Saskatchewan has increased the amount of education funding per student, more than any other province, during a recent decade that also saw enrolment drop.
That’s according to a report released Thursday by a conservative-leaning think tank.
The Fraser Institute found that provincial per-student funding increased 39 per cent, or roughly $4,000, from 2004 to 2014 in Saskatchewan.
READ MORE: Sask. gov’t to work with NORTEP council as post-secondary overlap is eliminated
When considering enrolment changes and inflation, the rate drops to roughly 28 per cent, but still leads the country, according to the findings.
“There seems to be this sense that … spending on education is being cut and despite any claims to the contrary, education funding in Canada is indeed not being cut,” said Deani Van Pelt, the director of the Fraser Institute’s Barbara Mitchell Centre for Improvement in Education.
Van Pelt, who is one of the report’s co-authors, said in a supplementary media release that “there’s a common misperception, perpetuated by teachers’ unions and activists, that spending on public schools has been declining.”
The Saskatchewan Teachers Federation (STF) responded to the report on Thursday, stating through an official spokesperson that the findings were “a misrepresentation of public spending on education as it includes capital spending instead of focusing on funding that supports teaching and learning in the classroom.”
“It also fails to acknowledge that the funding of education in Saskatchewan has changed with the removal of local taxation,” the spokesperson stated.
READ MORE: Aboriginal education gap costing Saskatchewan $1B yearly: report
Deani Van Pelt said the report looked at “the full amount that was being spent on education,” not “the composition of the education spending,” but added that a separate Fraser Institute publication found a large increase in Canadian education compensation during overlapping years.
“Over the decade spending in Saskatchewan increased by a billion dollars, and that’s spending on public schools from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion,” Van Pelt said.
‘The fact is that we do spend an enormous amount on public school education in this country and all of us need to be asking… is it being spent as well as it could be spent.”
READ MORE: ‘Do we really need 28 school divisions?’ Sask. education minister on possible restructuring
The Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) also responded to the report. A written statement from its president Connie Bailey said “the system for funding education in our province is very complex and there are many ways in which it could be analyzed.”
“The results of any analysis could vary greatly depending on the factors that are considered and the time frames that are compared,” Bailey’s statement read.
“We also know that investing in education and our students represents an investment in the future of our province and its economy.”
The report comes months after some provincial groups criticized the Saskatchewan government for not funding education at an adequate level in its recent budget. Education funding was also an election issue last March, as the Prairie Spirit School Division warned of eventual cuts to balance its budget.
READ MORE: 74 classroom staff losing their jobs in the Prairie Spirit School Division
Saskatchewan Education Minister Don Morgan was not available for an interview Thursday, however, in a statement, a government spokesperson said the findings “validates our position that education funding continues to be a priority for the Government of Saskatchewan.”
Comments