The president of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association says the province already has the recommendations it needs in order to address classroom composition issues.
Connie Keating said there are existing reports that have been produced over the last few years that show the answer to many of the challenges in classrooms involve ensuring the system is properly resourced.
“Our classrooms are chronically under-resourced,” Keating said in an interview.
“Moving forward we need to ensure that decisions made by government are made in the best interest of all students and that classrooms are properly resourced.”
The NBTA will be part of a “stakeholder group” being put together by the government in the wake of its decision to cancel proposed reforms to the anglophone education system.
The changes would have seen French immersion phased out, with all incoming students place into a universal program where they spend half the day in English and the other in French. The goal was to ensure all students graduate with a conversational level of French.
Premier Blaine Higgs said the program would also end what he called a “two-tier” education system, where high-achieving students were streamed into French immersion. Higgs says he is still intent on realizing the two goals of the now abandoned reform.
“I’m hopeful that the conversation has only just begun and I’m hopeful that the NBTA will play a key role in here as we move forward in finding a case where parents don’t have to make a decision when putting their kids in Kindergarten or Grade 1 but we have a system that is fair and equitable for all of our kids,” he said at a press conference for the Council of Atlantic Premiers on Monday.
“Today we don’t, we have a class system that is not fair and equitable.
But Keating says that the proposal wouldn’t have done much to address the streaming issue identified by the premier.
“Our classrooms are chronically under resourced,” she said.
“We talk about a two-tier system, we talk about streaming, however the changes that were proposed were just going to be a reshuffling of students and the same problems, the same learning issues would still remain.”
In order to address those issues, Keating says the government should look to reduce class sizes, hire more resource teachers, as well as those with specializations like teaching English as a second language, while also increasing other staff like school psychologists.
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