Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): Would the Committee of Supply come to order, please. This section of the Committee of Supply has been dealing with the Estimates of the Department of Education and Training.
Would the minister's staff please enter the Chamber at this time. We are on Resolution 16.2. School Programs (c) Assessment and Evaluation (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits.
Mr. Chairperson: Before we start, could I bring to the attention of all honourable members, we have seated in the gallery today from Oakgrove School in Fargo, North Dakota, seventy-three Grades 7 and 8 students under the director of Miss Lori Garbe.
On behalf of all honourable members, I welcome you here today. And they know what high water is.
Hon. Linda McIntosh (Minister of Education and Training): Mr. Chairman, at yesterday's sitting, the member had asked us to table some documents, salaries or contracts on Assessment and Evaluation, and I have three copies for the House here this morning. As well, we have brought back to the table, at the opposition's request, Mr. Greg Baylis, because the opposition wishes to question us today some more on Systemhouse, so we have got that staffperson back.
I have, as well, the fee for service for the special ed review for '98-99. We said yesterday we would bring that. I have three copies here for the House. We said it would be approximately 75,000; in fact, it is 60,000 and those are for the House and for the members opposite.
Ms. Jean Friesen (Wolseley): Mr. Chairman, when the government as a whole went into the Systemhouse contract, it would be my assumption that each department would be asked how this contract could benefit them, and how it could add to what was already being done in the department. So I wonder if the minister could table the cost benefit analysis that was done in this department when it was presented with the option of the Systemhouse contract.
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Mrs. McIntosh: I have indicated in previous sittings that the contract is with Government Services. It is a government-wide contract. The overall benefit to government comes from having a government-wide contract. It may be that some departments will benefit more than others. Overall, it is government that benefits, and it is government that has the contract.
Ms. Friesen: So is the minister telling me that no evaluation was done in this department when they were presented with this overall government contract?
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, at each sitting when we have been asked this question, we have answered the question with details about the costs and the benefits to the Department of Education on a line-by-line basis. We have tabled our financial costs, the services available as well as the services that we retain in our own right, but I come back to again the cost benefit is a government-wide cost benefit. We have said what our needs are; what are financial costs are. Government Services has developed a government-wide contract. We benefit as a partner in that by reduced overall cost to government and better cost benefit to government overall, which in turn then of course benefits each department.
The benefits to government is that we have one plan that all government departments participate in. We have a system-wide approach which provides for equality across government departments and allows government to organize and plan for all departments and the benefits to the Department of Education, a common platform for us to work with and to communicate with all other government departments. The benefits accrue in the long term with respect to the renewal of equipment, but in terms of a summary of the information that has been provided or tabled regarding Desktop Management in Education and Training, we have already tabled the chart which was dated, I believe, March 19, which was entitled Education and Training Desktop Management Costs.
That provides a complete disclosure on a program-by-program benefit basis, as identified in the Estimate Supplement of desktop services, of the costs of desktop services for the '98-99, which is a partial year, not a full year; the costs for desktop services for the remaining years of the contract, which are full-year costs; the costs from the old way of providing those services that have been redirected from the '98-99 to offset the new costs; the costs related to the implementation of desktop services for staff training.
We have tabled the rate structure used in preparing our Estimates for desktop management, including a list of the services provided. We have confirmed that capital costs are not included in these fees. We have confirmed that we expect to be fully included in the contract by the end of the summer. We have identified that two staff were impacted, one was transferred to MERLIN, and one had moved on the staffperson's initiative to the private sector. The two staff years were redirected to Applications Development and have been assigned to priority projects in support of training and continuing education. We have identified that not all work stations in the department will be necessarily covered by the contract. We have identified that in all likelihood the Manitoba School for the Deaf will be excluded and technical services provided by MERLIN.
We have identified that support for transferred employees under the LMDA agreement is under discussion with the federal government, so it is not known yet the ultimate conclusion there, but with the above two exceptions, the costs for desktop management, as identified in the Estimates Supplement, are based consistently on the information we have provided.
We have stated many times that the Department of Education and Training is not a signatory of the contract, and therefore does not have a copy of the contract and has not done the government-wide, cost-benefit analysis. We have stated repeatedly that requests for those kinds of fine details should appropriately be directed to the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pitura) in Supply and Services.
We have undertaken a series of internal government reforms, including Better Methods, Better Systems, desktop management and year 2000. We expect the total of these initiatives will provide the tools necessary to provide more efficient government and better service to the public as we move into the next century, but our department is not the lead on any one of those initiatives. Even though we are not the lead, we are committed fully to participation in order that we may harvest the benefits that accrue government-wide in the ensuing years. So, in short, the desktop management initiative is about building a better infrastructure for delivering government programs to the people and businesses of Manitoba. With any infrastructure, the benefits that derive are chiefly from the new applications that are made possible through the availability of the new infrastructure. That kind of initiative, as I say, has the details of the government-wide cost benefit resting with another department. We have identified what we need and what it is going to cost, they have provided. They will reap the overall knowledge in terms of cost benefit.
I do not know how else to put it except to say that she needs to get that fine detail from the appropriate department, the one that holds the contract.
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Ms. Friesen: Last time, I raised the issue of the large number of employees in this section of the department and the relatively small amount of money in the desktop appropriation. So, obviously, there are a fair number of people in the department as a whole, including in this section, who are not covered by the Systemhouse contract. The minister has already mentioned the Manitoba School for the Deaf and the federal transfer employees. So does the minister have a number of those employees who are using computer and desktop services, who are not covered by the Systemhouse contract. Obviously, we seem to have probably about 40 or 50 in this section of the department who are not.
Mrs. McIntosh: I think the member is misunderstanding. She seems to think that the number of work stations is equivalent to the number of employees, and I think there is a misunderstanding in that regard, because we do have work stations that are not assigned to employees, as in the library, for example, at 1181 Portage, and the contract is by work station, not by the number of employees.
So the assessment unit, we budget 79.6 for 51 work stations, which comes out to $29,000 per station, and this is the figure already tabled--$2,900, I am sorry, per station, and this is the figure that is already tabled. They are related to the 45 as opposed to the 61. The existing staff years and six extra stations for term and casual, they are related to projects. The 16 additional employees, if approved in this Estimates, the capital costs to equip them are identified under the Capital line as we stated here on Tuesday, and the capital costs are not in the SHL contract.
So the short answer is that we do have work stations that are not assigned to employees. So the assumption that there is one work station per employee is an incorrect assumption, and the cost per station remains that $2,900.
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Ms. Friesen: I thank the minister for that. I had been working on the assumption that the work station costs were $2,000. I accept that they are $2,900, and, yes, I had assumed that in a section like this there would have been a greater equivalency between the number of professional and technical employees and the number of work stations. So I accept the minister's numbers. I would have thought that in assessment there would have been a greater congruity between the two.
What I had raised last time was also the issue of capital and how many computers were being purchased under that Capital line. Our general question was was that the case also for other Capital lines in the department's budget? That is why I understand Mr. Baylis is here so he can tell us about the capital acquisitions of computers in these Estimates in the budget, and also, of course, the ownership.
One of the difficulties we are having is determining what is going to be owned by whom. Who is to do the servicing? Who owns things? The Systemhouse contract is not clear to me yet, and we will be asking, obviously, other questions in other departments. Sometimes the best way to understand any contract is to look at how it functions within the context of one department, which is why I have been pursuing it here.
So the issue is then, the number of computers that are being bought by the department, who owns them, who will be supplying service to them, and how does that apply across the whole department, not just on this line.
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we have answered this before, and it will appear in other parts of Hansard. But I am pleased to provide the information again, and staff confirms that it is indeed the correct information. The member is correct in her questioning to me, asking to have confirmed that the computers are bought out of the Capital line. We own them. We will buy 16 for equipment for 16 new employees, and the capital includes things such as desks and chairs, et cetera.
The SHL contract is for service, not capital, and, as stated earlier, it provides desktop management service, such as help lines, phone access, networking for all areas of the department. Of course, the Manitoba School for the Deaf and the Labour Market people are not included in this the way the rest of the department is, and that remains the answer. It is, I believe, confirming what the member had stated in her question as asking if she is correct in the assumption, yes.
Ms. Friesen: How many new computers will be purchased by the department this year? We have 16 in this section of the department. How many others?
Mrs. McIntosh: As I just indicated, we will be purchasing computers for new employees, and we will have 23 new computers that we will be paying for because they are new employees. The other computers are going to be supplied by Government Services to the department as a whole, but the Department of Education will be paying for those for the new employees, which we would have had to do in any event because they are new employees.
Ms. Friesen: How many will be supplied by Government Services?
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Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, we have already tabled that information for the member a couple of sittings ago, but I am pleased to provide it to her again that for the rest of the department would be 791, and she will find it in the information that we provided a couple of days ago when she asked that question phrased a little differently.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, just for clarification, that 791 is in addition to the 23 that the department will be purchasing for the new employees.
Mrs. McIntosh: That is correct.
Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell me where these 791 computers will be deployed in the department?
Mrs. McIntosh: I can provide that breakdown for the member, and I should indicate just as I begin that, that, of course, as the member knows, with our wonderful new computers in the School Programs that schools in Manitoba will be the ultimate beneficiaries, because, along with the federal government, it is anticipated that computers that are no longer required by government will, in the main, be made available for school divisions. We have a potential of up to thousands of computers here that can be made available to schools.
But, in answer to the member's question, all work stations that require upgrading to meet government functions will be receiving them, and they are, as the member requested, as follows: for the Native Education Directorate, three work stations; Human Resource Services, 17 work stations; Financial and Administrative Services, 33 work stations; Management Information Services, Administration and Finance, 71 stations--[interjection] Oh, I am sorry. Reading down the list I have given the total. Beg your pardon. The 71 is the total of three: 17, 33 and 18.
Division Administration, 7; the School for the Deaf, of course, is not in this category; Assessment and Evaluation, 51 work stations; Program Development, 56 work stations; Program Implementation, 133 work stations; Student Services, 46 work stations; Official Languages Program and Administrative Services, 59 work stations; Bureau de l'éducation française Library and Materials Production, 22 work stations; Schools' Finance Branch, 20 work stations; Education Administration Services, 27 work stations; Schools Information System, eight work stations; Schools Grants, PSFB, 14 work stations; Management Services, 16 work stations; Labour Market Support--is that included? Yes, it would be--nine work stations; Adult Literacy and Continuing Education, seven work stations; Youth Programs, 25 work stations; Workforce 2000, 13 work stations; Stevenson Aviation, 18; Apprenticeship, 35; Employment and Training Services, 93; and Council on Post-Secondary Education, 15; Student Financial Assistance, 46.
Mr. Chairman, that is basically the breakdown. I do not think I left anything out. As I say, these will provide upgraded service to the departments so that they can better serve people in the public, and for the opposition critic we can get her information faster and more completely. Those computers not required by government in some form will, in the main, be destined for schools, for students in the schools.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, the last time we did talk about this I think the minister indicated that the old computers would be going to Government Services and then a portion of them would be going to schools.
Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, that is consistent with what I just said, that those computers not required by government would, in the main, be destined for schools. Those required by government would include some of the old ones. I am not sure of the exact number, but it will be many thousands that end up going to the schools.
The reason for that, of course, I indicate that those not required by government would be that Government Services is the owner of the computers, and so we cannot automatically say that every one will be going to the schools. Although we do anticipate the majority will be, they may still have some use for some of the old computers in government. As long as they are still useful for the people of Manitoba here, they will be used here. But there are potentially 7,000 that could be available for schools and, hopefully and likely, will be, but I cannot categorically say that.
Again, it is like the contract rests with Government Services, so while we know that there will be thousands going to schools, we cannot say for sure the exact number because some may still be of use to government in other areas, in areas in which they are not currently being used.
Ms. Friesen: Well, we have gone from thousands in the main to a majority, when it seems to me all the minister really knows is that a portion will and that she does not have control over that portion. So it would seem to me more objective, more neutral to say a portion of those are going to schools. I am sure that we both hope that many of them will be going to schools but to make the larger claim seems to me not defensible at the moment. It may well be in the future, so perhaps we could stick to an objective criteria here.
Mrs. McIntosh: No, the member is incorrect in saying that only a portion, which implies a small portion. [interjection] Well, I estimate, Mr. Chairman--for the member's clarification, we estimate that would be a--
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Ms. Friesen: A portion means a portion. It means a part of. It does not mean small; it does not mean large. I have often great difficulty in convincing the minister of the use of some parts of the vocabulary, but that does seem to me very clear. A portion is a portion. It is a defensible argument the minister can make.
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The honourable member did not have a point of order.
Mr. Chairperson: The honourable minister, to conclude her statement.
Mrs. McIntosh: For clarification then, a portion is a portion, and I should indicate, then, that a substantially large portion of the computers, probably around 90 percent of those computers, will end up in schools.
The exact percentage and the exact number I am unable to provide, but as I have said, in the main, the majority, a very large portion will be ending up in the schools. I make that clear so that there is no impression left--when most people say, could I please have a portion of that, most people tend to think it is a small portion. I want to indicate it is a large portion, just for clarification because I want the record to be clear.
Ms. Friesen: Could the minister tell us how many new computers were bought last year? I understand the department was working on a 25 percent rotation or updating of the computers. Could we actually have the exact number or approximate number of the number of computers that were bought in the last year?
Mrs. McIntosh: We do not have the exact figure. It would be, we estimate, between 180 and 200. If the member wishes to have Mr. Baylis go back and pull all the purchase orders out of the file to try to get to the unit count, we can do that, but we would not be able to do it today. But we estimate between 180 and 200.
Ms. Friesen: No, I do not think that would be necessary. The approximate number is fine because I think what it does show is a considerable difference between last year's purchases and this year's purchases. Can the minister explain what the reason is for that sudden increase in the number of computers purchased? Last year, you bought 200; this year you are buying approximately 790, so what is the difference?
Mr. Jack Penner, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair
Mrs. McIntosh: Mr. Chairman, the answer is really quite simple in that we used to be on an annual basis replacing around about 25 percent of our work stations, and when we had the Systemhouse come in--it is going to do an overall government initiative--we stopped our program to opt into the provincial.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, could the minister give us an approximate cost or perhaps she would prefer to table a precise cost next time of last year's computers, the 180 to 200? Maybe it would be simpler to table that next time or another time.
Mrs. McIntosh: If we estimate 180 to 200 computers at an average cost of about $2,600, then we would have a range from a low of about $468,000 to a high of $520,000 as the ballpark range that we estimate would have been spent.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask some questions about Education Information Systems. Now there is a section of the Activity Identification for this line that does deal with that. Is this the appropriate line that the minister wants to deal with it on or should we look at a later line, EIS?
Mrs. McIntosh: I think we would be better to do it under 16.4.(c) because at that point we would have not only Mr. Baylis, who is with us today, but also the EIS project manager could be here, and that is Suzanne Adnams, and we could get more detail, if the member wishes to, with both of them here.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, okay, we will do that.
I wanted to ask the minister about the new method that she is proposing under her guidelines or her addition, her update for school divisions and superintendents, and that is local marking of exams at the Grade 6 and Grade 9 level. Does the minister have anything in this section of the budget that allocates money to school divisions for provisions of that local marking?
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Mr. Chairperson in the Chair
Mrs. McIntosh: We are not directly targeting funds for specifics of marking exams although school divisions, when they have local exams, have always marked them locally within the funds that are given for the general block grant in Education, which includes in many divisions some form of assessment. That form of assessment has always been included in the monies provided to educate a child and ascertained by the divisions. Of course, the divisions lobbied us very hard to get local marking. Up until I saw an article in the paper this morning, which is probably why the question is being asked here now--
Ms. Friesen: I have not read the paper yet.
Mrs. McIntosh: Oh, well, there is an article in the paper this morning that indicated that Anita Neville of the Winnipeg School Division is really upset that we are going to be having local marking because they did not budget any money, but that is sort of odd because the trustees have lobbied very hard to get permission to do the local marking and as an acquiescence to them we are permitting it.
It is certainly not our first choice. We prefer the central marking, and for the central marking, of course, all the costs are picked up. But at the specific request of school divisions, we are going to permit some local marking in the middle years in Grade 6 and Grade 9, so I would be very surprised if any of them then came back and formally requested money to do something that they had lobbied so effectively, so long and so hard, to have the ability to do. As the member may recall, at the time the Grade 3 province-wide pilot was conducted in 1996, where they had local versus central marking, we did a study and others were aware that divisions were asking for local marking because they could see the following benefits, and these are the dollars that divisions do not have to spend now as a result of having local marking.
They were asking for money for professional development in assessing. At the same time, they said if they could have local marking for province-wide exams, more teachers could participate in the marking, hence would achieve a greater understanding of the outcomes, why they are what they are and what the province is looking for in terms of the outcomes. Universally, teachers who have participated in that have said it has been the best professional development exercise that they have ever experienced in anything, in any subject area. We have many, many hundreds of written comments to that effect on the general forms teachers fill out at the end.
So local divisions began asking, local teacher associations began asking, superintendents began asking for the ability to have some local marking, so that more teachers could participate in the professional development exercise, and they would not have to spend so much money training them outside of the actual experience. So while it is not direct money provided for marking, it is direct money they will now save on professional development and not just those involved in central marking will get that since we have agreed to their request to allow local marking in some areas.
So it leads to an improved understanding of the curriculum, of the assessment and marking practices, the opportunity to see student work from other schools, which is a large part of it, other schools, other classrooms. It gives a better sense of students' potentials. These are all things teachers who have marked have told us. These are not things that I am saying. I am saying what teachers have told us. They have also told us it provides valuable insight into students' strengths and weaknesses so as to improve their own instructional planning.
We believe them. Like, we recognize the truth of what they are saying. We did a lot of soul-searching when we agreed to allow some local marking to meet the requests of those who will benefit from this; i.e., teachers, trustees and superintendents who all made formal requests for local marking. We have had the experience in the past whereby the department has supported local divisions by analyzing locally developed tests, providing analysis of the content and design and curriculum congruency of the locally developed tests, and with our '98-99 schedule, we will be auditing a 20 percent sample and providing information back to the schools with respect to the reliability of their marking processes.
In the year 1999-2000, school divisions will be marking the Grade 6 LA and the senior math locally. Divisions are now aware of that. They are in the main extremely grateful, Anita Neville notwithstanding. Maybe she did not know how hard her division had been pushing for the opportunity to have local marking through the Manitoba Association of School Trustees, but I am sure she probably knows by now.
They wanted to know this so they could have lots of time to do their local planning. I know that Winnipeg 1 is already examining the cost of their high operating costs to see if they can bring them down, and school divisions who are doing that expect to have money for other initiatives, maybe to help with the partnershipping they have requested in exams.
School divisions will benefit from local marking not just from professional development, but they will also need to look at the total assessment program they have at the local level. We are not asking divisions to duplicate local testing approaches where the provincial standards test are administered. As some have their own exams, they can now use ours, and so they will save money of developing their own local exams, and that money can be redirected towards marking as well. As an example, teachers in Senior 1 would not be developing a local Senior 1 final examination. They would use the provincial standards test. They would mark it and not a locally developed test, and they could use this as one component of the schools overall grade for that year.
So there are a lot of ways school divisions can save money because we are doing this, and we will be providing a training program very similar to that one provided for the Grade 3 pilot. So the short answer is no, not directly for marking; the long answer is yes, absolutely. There will be lots of money freed up in the system that school divisions can use to pay for local marking because they will not have to do some of the other things they currently do, but direct money, no. We do provide money for the education of a child, per pupil. That per-pupil grant includes teaching, assessing, et cetera. Assessing is part of it. The request to mark locally came from the school divisions and, when they made the request, they did not ask for extra money, they asked for it for the extra benefits they could get. We agreed to allow them to do that.
Ms. Friesen: Well, the minister's argument might hold water if there had been parallel requests from the school divisions for provincial testing. I am not sure that is the case, so that her argument--
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Mrs. McIntosh: I tabled it.
Ms. Friesen: Does the minister--did she say there were?
An Honourable Member: She said there were.
Ms. Friesen: Well, I had not heard that. I gather the minister interjected that indeed school divisions had requested the provincial tests, and I wonder if the minister could table those requests that she received from school divisions.
Similarly, I was also interested in the general evaluation she spoke of that teachers had made at the end of the exams and on their marking experience. The minister said that she had a considerable number. I did not write it down, so I cannot remember whether in fact she said hundreds, but the intent I think was to suggest that there are a large number of evaluations, hundreds of evaluations, and I wonder if the minister could table those evaluations.
I think at the beginning of her answer she said that the department had done a study, and I was not quite sure what study she was referring to. It sounded as though it was a study of the possibility of local marking. I wondered again, could the minister table such a study that the department might have done on looking at local marking versus centralized marking?
Finally, the minister said that the divisions will be able to save money because many of them now have divisional assessments that they will no longer need to use or to compose because they now will be able to use the provincial ones. I wonder if the minister could tell us how many divisions now use a division-wide test? I know that St. James does. How many other divisions do? Can the minister tell us which ones so we can see where those cost savings will be?
Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, Mr. Chairman, the member is asking for information that we will be able to gather for her. She has asked if we could provide the comments made by teachers who found marking to be a professional development experience worthy of repeating. She said that I said hundreds, and indeed I did say hundreds--hundreds and hundreds, I might say. The reason I can say that is that after every marking we have an exit sheet that teachers can put comments on. We have had hundreds and hundreds of teachers marking, and almost universally those hundreds and hundreds have said this was the best professional development experience I have ever had. I am willing to provide--now, as I say, I do not want to give the teachers' names because all the comments they give to us are confidential, but I will provide the comments with the names blacked out.
In fact, I will ask for 500 comments to be provided to the member if that is possible, around that volume, that you might like to read. I do not want to have to have them go through--I believe we would have that many people that have marked so far. Probably more than that have marked so far, but I will ask for a sampling of about 500 to provide to the member in support of marking as a professional development experience, and we will table that for her.
The member asks for a study of local versus centralized marking, and that information will show clearly that our rational for preferring the centralized marking as providing the most consistent comparisons is the right way to go and that our acquiescence to the field to allow some limited local marking at six and nine is being done because of the professional development benefit teachers say they get from it. We are willing to do that, but we will not publish those marks because we do not feel they will be as valid as the centralized marks. So we will provide that document to the member.
The member asked about who made the requests for local marking. I can tell her that it was the executive of the Manitoba Association of School Trustees, the executive of the Manitoba association of school teachers, the Teachers' Society, the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents. At every regional meeting the staff has attended, the request has been brought forward. It has been brought forward several times at the implementation committee.
Just to indicate what the implementation committee is, the implementation committee was struck by the Minister of Education at the specific request of the presidents of MTS, MASS and MAST. They asked me to form an implementation committee so they could advise me on the implementation of educational change. This I agreed to do, and we have met regularly since. I have added to that representatives of principals and parents. That committee meets approximately once a month for half a day, and that committee makes requests and provides advice.
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That committee represents all stakeholders, and on numerous occasions that committee has made the request to allow some local marking for the following reasons. One, it provides a professional development experience for teachers that, unless they can participate in a centrally prepared test which has province-wide outcomes sought, they miss, and teachers and trustees and superintendents have asked for it for the professional development experience so that they will not have to provide that professional development experience in other ways that are less effective and cost them money. The parents asked for some local marking so that teachers would not have to leave the classroom for as long as they do to go into the city to do centralized marking.
We felt both of these positions had merit and value, and when they were raised in the implementation committee on several occasions, borne out by repeated requests from the stakeholder groups, we did some soul-searching. We determined that those two points had merit sufficient that we would, at least for the intermediate grades, allow some local marking for those two reasons but would retain the centralized marking which we think gives a more accurate comparison across the province for the entrance grade which is the most important fundamental foundation year, and all educators agree that the early years are the single most important years for building a firm foundation. It is critical that at those years you be tested and at the exit in Grade 12 for post-secondary studies, workplace, et cetera.
So I can tell the member, those are the organizations that she asked: how do the divisions save money? I have indicated they save money by not having to provide specialized professional development. Local marking provides that experience. That is one way they save money. Secondly, for those divisions that do their own testing, and many do, they can use our tests instead of running parallel tests. We will provide to the member some divisions that we know of that do testing. We would have to do a telephone survey, which we are prepared to do if the member wants, put everybody back on the phone to phone and find out, division by division. We know there are many and will prepare to table as many as we are aware of that do testing.
Ms. Friesen: I want to, just to clarify for the minister, I am interested in the exit sheet evaluations of the teachers. Five hundred is a lot to xerox. I will be quite prepared to come and read them at the department's offices, as I did with the responses to the boundary review. That might make it difficult to hide the name--
Mrs. McIntosh: I would like to table them. I want them on the record. Thank you anyhow.
Mr. Chairperson: Carry on. The honourable member for Wolseley has the floor at this time.
Ms. Friesen: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Then I look forward to the minister tabling all of the exit sheet, the entire sheet that the teachers have filled out. What I am looking for is their evaluation of the whole exams. The minister seems to be--I do not know if it is aggressive or defensive on this. I can quite believe, and have said a number of times, that I believe that the marking is an interesting professional exercise for teachers. I have talked to teachers who have done it in British Columbia, so the minister does not need to be particularly aggressive about that. What I am interested in is how they have viewed the experience and the full exit reports of the teachers. If the minister wants to table them, then that is fine, I appreciate that, and I am sure other people will as well.
I had asked a specific question because the minister was pointing to the amount of money that could be saved, or the potential for saving money, by doing local marking. One of the points that she raised was that divisions which did division-wide testing would now no longer need to construct those tests. So my question was very simple: how many divisions do division-wide testing? I know St. James does. I know the minister is familiar with that, but it would seem to me surprising that the department would not have that information readily available, not necessarily here but without the phone canvass that will be needed. But I would think that would be useful information in any case for both the minister and for the opposition.
So, yes, I do look forward to knowing how many divisions in Manitoba have been constructing and using division-wide tests, and that we will be able to see that, at least, in those divisions there will be a change for them.
Mr. Chairman, my colleague for St. James would like to proceed with some questions in this area.
Ms. MaryAnn Mihychuk (St. James): My question is related to the student profiles that we talked about the last time I was here. I believe it was called student profile. It is related to the exam or an assessment of how the student did on that exam is prepared for each exam. Would it be possible to get an example of a student profile done by a marker and with a copy of the exam? I do not need to have a name, just to become familiar with the detail of the process, so that we can understand the value of that and whether we can go back and look at the exam and look at it as a learning tool.
I am wondering if it is possible to do the different grade levels, the 3, 6, 9, and 12 or the 3, 6, S1 and S4. I would really appreciate it, and I guess there is also an English and a French and then the different subjects, so that we can understand, especially if this is going to be a regular process for parents. I would really appreciate that and thank the minister and the department if they could do that.
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My other concern--I can wait--but this relates to my previous concern about the math exam in Grade 10 based on the three streams, the curriculum. There is precalculus.
Perhaps the minister would like to respond to the first question first, and then I can go on to the second. Would that be preferable? Yes? Okay. Mr. Chairman, let us deal with the first one which was to get the information on student profiles.
Mrs. McIntosh: Certainly we would be pleased to do two things. One, for the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen), we will table all the comments about marking instead of just 500. I do not know how many there will be, but that actually might be easier for us because then we can just photostat the whole thing and bring it in. I would like to bring it in and table it, so that everybody in Manitoba can see the good news, rather than you see it privately in an office where it is not shared with the public. I would prefer that that be tabled for all Manitobans, as you say, through this record to all Manitobans, so they can see.
Secondly, we are also delighted to provide for the member for St. James (Ms. Mihychuk), if I am understanding the member correctly, a copy of the exam, plus a copy of the student profile that goes with the marking in English and French in the exams that we have done so far. Now, so far, it has been math, Grade 3; and math and LA Senior 4. We have not yet done exams in Grade 6 and Grade 9. We are still introducing new curricula or pilot stage curriculum.
So for those exams that we have done as full status standards exams, we will provide that information. We are just discussing here, I think we can either--I am very, very conscious of confidentiality with both of these requests because the comments made on the report cards, of course, are private to the student and the comments made to me as minister came confidentially from the teachers. They were not told their comments would be shared with the public, so, therefore, it is imperative that the names be taken off in some way, either by blacking them out or simply by reprinting what they have said minus the names.
But we certainly will provide that information in English and French as soon as we can. I am not sure if all of this can be here tomorrow, but if we can get it here tomorrow, we will. That is a very good request and one I am pleased to provide to the member.
Ms. Mihychuk: I want to thank the minister for providing that and getting that together. I hope it is not too complicated. I am going to save my math curriculum thing until the next section because it relates to programming.
But I do have another question, and that is the government has recently announced that it is basically reducing its provincial exam schedule by 50 percent. By that, I mean in Grade 3 there were originally four subjects that were going to be tested annually. Now it is two. In Grade 6, it is going to be two exams annually. One is English LA and the other one will be a rotational exam. So it is about two exams per year in the four levels, and in Grade 12 they made no change.
Can the minister explain why she has decided to cut her provincial exam program by 50 percent in those three levels, Grades 3, 6 and S1?
Mrs. McIntosh: Yes, the member is correct. They will be taking two standards exams in each of those four grades, 3, 6, 9 and 12--I do it, too--Senior 1 and Senior 4. I have to indicate to the member, back up a little bit and indicate what we were seeking as a government in the Blueprint.
We knew and felt and believed, and still do, that there are four points during a student's academic career that assessment should be done in a very rigorous way, those being the four grade levels that I have just mentioned. So one of the firm points we made was that it is very important that at those four points in a student's career there be an external evaluation and assessment to ensure that every three years the student's work is examined to make sure that progress is continuing on a good strong learning curve.
We also identified four subject areas--language arts, mathematics, science and social studies--as being four subject areas that we felt needed to be tested. It was imperative that those four be examined.
We identified further two years that we felt were key years in terms of literacy and computation. All years are important. I do not mean to negate the others, but since we knew we were not going to be doing province-wide testing every grade, every subject, every year, we had to make decisions as to what were key points. Language arts and maths were deemed as something that had to be tested at the exit point, because it would be the level of measurement the student graduating could present to post-secondary institutions or employers, essentially certifying that they knew information to a measurable level.
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So hence in Grade 12 we said language arts and mathematics will be standards exams. In fact, they will be the only two, and they will be done annually by all students in Grade 12. That, of course, we have not changed, but in looking at the kindergarten to Grade 3 span of learning, we have said that at the end of Grade 3--originally we had said at the end of Grade 3 we would test all four subject areas: language arts, mathematics, social studies and science. As we moved into the implementation stage and did what we said we would do--we said as we went into implementation we would always be looking, continually looking to see if we can improve our blueprint, blueprint being just that, a blueprint.
We had many long conversations with the implementation committee, as well as taking a look at the teaching that was going on in the schools in terms of some of these subject areas, et cetera. We have determined to modify the plan at Grade 3 and zero in on language arts and maths in Grade 3, as we do in Grade 12, that the emphasis on literacy and computation had to take prominence over everything else at that grade, and that we wanted the adults in the students' lives to focus in on those two subjects, knowing that if those two are highly understood and easily applied that the other subjects will fall into place more easily.
So we said we will not test social studies and science in Grade 3. As we move to implementation we will focus in just on language arts and maths. At Grades 6 and 9, however, we do know that we wanted to, as we had said in the blueprint, assess knowledge of science and social studies also. So we said in Grade 6 we would do science every year, all students, standards exam, centrally marked. In social studies at Grade 9, we would do the same thing and rotate the other subjects every other year, so that we know then that we have tested on a centrally developed, centrally marked provincial standards test, LA and maths at Grade 3 and Grade 12; science and social studies at Grade 6 and Grade 9; and in the middle years the other subjects start on a rotating basis with every year there being a 20 percent audit by the province. All of the exams, whether marked centrally or locally, would be prepared centrally.
Part of this rotation has come about as a result of our acquiescence to the request to have local marking, because in our discussions on that topic with the members of the implementation committee, which are the stakeholders in the field, they said they needed and wanted local marking for the reasons I went through in my earlier answers. We said, well, we understand those benefits. We see there is merit in your argument. However, local marking does not give us the same consistency that centralized marking does. So, if we allow local marking at the middle years' grade levels, we cannot count them as full standards tests for marking purposes, even though they are centrally developed and are using the same rubric and so on, because the consistency will not be as high as it would be if it were done centrally.
We know this because we did pilot testing at the field's request. Last year we tried some pilot testing, pilot local marking rather, because they were asking and asking. We said, okay, well, we will try it. We will try a pilot with local marking, and we tried it for some subjects last year. When we did the examination of the consistency of the results, we found that, within the division where they were marking, there was tremendous consistency. For example, in division A, the marks in division A, comparing school to school to school, there was great consistency. Similarly, in division B there would be great consistency between and amongst the schools in that division. But, when we compared division A to division B, the consistency was gone. So we have said that we will let you do this for the good reasons you have identified, but we will not do it for all because we cannot count those now as bona fide standards exams, even though they are centrally developed and there is much about them that will have the merits of a provincial standards exam, but the centralized marking piece will be missing in exchange for these other components the field asked for.
So they still will be having, as I say, four subjects, four grades, centrally developed, centrally marked, but two per year instead of four per year--well, there only were going to be two at the end anyhow in Grade 12 that were compulsory, but we feel this is in keeping with some of the requests we have had. We had told the field all along that we would be willing to make adjustments if they were practical and pragmatic and made sense to the implementation and the scheduling, provided that they did not impinge upon the integrity of the provincial exam and provided that our hallmark years and hallmark grades would still be assessed centrally.
So we looked at a balance of factors. We examined the core subjects, the four benchmark grades. We wanted the highest quality of exams that matched the principle of fair assessment, because the principle of fair assessment is fundamental in all that we do here. It is our highest principle. Research about standards tests and the curriculum, and we also recognized that in some of the grades, say in Grade 6, for example, that there might just be one teacher teaching all the subjects. The workload on that teacher, then, became a factor, if they are teaching science, social studies, language arts, and math. The teachers were saying they were finding it very difficult to ready students for exams because they, in some cases, were not used to following the curriculum that closely and they would be going along developing their own things to teach. So it requires a different style of teaching, a lot of differentiated instruction. We are providing material for teachers for that, but when they move to differentiated instruction and they have some teachers teaching four of those subjects, we felt that they had made some points worth listening to. We felt some points they made we did not agree with, and so where we were able to agree, we have been able to adjust the schedule. Where we were not able to agree, we thanked them for their advice and carried on with our plans.
But the capacity of the system to administer the number of exams originally planned, we heard from people that in order to provide teachers for marking, they were having to release teachers from the classroom for a certain number of days, and some places they could readily get substitutes, some they could not, et cetera. So we listened, we conferred, as we said we would do; we listened as we said we would do. Where we had valid points made to us, we accepted them as we said we would do; and where we disagreed with the field, we thanked them for their advice and proceeded with our plans as originally set.
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I want to thank the implementation committee members. [interjection] Yes, and I have to indicate that I thank them for having provided me with the advice, and I am very pleased to say that our last implementation committee which was last week, two weeks ago, that the implementation committee members thanked me most profusely for having listened to their concerns and having responded positively to them, and it was a mutual thanking time. They recognized that we are still going to have standards tests, and it will still be those four grades and those four subjects, but they very much appreciate the ease with which they will now be able to implement this initiative and the revised schedule which will lighten their load a little bit.
Mr. Chairperson: 16.2.(c) Assessment and Evaluation (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $4,089,500--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $4,785,700--pass.
16.2.(d) Program Development (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $2,790,400.
Ms. Friesen: Mr. Chairman, the minister indicates in this section that she is going to develop parent materials on issues for senior years programs and outcomes. I wonder if the minister could give us a more specific indication of what she will be preparing.
Mr. Chairperson: Can we crank the volume up just a little bit? We are not hearing you very well.
Ms. Friesen: I was asking about the development of parent materials on topics and issues related to senior year programs, and I wonder if the minister could tell us more specifically what is intended to be produced this year.
Mrs. McIntosh: We intend to produce parent materials related to senior year's graduation requirements and the credit system which would include the transition to New Directions requirements.
Ms. Friesen: This section of the department, I believe, deals with professional development or, at least, has some responsibility for it. One of the criticisms, I think, the minister has been hearing, and calls for help essentially, is for professional development, particularly in the new mathematics curriculum.
The government has taken the--I am quoting, I think, from the minister's own advisory committee, or perhaps it was from the Students at Risk report. I am not sure which one, but one of them talked about Train the Trainer is not working. They need more. That is basically what people are saying to the minister. So I wonder if the minister could tell us whether she has heard that cry, whether she is going to respond to it or whether the Train the Trainer will remain as the model, whether it can be expanded. What response is the minister making to the request and desire for more professional development, particularly with the math curriculum?
Mrs. McIntosh: I have not heard anybody crying. The member uses some pretty strong language sometimes in her request. Have I heard crying? No. I have heard some requests, some reasoned requests for assistance, but the emotive language used by the member does not translate into what I am hearing. No, I have not heard people cry for help, but I have had some requests for assistance. I think phrased in a more realistic way, rather than with the emotive language, is probably a more professional way to ask questions in the Chamber, because unfortunately she gets the kind of response from me that one would expect when emotive language is used instead of realistic or appropriate language.
Having said that, no, nobody has cried, but they have made some requests, and we have responded to those requests. We have two things to remember, one is what each of our jobs are. Our job is to make sure that curriculum is properly prepared. The field's job is to implement the curriculum, so we each do have our own jobs. Having said that, we are prepared and we are helping some of the divisions with doing some of their job with them, because we know that in some cases they have gotten out of the habit.
Program Implementation will be hiring another math expert to work with the field. This is a priority that was identified in the Winnipeg region in the north. We are providing a range of different opportunities for professional development related to do curriculum.
We provide regional orientation sessions, and I will complete the number of things--
Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. The hour being 12 noon, pursuant to the rules, I am interrupting the proceedings of the Committee of Supply with the understanding that the Speaker will resume the Chair at 1:30 p.m. today, and that after Routine Proceedings, the Committee of Supply will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Education.