The Saskatchewan government said members of the public will have an input into the future of education in the province.
Education Minister Gordon Wyant said feedback gathered from the survey will help officials develop the provincial education plan beyond 2020.
“We want to hear from students, parents, educators, and school staff to better understand what they want for the future of education,” Wyant said in a statement.
“The new provincial education plan will ensure that our schools are on the right path to meet the needs of students as we look toward the next decade.”
The engagement process, which started in October 2018, is being led by the Ministry of Education.
It involves in-person participation by parents and students, and through an online survey open to the public until May 10.
The survey has questions broken into three categories; your experience in the school system, basic demographic information, and how you rank the importance of eight topics.
These topics include social and cultural areas like how to ensure schools are inclusive and have Indigenous content in the core curriculum. There are also more conventional items like updating the curriculum for the modern era and the idea of offering alternative paths in high school with a focus on a job post-graduation.
All of these questions have an open-ended response space following their importance rank.
“Once we have the results of the surveys and we compile them and the work that’s being done by other sector partners, we’ll bring all this together to decide on what the best future is – what the plan is going forward for the next five-to-ten years,” Wyant said.
The importance ranking survey questions come from the main ideas discussed in an “education summit” that took place in October 2018.
Education critic Carla Beck said she will be watching to see how the survey is weighted against consultation with those in the education sector. She said it is good to see this kind of consultation, but wonders why Indigenous elements of the curriculum are included in the survey.
“It stands out as something that’s curious to put to a survey. I would think that we have some consensus in this province about the importance of reconciliation, the importance of treaty education in schools, the importance of Indigenous content in schools,” Beck said.
“To put that in a survey, it seems to me it should be a given; not something that’s up for debate.”
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