Citizens' Forum on Public Policy

A free, high quality meaningful primary and secondary education is a right of all British Columbians. However, we do not have sufficient healthy, safe and convenient school facilities to meet the needs of our children.  Social changes, including more parents working and moving, higher poverty levels, more English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) students, increased student access to drugs, and increases in child health problems such as asthma, allergies and attention deficit disorder, have placed extra stresses and responsibilities on teachers that hamper their ability to teach effectively. In addition, although the BC education system and curricula have been modified on an almost continuous basis, they have not been fundamentally restructured to ensure that they meet the needs of our society and economy in the 21st century. There are inadequate post-secondary education opportunities to satisfy demand or societal needs. Although there has been a post-secondary tuition freeze for the past five years, there has also been a decline in government post-secondary spending per capita, resulting in over-crowded and under-staffed post-secondary institutions.

The Green Party places a priority on adequately funding and strengthening our public education system, from pre-school to post-secondary institutions, as an investment in our children, our economy and our future.

• Provide universally accessible and affordable pre-school education
• Move towards qualification-based pay parity between pre-school and other teachers in the school system.

• Increase funding to our public school system by 10% as a long-term social and economic investment.
• Retain the recently negotiated small class sizes in the primary grades.
• Reduce intermediate class sizes.
• Restructure the curriculum and delivery of K-12 education to ensure students learn the skills to cope with increasing social, economic and environmental change and are well prepared to become environmentally and socially responsible citizens. Nurture interest and involvement in BC’s and Canada’s democratic systems.
• Ban corporate funding, advertising and the privatization of services such as cafeterias in our public schools.
• Support and encourage diverse public use of school facilities. Establish more community schools and provide supplemental funding to community schools that provide licensed after-school childcare.
• Require energy-efficient, safe and healthy buildings and organic food cafeterias. Ban the use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers on school grounds.
• Eliminate user fees for enhanced learning programs (e.g., art, outdoor education and music programs).
• Increase resources and opportunities for gifted students.
• Support and encourage more alternative education choices within the public school system, including integrating home-schooled children into some classes such as physical education.

• Increase the base level of funding for post-secondary institutions. Increase student spaces for ESL, adult basic education and high opportunity occupations such as teachers, health care professionals, sustainable technologies and industry-based job training and apprenticeship programs
• Provide free tuition for post-secondary education, as they do in many European countries, contingent on performance and continuing residence and employment in BC for a minimum of 5 years after graduation.

Increase funding for needs-based grants (bursaries) and scholarships and reinstitute the system of providing 50% of every student loan as a grant.