Public School Vaccinations
Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel promised an Alberta Party government will require children to have up-to-date immunizations in order to attend a publicly-funded school. An Alberta Party government will require children to have up-to-date immunizations in order to attend a publicly-funded school.
Educational Assistants
Children First Plan The Children First plan includes a major expansion of direct financial support to lower and middle-income families to cover the costs of licensed daycare and out-of-school care programs, a caregiver tax credit, and the creation of more affordable, high-quality child care spaces throughout the province. Our plan will also power the creation of more safe, high-quality, affordable child care spaces throughout Alberta, and ensure the government places a new focus on our children’s early years. This represents the biggest expansion of child care in the history of Alberta, which will support participation in the workforce and position Alberta for a prosperous future.”
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HELPING FAR MORE FAMILIES AFFORD CHILD CARE
Far more lower and middle-income families will receive financial support to cover the costs of licensed child care through a new voucher program. The voucher can be used at any licensed child care and will provide a subsidy of up to 100% of the costs of a child care cost (up to established regional maximums) The NDP’s $25/day child care proposal covers only 7,276 spaces. Our Children First plan applies to all licensed child care spaces in the province. There are over 260,000 Albertan children and more than 100,000 Albertan families to whom our program would apply. The voucher will “follow the child”, putting decision-making in the hands of families rather than the government. This accommodates differences in childcare costs between care providers. Children up to age 6 will be covered. The subsidy will be income-tested using a sliding scale calculation. For general reference, approximate maximum amounts that families would pay out-of-pocket for child care under this plan (i.e., after subsidy) are as follows: Approximate Combined Family Income Estimated Maximum Cost Per Day to Families Per Child $0 - $29,999 $0 per day max $30,000 - $49,999 $5 per day max $50,000 - $69,999 $10 per day max $70,000 - $89,999 $20 per day max $90,000 - $110,000 $30 per day max CAREGIVER TAX CREDIT For families with children who do not use a licensed child care option, or do not make use of the voucher program, a new income-tested caregiver tax credit will be created to help recognize the costs involved in raising children. CREATING MORE AFFORDABLE, SAFE, HIGH-QUALITY CHILD CARE SPACES A comprehensive review of Alberta’s child care legislation will be undertaken, with a view to making it easier to create more licensed, safe, affordable, high-quality child care spaces. A new investment credit will be established to encourage employers to create licensed child care spaces for children of employees. CREATION OF A NEW MINISTRY OF EARLY CHILDHOOD A new ministry will place a focus on early learning and early childhood in Alberta. It will work proactively, and in collaboration with other ministries, to encourage the healthy development of children during their early years. It is well established that preventative efforts during a child’s early years help bring about better outcomes as they move into adulthood. |
No mention of education in platform.
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Smaller Class Sizes
Alberta Liberals will put an end to overcrowded classrooms by implementing flexible classroom size caps and 2, 000+ hiring more teachers. Reducing classroom sizes increases the academic performance of students. Yet for almost 20 years successive Governments have failed to meet Alberta’s class-size guidelines. Some math classes have upwards of 45 students in them and there are Gym classes with 60 students. The money that has been spent on reducing class-sizes has been poorly tracked, according to Alberta’s Auditor General, and failed to create results. The Alberta Liberal Plan will:
Alberta Liberals will create a leading-edge Healthy Lifestyle Program that includes banning junk food from schools and fully-funding comprehensive healthy lifestyle training. The formative years of a student’s life are the perfect time to teach them how to live a healthy lifestyle. Early Intervention Mental Health Alberta Liberals will tackle youth mental health issues through a significant increase in funding for mental health services in our schools. 70% of adults with mental illness had recognizable signs in childhood that were inadequately assessed and treated. Addressing mental health issues starts with helping our youth. Curriculum The current curriculum review isn’t perfect but it has made good changes. It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to throw it out. We support the curriculum changes but are calling for further improvements including:
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Enhanced Trades and Professional Training in High School
The Alberta Liberals will expand trades and professional training in high school and junior high to reduce the risk of skilled labour shortfalls and create more options for students. True Inclusive Education We’ll invest in more supports for students with extra needs by increasing funding by 50%.We understand the need for more teaching assistants, more training and more professionals with specialized qualifications to support teachers. We’ll ensure funding for special needs students follow the student it is intended for, including for those students who are home-schooled due to difficulties they’ve encountered in the public school system. We’ll also immediately ban the use of seclusion rooms and mandate closer monitoring of all funding directed towards inclusive education. Support for Alternative Programs We support mandating that students attending language immersion schools or other alternative programs within the public education system qualify to have their student transportation fees waived in the same manner as children in regular programs who reside more than 2.4 km from their designated school. Eliminating School Fees We will phase out school fees. Nothing is more important to education that equality of opportunity, but school fees disadvantage low-income families. They will cease to exist under an Alberta Liberal Government. We will phase them out over the next four year and make up the funding difference to schools. Supporting Choice for ParentsCharter schools are part of the public system and provide valuable, specialized programs, but this NDP government has treated them and their students like second-class citizens. An Alberta Liberal government will eliminate school and bussing fees for Charter school students, and ensure Charter school infrastructure is funded in an equal and fair way. |
Investing in Quality Education
We will fund enrollment growth to ensure there are enough teachers and resources to match our growing population. We will continue to invest in Alberta communities and keep up with our growing population by building and upgrading another 70 schools across the province, with an emphasis on badly needed high schools. We will make the Classroom Improvement Fund permanent and supplement it with additional in-class resources to ensure every student has the support they need to learn in our increasingly complex classrooms. We will continue to build playgrounds for every new school built and will assist mature neighbourhoods to replace aging and outdated school playgrounds. We will expand on our success at creating new language programs in Alberta schools, including creating new provincial Filipino, Punjabi, Somali and Cantonese offerings. Investing in Skills Training, Colleges, and Universities We will provide stable, consistent funding to post-secondary institutions to ensure higher education remains accessible and affordable for all Albertans. We will eliminate tuition fees for high school upgrading and English Language Learning programs, so every Albertan can acquire the skills they need to participate in today’s economy. We will work with post-secondary institutions to renew the funding formula and focus resources on creating new spaces, ensuring a lack of seats doesn’t stop qualified students from getting the education they need. Protecting LGBTQ Albertans We will ban the use of conversion therapy techniques in accordance with the forthcoming recommendations of the Conversion Therapy Working Group. We will create a provincial Hate Crimes Unit to investigate hate crimes, including those targeted at LGBTQ Albertans. We will continue to protect all students by ensuring the timely creation of a gaystraight alliance when requested by students so they have access to a safe space without fear of being outed. |
An Inclusive and Diverse Alberta
We will continue to implement the provincial anti-racism strategy, including the creation of a Hate Crimes Unit, more resources for community groups combating racism and reforming government hiring practices to eliminate bias. We will increase investments in the foreign qualification recognition fund to further improve the ability for newcomers to have their education and experience recognized. We will implement a Newcomer Paths to Employment strategy to make sure newer Albertans are able to fully share in our prosperity, including a Newcomer Advocate, expanded bridging programs and a provincial government internship program. We will create a Ministry of Multiculturalism to educate and promote diversity, inclusion and mutual respect among all Albertans. We will work with communities that have experienced hate crimes at their places of worship to increase security and to restore a sense of safety. We will push the federal government to allow more family reunification entries in Alberta and to create more paths to permanent residency so more newcomers can make their homes here. We will modernize charitable gaming rules to remove unfair barriers for multicultural groups accessing casino and bingo revenue. We will increase the number of language programs in Alberta’s schools so more students can stay connected with their family’s culture and language. |
Making Life Better for Students, Parents and Teachers: Renewing Education
A United Conservative government will: • Maintain or increase education funding while seeking greater efficiency by reducing administrative overhead and pushing resources to front line teachers • Continue to build new schools, while ordering an immediate audit of class sizes to determine what happened to previous funding dedicated to class size reduction, and prioritizing public infrastructure funds for schools and health care infrastructure • End the focus on so-called “discovery” or “inquiry” learning, also known as constructivism, by repealing Ministerial Order #001/2013 and replacing it with a new Ministerial Order which focusses on teaching essential knowledge to help students develop foundational competencies Alberta Strong & Free 59 • Pause the NDP’s curriculum review, and broaden consultations to be open and transparent, including a wider range of perspectives from parents, teachers, and subject matter experts: • Curriculum reform should begin by determining the key knowledge and skills that Alberta students should possess by the time of their high school matriculation, written in plain language that students, parents, and teachers can understand • The curriculum should focus on developing foundational competencies • Teaching methods should focus on those that produce the best outcomes, such as phonics and proven math instruction methods • The social studies curriculum should be taught without political bias, offering an objective understanding of Alberta, Canadian and world history, geography, and civic literacy • Financial literacy should be a mandatory element woven throughout the curriculum • Consent must be taught as an essential part of the sexual education curriculum • Reform student assessment so that students, parents, and teachers can clearly identify areas of strength and weakness. This will include: • Bringing back the Grade 3 Provincial Achievement Test • Returning to a 50/50 split between Diploma and school grades for Grade 12 • Implementing language and math assessments for students in grades 1, 2, and 3 to help both parents and teachers understand and assess progress in the critical early years, and remedy where necessary • Require clear, understandable report cards • Focus on excellence in outcomes, with measures that include: benchmarking the Alberta education system against leading global jurisdictions; ensuring teachers have expertise in subject areas by introducing teacher testing; expanding options for schools to facilitate expertise; and, requiring that the education faculties in Alberta’s universities themselves require that teachers take courses in the subjects they will one day teach in schools. 60 • Support safe schools that protect students against discrimination and bullying • Reinforce the need for open, critical debate and thinking as key to lifelong learning • Proclaim the Education Act (2012), taking effect on September 1, 2019: • A UCP government will trust the hard work done by those who created the 2012 Education Act, and proclaim that legislation, already passed by the Legislature • Unlike the NDP’s curriculum review, conducted largely in secret, the Education Act resulted from years of widespread public consultation • Introduce a Choice in Education Act which will: • Affirm parents have primary responsibility for the education of their children • Add to the preamble of the Education Act recognition of Section 26.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children” • Protect the status and funding of independent schools in legislation given that they save the public education system $168 million annually • Facilitate the creation and operation of new charter schools by: • Lifting the cap on the number of charter schools • Lifting charter school enrolment caps • Allowing charter schools to own property • Treat charter schools as priorities above other possible uses for surplus public-school infrastructure • Support and encourage an expansion of alternative programs in the public system • Respect the constitutional right to separate schools • Maintain funding for independent schools and home schoolers at current levels Alberta Strong & Free 61 • Encourage the sharing of busing and infrastructure where appropriate, while respecting the distinctive nature of both systems • Ensure that requests from parents for blended homeschool programs are facilitated • Amend the Education Act to implement the Leadership Quality Standards • Reduce paperwork burdens on teachers, principals, and other school staff, and reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens throughout the system • Review and implement selected recommendations from the Task Force for Teaching Excellence including: • Establishing alternative pathways to teaching certification for those in specialized areas of knowledge • Introducing more regular assessment of teacher performance • Ensuring subject matter competence • Review the current funding formula to ensure that rural schools have adequate resources to deliver programs in an equitable way |
Supporting and Reforming Post-Secondary Education
A United Conservative government will: • Reduce provincial red tape and mandates on universities and colleges, freeing them to innovate and compete more, and comply with bureaucratic mandates less • Measure labour market outcomes of post-secondary programs to identify the correlation between provincial subsidies and economic returns for taxpayers • Encourage efforts by Alberta universities and colleges to attract more qualified foreign students. Alberta post-secondary institutions are well below the national average, and leaders in the information technology sector report that their principal challenge is a shortage of labour with relevant skills • Establish the most effective intellectual property framework for the commercialization and entrepreneurial application of innovative research and development from Alberta’s universities and colleges • Work with universities and industry associations to measure Alberta’s performance against leading global research and government networks in key innovation hubs like California, Texas, Israel, London, and Hong Kong • Require all universities and colleges to develop, post and comply with free speech policies that conform to the University of Chicago Statement on Principles of Free Expression Skills for Jobs A United Conservative government will: • Double the number of schools that CAREERS: Next Generation currently works with from 500 to 1,000 and quadruple the number of students and full-time apprentices from 1,567 to 6,000 by 2023 by providing CAREERS with over $6 million annually by 2022/23 • Dedicate $1 million for trades scholarships for 1,000 students who show promise in trades in high school • Support the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s new collegiate in Edmonton with a $28 million contribution, and budget for $28 million to 64 Alberta Strong & Free expand that model in Calgary and eventually to other centres as well • Reform teacher certification to enable qualified tradespeople to teach and bring their skills to the classroom without requiring a full Bachelor of Education degree • Modernize the Alberta Employment Standards Code to enable junior high school students who work in co-op programs on job sites • Appoint a Skills for Jobs Task Force to report to the government on how to reform education in order to expand opportunities for vocational education and the skilled trades • Increase support for Skills Canada Alberta with funding of $2 million over four years so that young Albertans can participate in its Skills Canada National Competition and demonstrate their skills and talent on the national and world stage • Support the creation of an Alberta Trades Hall of Fame to honour Albertan tradespeople who have left their mark in our province through their work • Expand the Women Building Futures program with $10 million over 4 years to support women who wish to pursue opportunities in the skilled trades. • Work with other provinces and territories to better harmonize provincial mobility for apprentices and skilled tradespeople • Expand the apprenticeship model to other careers with emerging demand such as coding and green technologies • Invite applications for vocation-focused charter schools • Reform teacher certification to enable qualified tradespeople to teach and bring their skills to the classroom without requiring a full Bachelor of Education degree • Create a Premier’s Council comprised of vocational education leaders, trades unions, and other stakeholders to meet regularly with the premier and relevant ministers to advance vocational education as a government priority |
