The Hook

Tell me again

about all the good things that Campbell & Co have done over the past 8 years.

And Back to the Future... Education

Education Spending:

1. BC Public Accounts in the 1993/94 fiscal year: $4.8 billion;

http://www.bcauditor.com/PUBS/1993-94/93-94%20report3%20on%2092-93%20PAccts.pdf

2. BC Public Accounts in the 2000/01 fiscal year: $6.486 billion;

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/OCG/cfa/PA/00-01/PA%202001%20All.pdf

That's around a ~35% increase, in annual spending, over that relevant 7-year period under NDP government, in the 7th year.

3. BC public Accounts in the 2007/08 fiscal year: $9.989 billion;

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/OCG/pa/07_08/PublicAccounts.pdf

That's around a 54% increase, in annual spending, over that relevant 7-year period under Liberal government, in the 7th year.

Now I realize for some bizarre ideological reasons many people here will prefer the 35% increase over the 54% increase over the same relevant time frame, but I digress.

Now back to Mustel. Is it any wonder that the provincial NDP is currently polling at a 33%, a level not achieved at election time for a period of ~40 years since 1969 and pre-1969???

[2001 election excluded, of course.]

Luke,your spinning

Luke you know that per pupil funding is less today than ever before,Shirly Bond uses a diffrent formula than before.

Ministry of education, teachers wages have gone up,utilities have sky-rocketed,operating costs have gone up.

The ministry now uses a formula based on SQUARE FOOTAGE, according to the ministry the fact that there are less schools the cost per square footage is more(considering 200 schools have closed)

Per pupil funding is down,extra fees are being charged,capital costs are now included in the ministry expense sheet,upgrading a school,or building the odd one shouldn`t be considered in the education budget.
Anyways,teachers,stundents and more importantly parents no the real story,they also have may12/2009 marked on their calender.

Here is what is......

Going on in public education in BC...

It is down right disgusting what Campbell has been up to.

http://www2.canada.com/burnabynow/news/opinion/story.html?id=43514992-cdf8-4203-810a-2aadc44e7333

Pimping for private schools - a Campbell specialty

Between 2002-03 and 2007-08, the government own documents, budgeted 34 percent more money for independent school funding and only 5.3 percent more for public schools. This is at least partly why there is a crisis in education in BC.

Public schools have been forced to reduce instructional days due to budget shortfalls while private and independent schools have maintained the five-day school week and the traditional school year with exceptionally low enrollment numbers.

Private and independent schools are rewarded for their efforts by receiving more money while they do little or nothing about special education and problematic students.

Figures don't lie

"Between 2002-03 and 2007-08, the government own documents, budgeted 34 percent more money for independent school funding and only 5.3 percent more for public schools."

Garth, how much would that be in absolute terms and how much has enrollment changed in each system? If one has decreased, why and if the other has decreased, why also?

Some facts to help the discussion

Regardless of your point of view on the govt, it's helpful to use real numbers, instead of made-up ones.

Here's the actual enrollment figures:
2003/4: Public schools - 614664 : Private - 63314
2007/8: Public schools - 582691 : Private - 68939

Source: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reports/pdfs/student_stats/prov.pdf

Here's the actual expenditures:
2003/4: $4.786b
2007/8: $5.492b

Sources:
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/Annual_Reports/2003_2004/educ/educ.pdf
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/Annual_Reports/2007_2008/educ/educ.pdf

Doing the math myself, exp/child in 2003/4 = $7.7k; exp/child in 2007/8 = $9.4k

I can only find numbers for public school (as opposed to private school) expenditure for 2003/4 (that would be $4.075b vs $165m). I leave it to other interested sleuths to find more recent numbers.

Ummm

Independent school funding amounted to $222.6 million for the 2007/08 school year.
Before Campbell came to power the majority of Independent schools received funding at a rate of 35% of the per student allocations for public schools. An amount which was, in truth too high...it should be zero.

Currently that figure, for the majority of private schools, is now at 50%.

I'll let others have a look at what has happened to funding for education generally and for K-12 capital projects during the same period

The financial figures.....

are absolutely useless, in dollar amounts they are spending more but,sa I tried to explain,capital costs are being thrown into the mix, all costs have sky-rocketed,utilities,maintenance,construction,inflation,wages.
Never before have students/parents had to fork over this much extra money$

No need to haggle over Funky accounting/talk to the parents,talk to teachers,by the way,Gordon Campbell`s Carbon/GAS TAX takes money right out of the school budget and feeds the money to exempt corporations.

Interesting

Foobar thanks for the link. Interesting how absolute funding has increased significantly for each student since Premier Campbell came office. Kind of flies in the face of what the BCTF has been spinning. Funding per student is also up significantly since 2001. Good work!

As for private schools, well, one size does not fit all so the taxpayer is getting a great deal if it only has to to pay 50% of the bill.

Let's hope the wise policies we see here in BC continue in Premier Campbell's third term.

hot potato

The real problem here is that the whole issue of schooling is held hostage to the broader political debate.

When you look at the numbers, you can see that all govts, of all political stripes, have been consistent in devoting resources to the school system. It would be political suicide to do otherwise.

But, it's not clear that the resources are being used wisely; and anyway, regardless of how the resources are allocated, there will always be a strident body on the other side of the political fence claiming the allocation is a disgrace.

It would be nice if education stopped being a political football, but I guess that will happen around the same time the Canucks win their third successive Stanley Cup.

The 99,000-dollar question

So if the BC Liberals have been spending more tax dollars every year on fewer kids, while parents,teachers, principals and trustees are all reporting a decline in the level of services and supports available at the front lines, then what does this say about...

...the BC Liberals' fiscal and management competence????!!!!

foobar

Why not use inflation adjusted numbers?

Here's a BCTF PDF that shows things like teacher to student ratios and inflation adjusted education spending, spending as relative to GDP, the loss of almost 2,000 teacher FTE's in the years you posted, little things like that.

Unfortunately I doubt you'll like it since it doesn't paint the sweet picture that the Ministry's report does and apparently challenges the view that the Libs know more than the teachers about education.

Der link

http://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/issues/Education_Finance/TheNumbersTellTheStory.pdf

Ministry of Truth?

Says on page 11 of the above link that :

BC trails behind other provinces in education spending

BC's teacher to student ratio is lowest in Canada

Education funding in BC has not kept up with inflation

The number of teachers has gone down significantly.

Numbers, numbers everywhere ...

Frank,

I posted the numbers I could find. I don't have the time or the data to adjust the numbers I found.

I also posted the links to the numbers, so anyone can go take a look, and see if they believe, or don't believe the numbers.

You might want to take a look at the actual StatsCan report that the BCTF used for their numbers.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-595-m/81-595-m2008067-eng.pdf

You'll see that the BCTF is not exactly telling you the whole story. For eg, while BC expenditure per capita is below the Canadian average, that's because BC has fewer kids per capita. Look at page 16 of the StatsCan report, and you'll see BC's expenditure PER CHILD is just about the Canadian average.

Now, you can argue that we're richer than the rest of Canada, so we should spend more, and that would be a fine argument, but the BCTF is just being disingenuous with their numbers.

There are other examples, IMHO, of disingenous data treatment in the BCTF publication, but you can always go look at the StatsCan data and decide for yourself.

BTW, being in favour of having all the facts on the table when having a debate is not the same as supporting the Liberals. Rather, it suggests that even after we get an NDP govt in May, the amounts spent on education aren't going to change much. And anyone who thinks or says otherwise hasn't been doing a good job of looking at the facts of the last decade or two.

foobar

I simply noted that the numbers aren't inflation adjusted which makes them next to worthless. Shall I post the non-inflation adjusted BC Stats numbers on how much the economy of BC grew from 1991 to 2000? Somehow I'm willing to doubt WM will be impressed with the results.

As for the BCTF numbers. You claim that BC has less kids, if so, why have the Liberals hired more administrators? Does that not speak to Name's point about the Libs being bad managers? Why do they need to hire more admin staff while at the same time cutting teachers on the grounds we have less kids?

Teachers have been reduced, librarians have been cut, administrators have increased, teacher per student ratio has gotten worse. Those are the facts and they hold up whether adjusted for inflation or not.