Education is again Ontario's competitive advantage
Management + Investment = Results
Liberals:
Stability & competence
What a difference four years can make! Education is an Ontario priority again.
Primary class sizes are down. Test scores are up. Graduation rates are up. And
peace and stability reign in our schools. We've come a long way together.
- Our high school graduation rates are up. Now more than 71 percent of students
finish secondary school. That's an additional 6,000 more
graduates available to Ontario's labour force and post-secondary
institutions;
- Western Mississauga now has five new schools: Artesian Drive
Public School; St. Sebastian Catholic School; Oscar Peterson Public School;
Stephen Lewis Secondary School; and St. Joan of Arc Secondary School;
- Both the Peel District School Board and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District
School Board received funds to repair and upgrade older schools. The work is
either complete or underway at this point;
- Our school boards have more money. Money is still a challenge in a high-growth
board like Peel, and Ontario is amending its funding formula year after year.
The dysfunctional Dufferin-Peel Board was put under a supervisor after its
trustees refused to balance the budget, and the board's finances are now
under control;
- The government's war against the teaching profession is over. Ontario has
funded some 5,200 new elementary teachers since October of 2003, and depoliticized
the Ontario College of Teachers.
Teacher testing is gone. School facilities are open to the community again. Teacher
salary benchmarks now better reflect reality. English as a Second Language (ESL)
funding is up about 20 percent.
Tories:
Create-a-crisis
Why don't the Tories just say what people have known for years? They have
no use for public education. On their 1995-2003 watch alone:
- The last PC government took nearly $2 billion annually out
of the Ontario public education budget;
- More than 24 million learning days were lost to labour
disputes (zero on the Liberal watch);
- Boards were forced to cut kindergarten; libraries; classroom spending;
school construction and adult education;
- After lunchroom supervisors were cut, students in Peel had to sit on dirty
gymnasium floors to eat their lunch (Brampton Guardian, February 7, 2001)
And they are at it all over again, proposing to rip funding out of the public
school system and hand it to religious-based schools, forcing a school system that
is now Ontario's great uniter to become Ontario's great segregator. Shame.
NDP:
Social Contract cuts
The NDP's one sad, sorry term in government serves as a case study in
mismanagement, especially in education.
- Class sizes increased because of NDP cuts brought in under the Social Contract;
- The NDP government of 1990-95 closed 150 schools;
- Transfers to school boards were frozen at 1992 levels, downloading costs onto
local taxpayers.
The NDP tore up legally-negotiated collective agreements. They were a disaster in the
early 1990s, and the same people are running the party today.
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