The Saskatchewan Children’s Advocate has released 36 recommendations for the Ministry of Education after an in-depth investigation into the province’s independent schools.
The 120-page report was released after lawsuits and criminal charges sprung up following a wave of allegations against a Saskatoon Christian school.
In early August 2022, dozens of former students of Legacy Christian Academy came forward with allegations of past phycological, physical and sexual abuse by school staff.
The students also expressed extreme concern surrounding the quality of education at Qualified Independent Schools as well as discrimination on the basis of disabilities, gender, and sexual orientation.
A $25 million class-action lawsuit has been launched against Mile Two Church, which runs the school, school staff members and the provincial government.
Four of the former staff members are currently before the courts, facing criminal charges.
The allegations have not been proven in court.
Qualified Independent School are overseen by the province’s Ministry of Education and receive up to 50 per cent provincial funding annually per student average.
As a result of the lawsuit, the Ministry of Education appointed an official trustee to conduct the affairs of Legacy Christian Academy and two other independent schools that employed staff named in the lawsuit. The number of unscheduled visits by the ministry also increased and full-time staff was increased.
One of the schools was shut down by the ministry.
In the 2022-23 year, there were 19 registered Qualified Independent Schools in Saskatchewan which enrolled 1,654 students. The category is part of a larger group of 63 independent schools overseen by the ministry. Not all receive provincial funding.
When the abuse allegations first came to the advocate’s attention, it asked the ministry if it had received any complaints of physical force or corporal punishment being used at independent schools.
According to the advocate, the ministry said it wasn’t aware of any complaints.
However, the ministry had received at least three concerns related to physical and verbal force being used towards students at two Qualified Independent Schools between 2012 and 2019. It claimed the complaints were misfiled, not documented, or not reviewed in response to the advocate’s requests.
The advocate mentioned the schools’ and ministry’s lack of documentation and filing in almost all areas of the report.
According to the report, there was no follow-up or documentation related to the concerns by ministry staff as there was a lack of formal process and confusion between staff and officials as around who should be handing the matter with the school.
The Advocate’s investigation into Legacy Christian Academy, specifically, found a “Scriptural Discipline Agreement” that was signed by parents prior to 2005 that gave the school permission to “paddle” students.
“A students would receive multiple (typically three to five) ‘strokes’ with a wide, flat wooden paddle across the buttocks for the purposes of ‘character development’,” the advocate described in the report.
The investigation found paddling would be administered for wrongdoings including talking, not understanding course material, and disobedience.
Former student and lead lawsuit plaintiff Caitlin Erickson has told Global News about the school’s paddling punishments in previous interviews and said it’s encouraging to see the report recognize the same issues.
“It just solidifies and backs up everything that we have been saying about these schools,” Erickson said on Thursday.
In addition to the abuse allegations raised by the students, Erickson and two other former Legacy Christian Academy students went to the Legislature in 2022 and to put a spotlight on the inadequate curriculum supplied by some of the schools.
Erickson supplied a biology 30 textbook from Legacy Christian Academy that stated people and dinosaurs once co-existed.
“It has things in it that do not align with the law in Saskatchewan on human rights,” Erickson said.
Several schools removed references from curriculums that people differed in values, behaviours and lifestyles as well as on interacting and feeling comfortable with others who are different in race, religion, status, religion and culture.
The report found one school to not provide curriculum instruction in seven ministry-required areas of teaching from 2016 to 2019.
For at least two of those years, the school was not teaching science as it couldn’t find science material in alignment with religion.
The investigation also uncovered concerns with the individualized “mastery-based approach” conducted in some of the schools.
“Several Qualified Independent Schools use a ‘self-mastery approach’ through which students read and complete workbooks on their own and little direct teaching is done,” the report read.
Documented supervision forms showed students were usually working on workbooks during ministry visits.
The advocate found the instructional model not likely to be meeting curriculum objectives related to comprehension, critical thinking, analysis, and creativity.
Data from the Ministry of Education showed that in years that Grade 12 students in unfunded independent schools participated in provincial exams, their average marks were 6.4 to 1.2 per cent lower than the total Saskatchewan student population.
When the marks of the same students were determined by the teacher, the average grades were 3.4 to 11.3 per cent higher than the total Saskatchewan student population.
The advocate found that independent schools are making it difficult for parents and students to question the practices of the schools.
“The Advocate found that statutory and policy gaps, combined with the lack of school policy review by the Ministry, opened the door for independent schools to potentially dismiss the participation rights of students — and to limit the ability of their families to address concerns outside of the school,” read the report.
The report said historical evidence was found that a parent was “formally chastised” by a school administrator for privately questioning the policies of the school. Documents were found that said students and families are only allowed to speak positively about the school and staff and strongly discouraged going to any sources outside the school with concerns.
The report said that there were very few options to address complains about policies and staff.
“Because the same individual could fill several roles within an independent school simultaneously — serving as teacher, principal, director, and board member — it could be difficult for anyone to come forward with a concern involving the person in that role.”
The Ministry of Education said they will be doing a detailed analysis of the advocate’s report.
“Ensuring that students feel safe, protected, and respected are priorities for our government. The Government of Saskatchewan believes registered independent schools are a valuable part of our education sector as they provide parental choice with respect to their child’s education,” read an email from the ministry.
Erickson said the 36 recommendations should be enough to stop funding the schools and shut them down.
“You can’t continue to have all of this evidence showing that this place is very harmful and not do anything about it… We need to see the funding freeze because taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for these types of systems.”
She said the schools should have been shut down a long time ago.
“We have seen how quickly the government can act when they have a charged MLA in the Legislature and Premier Scott Moe wants to remove that person, but we have a school on the corner of 102 Pinehouse Drive that has multiple staff charged, a civil lawsuit, two reports now from third-party government agencies… so at what point do we say enough is enough and freeze the funding?”
The advocate said it would be monitoring the implementation of its recommendations and will request updates and meetings with the ministry.