tell us whether that work has been completed or whether it is included in the Estimates here.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, they have been able to acquire some preprepared videos, preprepared by ASCD, and additional videos are going to be purchased as well to support parental involvement, so some of the videos are available now.

* (1050)

Available right now is a video called Involving Parents in Education, which is a 30-minute video, and that has been produced by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the ASCD.

Ms. Friesen: I am not familiar with that organization. Could the minister tell me where it is located and when this video was made and what the price of it was?

Mrs. McIntosh: We do not have the cost of the video here right now, but it was produced by the association which is called the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which is an international organization, a professional organization, international in scope. There is a Manitoba affiliate. I do not have the address, but this particular video has five strategies for parents, teachers, administrators and school boards to work together, indicating how they can work together in constructive, positive and meaningful ways.

So they have strategies under there, like help parents at parenting, developing better ways to communicate, how to increase parent volunteer support, how to help students learn at home, and how to involve parents in decision making and policy making.

We do have four copies of the video. As I say, this is a professional organization. It is international in scope, and there is a Manitoba affiliate.

We can get the cost of the video for you later. We do not know the exact price offhand without looking it up.

Ms. Friesen: Is it possible to see a copy of the video?

Mrs. McIntosh: There is a copy available, and we would be very pleased to provide it if you would like to see it.

Ms. Friesen: Is that through the library or through the department?

Mrs. McIntosh: Through the library.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman--[interjection] Yes, I understand, it is through the departmental library.

How would a citizen have access to this, and how is the department planning to distribute it, other than on request?

Mrs. McIntosh: All parent groups can have access to the video through the library, if there are copies still available. If they all ask for it at the same time, they may have to wait a turn, but I think we have got four copies available so that many could be out at any one time.

Ms. Friesen: Does the department plan to purchase other videos, or does it intend to create any videos of its own to accompany the changes to education curriculum?

Mrs. McIntosh: We have the beginnings. We are developing a bibliography for starters, as we begin to acquire more material. Our intention is to acquire more material for community members, parents, teachers, all those involved with the education of a child, to be able to peruse, to study, to view, to discuss, in groups or individually.

We will be looking at purchasing additional material, a preference being to purchase, if possible, as opposed to producing our own simply because of cost considerations. If there is material that is preprepared, that is screened, and seems to be suitable, then, of course, we would acquire that as opposed to producing our own.

Production of our own is not precluded, but why reinvent the wheel if something good is already there, so we will be looking to acquire print material, video material, audio material, to develop a reference library for access by parental groups, community groups, teaching groups, groups that are composed of all of those people, with a bibliography that will give them an indication of what is available for reference material to expand their base of knowledge.

Ms. Friesen: I understand and support the idea of not reinventing the wheel in areas like this, where there is some commonality, but it seems to me the other side of the coin is that Manitoba has some circumstances, particularly multicultural schools and particularly urban aboriginal schools where there are conditions here that might enable us to produce materials for other people. Perhaps the minister would want to do it in a market sense, or the alternative, of course, being a co-operative sense, working with other agencies.

I wondered if the Western Canadian Protocol, for example, or the co-operation across the West, and I would think Alberta and Saskatchewan, particularly, would have interests in the kinds of conditions which exist for large parts of Winnipeg, for example. Is the department looking at that from an aspect of longer-range planning?

Mrs. McIntosh: I am actually quite excited about some of the things that are starting to be done in this area, because I believe the more information you can make available to members of society who are concerned about education, be they parents, community representatives or those who actually work in the schools, the better off we are going to be. I see some of the initiatives going on in the department. I really want to just pause and compliment the staff for some of these.

* (1100)

There has been a document prepared for aboriginal parents prepared by the department staff, and they also have a brochure that they have put together on how parents could help children, again, both of these targeted for aboriginal communities in the city.

They are working, as well, with the western consortium to see if we can produce some common projects. That is still at the discussion stage so we do not have specific outcomes there that we can identify at this time, but those discussions have begun. Is there some common thing that we could produce that would be of benefit to parents and educators and community members who are interested in the success of the schooling system?

As well as having done those two that I have just identified which are specifically geared to aboriginal parents, the department has also produced a language learning handbook for parents which is produced currently in seven languages, and, again, that was done by department staff.

These types of initiatives are underway, and I commend the staff for the work that they have done on them. I also indicate to the member that this is just the beginning of the building of a reference library, and, in answer to one portion of her question, would we be producing our own, I say, the two-part answer: Wherever we can acquire preprepared existing material that answers the needs we have, we will acquire it that way because it is less costly, but where we cannot do that, then we will be examining doing our own producing to tailor-make material if it is not already in existence and cannot be acquired elsewhere.

I am pleased and encouraged by the support that I heard in the words you used here for us doing that, if we need to, because it could cost money, and so often people will say, well, you know, government has produced this video and it is costly and it is, you know, just a public relations exercise, or whatever.

I do not know what criticisms could come up, but inherent in the question you asked, I heard some support for the need to have material that would bring parents in, and I appreciate that.

So, if we need to, we would produce our own. We hope that we could avoid that expense if we can find preprepared material, but we will be doing both, if it is needed, to make the whole reference library as full and complete as it needs to be to meet our needs.

Ms. Friesen: I think the handbook for native parents was completed two years ago. I wonder if the department could tell us how many copies have been distributed, and what the brochure was that was listed--I think the minister indicated it was a separate item. Was that completed this past year? How different is it from the original?

Mrs. McIntosh: The brochure has just been completed this year, and I will--it, first of all, is more user-friendly in that it is quite easy to read, and it is concise. The information has been, sort of, concentrated and put down into fewer sentences, less verbiage--not that the other had excess verbiage, but they have tried to streamline it for easy use, and it deals specifically with how parents can help children at home. Staff indicates to me that we have distributed some 3,000 books and some 5,000 brochures at this point and they seem to be popular with those who are reading them.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, could the minister indicate how those are distributed, the 3,000 to 5,000? Are they sent to school divisions? Are they sent to individual schools? Have the bulk of them been distributed in the city or are they going to reserve communities or to non-Status communities outside the city?

Mrs. McIntosh: They are distributed across the province and they are targeted or distributed mostly to those communities that have high aboriginal populations. They go both to schools and to parent groups directly.

Ms. Friesen: So, in the past year, what the department has done is to prepare a simpler version of an existing booklet and to begin discussions with the western consortium. This is in terms of parental connections, parental support in aboriginal education.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, in terms of the things that are being done for parents, in addition to updating existing materials and starting discussions with the western consortium, we have also embarked upon a number of enterprises that are not just reading or viewing but active participation in terms of parental involvement, parental education, providing parental support and support to community members.

We have nine regional parental involvement workshops currently underway. They started back in April; they should be finished at the end of this month, and in those we have 34 divisions and 71 school teams participating and they are taking place in Winnipeg certainly, but also in Winkler and Thompson and Portage la Prairie, Brandon, Cranberry Portage, Dauphin, Gimli, Morris. So those areas --and I do not have a listing with me right now as to which have already participated, which are complete and which are yet to come--but they are underway and I believe they are about two-thirds of the way through, and they will be finished at the end of the month.

* (1110)

Those are really good regional workshops because they bring parents and community members right into the whole milieu of education with trained administrators, with parents and school teams and trained administrators all working together in these settings, and they focus on increasing the communication between parents and schools and implementing parental involvement activities in the schools. So they focus right in on teamwork and partnership, interjurisdictional so to speak, instead of having parents over here and educators over here and another group over there, they are together as one team. These are all important people in the lives of the student and it is, I believe, critical that they come together and understand each other's influence on that child that they service.

So that is underway. Of course, we have those two documents on New Directions, advisory councils and school, that is the guidelines which are preprinted. I think the member has copies of those.

We have documents for Advisory Council for School Leadership and for Partners in Education, Renewing Education: New Directions, Parents and Schools.

In terms of this particular initiative with the nine regional parental involvement workshops, we have identified a half staff year that will provide a focus and the required departmental expertise for this initiative which will take full effect in the fall, in all likelihood. So we will see this kind of initiative, come September, really taking off. We have actually assigned a half-time person just for that function.

I also want to indicate to you, in terms of your desire for information on aboriginals, that through student support grants we support parental involvement in some 60 schools and some 24 divisions. These 24 divisions are ones with high aboriginal populations and high multicultural populations. Those student support grants to those 24 divisions, to those 60 schools will enable them to receive funds which can involve parents in the education of their children.

Again, the same focus that I indicated, when we talked about the regional meetings, will be a focus that is involved here, where parents are included, where parents have an opportunity to understand what is going on in the schools, to opt into being a strength and a support for those who are delivering education and where educators have an ability to interact with those who have the largest influence on the child which is those who are involved with the child at home either as parents or guardians or fosters.

I will just read some of the other program headings. The home-school programs, the early schools language development programs, the early literacy programs, the home math programs, the family and the intergenerational literacy program, which is an interesting one, because so many people feel we have lost that intergenerational ability. One of the things our children suffer from is the lack of having grandparents and great aunts and great uncles around them. Certainly, in some of the ethnic communities and some of the aboriginal communities that extended family is very much a factor.

So we have intergenerational literacy programs which, again, will do a great number of things in helping to prepare students for school success.

We have parent education programs, I have listed a few. We have parent volunteer and mentor programs. Mentoring and those types of activities, harkening back to the multigenerational thing, are ways in which we can utilize people who have a sincere and genuine interest in the educational success of students. Mentorship programs are very important. We feel it is important that we do an outreach to them, provide them with back up materials so that they in turn--sort of training the trainer type things.

We have governance and advocacy programs to help people understand how decisions are made and where the lines of authority flow, and those types of things.

We have a number of initiatives underway that we believe will be extremely beneficial. We work with native agencies, community parent councils, all these different groups that have, to date, held some workshops in some 40 schools in the year that we are just ending now on these types of things.

I do not know if that gives you an overview or if you would like further detail, but I leave that with you at this time.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I understand that the minister has met recently with aboriginal people in Winnipeg who are interested in forming a separate school division. I wonder if the minister could give us a sense of where the government is going with this one and whether the minister plans further meetings.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, I had a meeting with Bill Sanderson of the Winnipeg school division board who asked to see me and came to see me with an individual who was part of the aboriginal community, and I am sorry that I forget her name at the moment. Their interest and request was that a separate aboriginal school division be set up along the lines of the French school board governance. My reply to them is that I really do not know that would answer the need they were trying to address, their concern being, of course, that aboriginal students should have access to cultural awareness and traditions and history and so on.

My indication to them was that local school boards have the ability to deliver services that can address those specified needs and that indeed Winnipeg No. 1 in setting up the Children of the Earth school, for example, was in fact setting up alternative schools, alternative education within the public system that would do what I felt to be very much the same thing that a separate school board with separate governance would deliver.

I expressed concern about the cost of running parallel systems and indicated that the French school board governance, while it is indeed addressing a particular cultural group, is linguistically based and there are constitutional factors that are at play in the delivery of French language education to the section 23 parents. So the aboriginal needs I felt fit into a different category, and the governance situation also came under a different jurisdictional commentary.

Having said that, however, Mr. Sanderson asked if he could continue talking with me, and of course I absolutely indicated that most definitely I am quite willing to meet with and talk to any person, individual or group that has a keen interest in meeting specific needs of students. Having indicated my reservations about the effectiveness of that kind of governance versus the ability of school divisions to already deliver alternative schools that would meet those needs, I nonetheless am willing to explore the needs that he would like to bring forward to see if there is anything that government should be doing to try and address those needs over and above what local school boards are able to deliver.

* (1120)

My personal feeling at this point is that the school boards are able to deliver services to meet those needs. Never, however, would I ever turn anyone away who wished to further explore dimensions and depths within those issues that they live with, that I do not live with, because if they can enlighten me and build my awareness then I can only benefit from that as minister. The more I grow and learn, the more I may be able to help divisions try to address needs that may in truth be already met or may in truth be still in need of further meeting.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chair, does the minister plan on a series of meetings on the aboriginal school division over the next year, or is it going to be by request?

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairperson, I indicated to Mr. Sanderson that he is free to give me a call at any time and if I have free time in my schedule I would be delighted to sit and talk to him, and I would be. I would be delighted to sit and talk with any number of people, and have been doing so with everybody I can fit into my schedule. I most enjoy those meetings.

I have met with several individual trustees from various divisions. I have met with a couple of individual boards to date and have indicated my willingness to meet with other boards, if they would like to come in.

I always find, when those boards and individual trustees leave, that I have learned something, be it just a small thing or a fairly significant thing. That is extremely beneficial, and I hope that they are able to take away with them some further knowledge of how government works and the terms of reference within which we must, by virtue of our obligations and limitations, function. So I think it is always a two-way street. The only thing that limits really extensive dialogue in some cases are the restrictions of time, and I think the member is aware of the time limitations on all MLAs and particularly on ministers of the Crown.

I just wanted to add something to the previous question, because our provincial strategy in curriculum will be in terms of the question about aboriginal needs being met in schools, but our provincial strategy in curriculum will be the integration of aboriginal content and perspectives in kindergarten right straight through to Senior 4, so as we develop those new curricula, we do have an aboriginal perspectives resource team, and they have aboriginal educators in that, and that is not yet up and running.

But it is going to be established, and we will have targeted aboriginal educators on that to help us make sure that as we develop new curricula, we are addressing some of the needs that Mr. Sanderson and others have identified as being desirous.

Ms. Friesen: I want to discuss under this line, if it is appropriate, two areas which I do not see anywhere else. One of them is independent schools, and the other is home study programs. Is this the place to discuss them?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes.

Ms. MaryAnn Mihychuk (St. James): My question is firstly one of process, I guess. When we look at the annual report that we just received, there is a section here on independent schools, and yet in the Estimates book, I am having difficulty in locating a line item on that or some identification of the supports provided to independent schools.

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, under Implementation Branch and under regional teams are two lines that should be examined for that topic. We have one dedicated staffperson who works in those areas in terms of the regulatory process, for example; inservice programs, that type of thing, that both public and independent schools are included in. Those would be the two areas to look at.

Ms. Mihychuk: Can the minister share with us the student population in the nonfunded schools and the funded schools for '94 and '95?

Mrs. McIntosh: There are 1,289 students in the nonfunded schools and 11,471 pupils in the funded schools.

Ms. Mihychuk: Can the minister please explain to me the difference between the nonfunded and the funded? What are the criteria that defines the two?

Mrs. McIntosh: The basic difference is that in the funded schools, if they are receiving a portion of their operating costs from the public purse, then they must abide by our curricula. They must have certified teachers. They must have a board of trustees. They must function essentially not unlike public schools in that regard, but they are allowed to have, for example, a religious--for example, Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate. They are allowed to have a religious atmosphere permeate all their learning experiences. So, for example, if a yarmulke is required, then that code of dress can be mandated. Certain dietary observations in the school cafeteria can be mandated--those types of things if they are a school of that nature.

That would be one of the differences because, of course, you could not do that. You could not have those cultural aspects permeating a public school, but you can in an independent. They have to follow curricula, have certified teachers, a board of trustees, those standards. They are allowed to vary according to the particular atmosphere they are wishing to create in their school. The milieu--that was the word I was looking for.

The nonfunded schools, on the other hand, do not have to have those criteria as fixed. They may decide, for example, that instead of a certified teacher to teach chemistry, they may hire a chemist who is straight from the workforce to come in and teach. They may decide that instead of a certified music specialist, they may just have a performing artist who teaches music, a musician, that type of thing, and, indeed, a lot of the private schools that operate will do that or have done that type of thing.

* (1130)

They may be able to specify then that they want all their staff to be members of a particular religious order. They do not have to have certified teachers. They can choose from other arenas those particular people they wish to have educate their children. They take assessment tests, and, by and large, on the assessment tests, like for science, that type of thing, they come within about 1 percent of the other student population, so we can assess their progress in that way. In terms of their knowledge, I mentioned science and I will use science for the example.

Ms. Mihychuk: Could the minister, on the same vein, give us some indication as to the regularity of assessment processes? How does the department ensure that the private schools are in fact following curriculum, and is there a monitoring of the qualifications and certification of the staff members in those schools?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, we have a regional consultant that does that.

Ms. Mihychuk: Can the public be assured that each school, for example, is assessed annually? What regularity would there be for that type of assessment?

Mrs. McIntosh: It is done annually, every school.

Ms. Mihychuk: Under this independent schools, is this the area that also includes home schooling?

Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, that comes under this area.

Ms. Mihychuk: Can you share with us the number of students that are now in home schooling? Is there an increase? Is there a decrease over the past few years? What assurances do we have in terms of their learning environment?

Mrs. McIntosh: The number of registrations for home schooling in the '94-95 year was 831, 686 of them being in kindergarten to Grade 8 and 145 of them being in the high school area, Senior 1 to Senior 4.

Ms. Mihychuk: What was the number for '93-94 please?

Mrs. McIntosh: There were, last year, 666.

Ms. Mihychuk: When families choose to home school, whose responsibility are those families? Is it the home school division? What type of materials are provided for the families that choose home schooling?

Mrs. McIntosh: They register, not with the division, but with the department so they come under direct line with the department. There are three basic requirements that home schoolers must go through. Each student has to register with the home schooling office. They have to submit an educational plan each year when they register. So they, (a) have to register; (b) at the time of registration submit an educational plan to the department and twice a year have to have progress reports submitted for analysis to the department.

Ms. Friesen: The department to which these reports are submitted, how many staff are there?

Mrs. McIntosh: That branch works out of the office in Winkler. They have one full-time dedicated person who is there all the time.

Ms. Friesen: And this one person then analyzes and responds to 1,600 reports a year on 1,600 students and provides materials for 1,600 sections of study and I assume also looks at final outcomes of those 800 students.

(Mr. Mervin Tweed, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

Mrs. McIntosh: That individual, yes, does that, and in addition to that, also will make home visits where required, work with other agencies where required, work with other members of the department where required, but the individual is basically responsible for monitoring on a twice-yearly basis the progress reports of some 800 students and does, in fact, as well, get out into the field to do home visits and meet with parents, as well as being the supervisor for receiving the reports.

Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, how many home visits were conducted over the past year?

Mrs. McIntosh: I did not get the question, I am sorry.

Ms. Friesen: Approximately how many home visits were conducted over the past year? If we have 800 students, does the staff member, for example, plan to visit a quarter of them every four years?

What kind of planning goes on, and how many home visits can be accomplished by somebody who is reading 1,600 reports a year? I do not know the individual involved, but it certainly seems to me an enormous task and a very large responsibility.

Mrs. McIntosh: The visits are done on an as-need or as an identified need basis, and the individual who does the assessing, of course, does not do the teaching, so if you consider a person who is like a full-time marker, it is not as onerous as one might think at first blush, because the teaching is all done by other than the person who is doing the examination of the progress reports.

I do not have the exact number of home visits, but I indicate to you it is not a regular rotating schedule of visits. It is done on an as-need basis and, as well, working with the other agencies is done on an as-need basis, as well as working with the other staff members, et cetera, is on an as-need basis, so that is why you do not have more than that directly associated with it, because that one individual interacting with others, as need be, is able to supervise that particular program.

I want to indicate, as well, though, that a lot of students use the Independent Study Program, and that is regulated. It is departmental. It is regulated again through the Winkler office. The correspondence-type courses--I spent one year of my life getting a grade through correspondence with my mother teaching me just because of the isolated circumstances in which we lived, and even way back then, which was a long time ago, those correspondence courses were extremely good because I was able to complete that particular grade with A-level results just by being taught at home by my mother with a very good guide of the correspondence courses.

So you will have many reasons for home schooling. You will have people who decide to home school for religious reasons, for physical reasons, you know, for a wide variety of reasons, and you will often find some very good teaching occurring in those circumstances.

The independent study I referred to earlier, those assignments are not marked by the individual I spoke about in Winkler. The independent study courses, of course, are marked by the department because they are correspondence courses, and they write exams, of course.

So I do not know what percentage of the 800 students we are talking about is taking the independent study, but I know it is a large portion of them. The written exams that they take at the present time, the students in the public system are not submitted to the rigor of those written examinations marked to a standard by an external source in the department, and we are able to assess progress through those. Having been the recipient of a correspondence program for one year, I can attest to the amount that can be learned if you are in isolated settings.

Ms. Friesen: I would be interested in having the minister provide us with information later on the proportion of those 800 students who are taking the correspondences courses.

* (1140)

Mrs. McIntosh: We will break out that number from the overall number and bring it back to you.

Ms. Friesen: I have asked questions in this area before, and my concerns, of course, are obviously the rate at which it is growing and the impact that this has upon local school divisions, as well as concern for the standards and progress that the children are able to make.

That is why my concern is for only one person who is looking after--and I would disagree with the minister here. I do not think it is like simply being a marker of 1,600 reports. It is much more a combination of marking of reports and evaluation of teaching, because you are not just looking at the progress of the child, but you are also looking at the nature of the education that is being imparted, and I assume that those as-need visits are made on the basis of request, since the minister said that there was not a rotation involved, that it is by the request of the parents.

Again, from a broader educational perspective, that gives me some concerns, as well.

Mrs. McIntosh: I have just a couple of points in response. The member is absolutely correct, and I agree with her that the person does much more than just mark. I hope that however I phrased my answer, I did not give the impression that I think that is all that individual does.

That is part of what he does, and I was responding to what I felt was an indication--I maybe picked it up wrong--that the person would not have time to mark all 1,600. I was just referring to that one component, but, certainly, the person does much more than that. The member is quite right. The member is also correct in indicating that one should have a concern about people who are being educated in isolation from the system in terms of ensuring that they are learning.

On the as-need thing, the as-need is not just a parent making a request. The as-need would also be in response to the--in fact, the majority of these as-need ones would probably fall into the category I am about to describe, which is where the person responsible for overseeing home education notices in the reports he is assessing that there seems to be some irregularity of some sort.

That would be one thing that would spark him to say, I must go out and see these people, because this report looks to me like it is not the way it should be, or if he or she has any concerns in any way about what might be going on with the home schooling, then he will describe a need to himself that that home school requires a visit and would then go out.

So we will find, once we get our measurable standards into place, and everybody is writing standardized tests, these students, of course, will be included. So I expect two things will happen. The member is quite right. There is a big acceleration in attendance at independent and home schools, and one of the things people indicate in conversation that they are seeking are these measurable standards.

So once they come in, those people in home schools will be required to write the standardized tests, as well, and that will help, as it will all students in Manitoba but will specifically help with this area in terms of being able to assess, can they measure to a standard of problem solving? Can they do independent thinking? Have they acquired certain skills? Can they do deductive reasoning? Do they take a logical approach to solving problems? Can they interpret items to be read, not just for words but for content, and can they then reveal that content in a written form that is grammatically correct, and can they pass on their knowledge of the content in a way that is easily read and understood by the reader?

Those are all part of our new direction for accountability and monitoring progress, both in the public schools and at home schools, and so they will be participating in those tests for standards, and I think that, again, should give the member some comfort that yet another vehicle will be there to determine whether or not students are learning as they should be and to step in and take corrective action as needed.

Ms. Friesen: I have a number of questions arising from that. What corrective action is available to the department, presumably after some concerns about reports and after a home visit? What corrective action has been taken in the past? What is the experience of the department?

Secondly, I am interested in the application of the new program to home schooling. Who will be marking those? Will it be done by the department, or will it be assigned to the home school division, as I assume, other marking of standardized tests is going to be.

Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, there were a couple of questions in that last round of questioning there, and I will try to go through them in the order, I think, that I remember them coming.

When the staffperson responsible for supervision of home schooling decides that there is a need to go to the home and investigate what he feels, or she feels, is an irregularity, there are several things that happen. It may be that there has been a simple misunderstanding that can be easily corrected. It may be that another agency has to come in. For example, we recently had a child with cerebral palsy being educated at home. This of course is one of the reasons for being educated at home, that kind of disability in some instances where the parents live far from a local school and they may choose to keep the child at home and educate them at home. This is one of the valid reasons for home schooling. In that instance we brought in an outside agency and the agency was the association for learning disabilities who came in and offered assistance to that parent in the learning situation because communication can be a problem sometimes with certain types of students.

* (1150)

If the problem is not corrected, however, and if the authorities here feel that the learning experience is not adequate or is not proceeding as it should, then the registration is simply revoked and the child then must attend either a public or an independent school and is subject then to all of the violations inherent in regulation if they do not. Just registering for home schooling does not mean that you can always continue home schooling. Like everything else, you have to be doing your job to keep your job, so to speak.

We have got, in terms of various reasons why people meet, why people take schooling at home. We have got 20 percent of Manitoba's home schoolers at home taking their schooling due to sickness or isolation perhaps, or, not perhaps but definitely, student safety and personal conflict of some sort in a particular school setting. Those are about 20 percent of the reasons.

You have got another large group, almost the balance of the rest, who are part of a network of home schools. These are people who home school for religious convictions. They have standards and morals that they feel are compromised by being in an integrated setting in a public system and so they prefer to segregate their children, as is their right, but they network with each other so they share learning experiences and materials. They assist each other much the way as any other educational organization would.

Just to give some examples of schools in that network--and I should indicate that sometimes students register for more than one course. You may find a parent in a home-schooling situation registering for one course in this particular network and then registering for another course in that particular network. You will see numbers that are not reflective of--two registrations but one student, if you follow what I am saying. We have Seventh Day Adventist families that choose to have their children educated in a nonintegrated setting at home.

In terms of the network of home schoolers, the ACE, which is a Christian home-schooling program, most of these people have no objection at all, in fact are quite supportive of the standards of literacy and mathematics, computation and all of those things and would have no difficulty at all in terms of the course content of most of the courses that are provided through the department. They may not believe in some of the societal standards that are evident in schools. They may prefer to have a certain code of dress. They may not approve of certain kinds of music. They may have religious beliefs that they feel their children might be exposed to influences that they prefer them not to be exposed to, not particularly with the schooling but with the influences in the milieu and the atmosphere outside the protective custody of the home. I am just indicating that there is support for literacy there. It is not anything against literacy or computation.

Ms. Friesen: Has the department prepared any evaluation, any report on the rate of growth over the last few years? I think it is of some concern to local school districts.

Mrs. McIntosh: There has been an increase over the last decade from 1985, at which time there were 109 home schoolers, to 1995 where we have reached 800. You do indeed see a growth. One of the reasons we are so intent on bringing in our blueprint and providing the measurable standards and those skills that we have in trying to give teachers the power to enforce greater discipline in the classrooms is to make our schools places where people will wish to go. Sometimes people will be home schooling because they are considered about standards of behaviour and so on in school. Sometimes they home school because they feel that they cannot get an accurate assessment of their student's progress because they do not know what 50 percent means. They do not get a 50 percent for starters. They do not know what satisfactory means. The member is correct. There has been a growth over that decade, a very large growth. We will be ensuring that the standards that all Manitoba students will soon have to meet will be met by all students who are studying in Manitoba.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Tweed): Order. The hour now being twelve o'clock, the committee will rise.