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Ministry responds to Adult Ed concerns, restores some courses

Less than two month after announcing it was retracting funding for several key adult education courses, the Ministry of Education has agreed to restore funding to six high school-level courses.

In a letter sent to all districts on June 8, Deputy Minister of Education James Gordon said the Ministry had read the coverage of the cuts and discussed them with the presidents of the BC School District Continuing Education Directors' Association and the BC Distributed Learning Administrators' Association.

That led to a decision to re-fund Physics 12, Chemistry 12, Calculus 12, Communications 11, Communications 12, and First Peoples' English 12 as part of the Education Guarantee. This means students who graduated from high school, but don't have the marks to get into post-secondary, can still take these courses for free.

The letter goes on to say the Ministry will develop a formal review process for the addition or deletion of course funding. Minimum requirements and evidence criteria required for a course to be approved for funding will also be established, with details coming later this week.

Funding cuts for adult education were communicated to districts in late April. The Ministry's reasoning was an increase in Adult Ed spending to $15 million annually from $1.4 million in 2008.

Katie Hyslop reports on education and youth issues for The Tyee Solutions Society.

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