Hours in classroom not the problem with school system, teachers rep says

Education Minister Dominic Cardy is misrepresenting the numbers of instruction hours that students in the province get, says the president of the New Brunswick Teachers' Association.

George Daley disputed data given by Cardyrecently that New Brunswick students are 200 instructional hours behind the Canadian average.

"I've gone to the minister and asked him to give me that data because those numbers do not match what we have," Daley said.

"I will be meeting with Mr. Cardy to walk him through our collective agreement and explain where the hours of instruction are."

The Department of Education said later Tuesday that under the teachers' contract, kindergarten and Grades 1 and 2require 4 instructional hours per day. Grades 3 to 8 require 5 hours and Grades 9 to 12 require six hours.

The number of teaching days in a school year is 195, which doesn't include statutory holidays but does include snow days.

The department was asked for the source of Cardy's information but did not have an answer on Tuesday.

The instruction hours provided by the Education Department are what Daley called maximum hours. The teachers' contract also identifies minimum hours, he said, but only the maximums are followed at almost all schools.

"About 10 years ago, New Brunswick was mandated to go to maximum hours," he said.

Reports on the school system, however, often just lookat the minimum hours, which might suggest the education system is worse than it is, Daley said.

In most cases,New Brunswick ranks close to or above the national average in terms of instructional time, he said.

Even using the minimum instructional hours per day, the 2018Education Indicators in Canada: An International Perspective report estimates primary school teaching hours in New Brunswick at 700, compared with the national average of 798 hours annually for primary schools.

But if instruction time is calculated using the maximum hours, Daley said, "New Brunswick has the highest hours of instruction in this country."

Daley said the conversation about education in New Brunswick needs to change to focus on improving learning environments.

"We have a problem in this province that we want to continue to beat up on education."

In December, Education Minister Dominic Cardy reported that 61.1 percent of Grade 6 anglophone students and 62.6 per cent of Grade 3 francophone students were successful on the provincial reading assessments.

Daley said it should be highlighted that this information is based on the province's own standards and doesn't indicate where New Brunswick students compared to students in other provinces.

"We're having success out there," Daley said. "Yes, we have challenges but it's time that our elected leaders, and I don't just refer to the minister of education, I'm talking about every elected leader in this province, has once and for all got to stand up and be speaking on behalf of New Brunswick students and New Brunswick teachers."

Calls for flexibility

He said the focus of concern should really be on classroom composition, which has become an issue since children with intellectual and other disabilities entered the public school system.

"Class composition is still the major issue in the province of New Brunswick," Daley said.

"We need changes to inclusive education policy, we need flexibility in the policy, we need the funding to be able to deal with the violent students, with the students who are taking away the learning environment for other students.

"We have an inclusion policy right now that does not have the flexibility to allow us to deal with the students in different environments because they are taking away the learning environments of other students."