AllTheirAgendas
'RUsVille
The lede of a piece by David Carrigg in PostMedia's Westcoast slightly broadersheeted print organ:
British Columbia has the lowest percentage of students studying in the public school system according to the latest national school enrolment figures.
Put another way, B.C. has the highest percentage of students in private/independent schools compared to other provinces at 13.1 per cent. This is significantly higher than Quebec, the second placed province for private/independent school enrolment, with 9.6 per cent.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick all had private/independent enrolment rates lower than five per cent. The Canadian average was 7.4 per cent.
The Statistics Canada figures are based on the 2017/2018 school year and reported there were 563,244 public elementary and secondary school students in B.C., and 85,000 in the private/independent school system. B.C.’s home school rate was among the lowest in the country at 0.3 per cent. Yukon and Alberta had the highest home school rates at three per cent and 1.8 per cent.
The percentage of students in public school in B.C. has been declining steadily since 1977, when the B.C. government started providing partial funding for approved private/independent schools...
Which is fair enough, as far as it goes.
And good on Mr. Carrigg for getting this story past the hedge fungible super troupers that currently protect the ideological purity of the conglomerate he works for.
But it would appear that the trade off may have been a decision to invoke total radio silence regarding the impact of the Fraser Institute's longterm onslaught on our education system.
Which, backed by actual evidence by collected awhile back by the Press Progress is demonstrably a strategy to discredit public and elevate private schools:
...(A)ccording to the Fraser Institute’s Executive Vice President, the school rankings are actually a tool in the Institute’s “communications agenda,” part of a strategy designed to “convince people” there’s a “problem.”
That’s what Fraser Institute VP Jason Clemens told a 2014 workshop organized by the Atlas Network, a Washington-based umbrella organization for right-wing think tanks and political action groups, funded by Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and other wealthy donors connected to the American Tea Party movement.
Asked about education reform – usually a code word for publicly subsidizing private schools in Tea Party circles – Clemens pointed to the Institute’s school rankings as a good example of how to “set-up your research agenda and your communications agenda.”...
Surprise!
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Friday, November 01, 2019
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3 comments:
Gordon Campbell short-changing schools
4. School property tax rebate for industry: 50 per cent of all school property taxes will be rebated to light and heavy industry to help some of B.C.’s oldest and largest employers, particularly in rural British Columbia. It will save industry about $115 million over the next three years and is on top of the approximately $24 million in annual benefits to heavy industry announced in the 2008 budget. This builds on the plan to have the lowest corporate income tax rate in Canada by 2011.
https://web.archive.org/web/20081216163742/http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2005-2009/2008OTP0260-001612.htm
Generally speaking, if a concerted communications strategy is necessary to convince people there is a problem, there probably isn’t much of a problem.
But when said strategy is based on misusing data in a manner that is debunked not only by the BCTF, but also by the private schools it’s designed to benefit, a real problem does become apparent. That problem has a name. The Fraser Institute.
Someone else wrote this comment:
" 'Put another way'? Yes it should have been put another way. Basically it should state that 87% of students in BC attend public school and that is the lowest number in Canada. Quebec is second with 90.5% attending public school. The Prairies and the Maritime have 95% attending public schools. Then, it should explain why that number does not mean much because there is no uniform means of identifying public or private in some provinces. The other question that could be explored is why most parents prefer to send their children to public school. Private school are minor players and have an appeal to those who can afford the extra costs or are congregants of the religion offering private schooling."
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