Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 11/99) - If it's of any consolation, Yellowknife and the NWT are not alone in wrestling with the many sides of the education debate.

That was the conclusion reached at an annual meeting of Canadian teacher representatives held in Yellowknife this week.

"A lot of our issues are the same," said NWT Teachers' Association president Pat Thomas. "We're all concerned with teacher shortages and working conditions."

Thomas said the informal meeting highlighted some of the issues raised in the recent territorial budget debate, and gave the representatives of teacher associations across the country the chance to air their views.

"There are no real differences in the North except on the scale of the problems," she said. "I think we have the same class sizes but deal with sharing resources among remote communities -- and in classes of 15 where 10 pupils might be on individual programs because of their special needs."

Diane Gillett, president of the New Brunswick Teachers' Association, said that historically the differences across Canada lie in how boards and departments have chosen to combat the problems -- because education is a provincial or territorial rather than a federal responsibility with national guidelines.

"Governments tend to think up short-term solutions and there hasn't been much coordination -- there are even differences in how we define terms like violence," she said.

Gillett said efforts are being made through the Canadian Teachers' Federation to foster greater communication and co-operation. She said an increase in standardized testing, especially in Atlantic Canada, is one result of that partnership.

Marshall Jarvis said the North can expect to be incorporated into a more national system early next century.

President of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, Jarvis said recent references to a crisis in education in the NWT are not necessarily anything new.

"Every time a minister of education wants to change something, the idea of a crisis is brought up -- in Ontario it was about the re-election (of Premier Mike Harris)," he said. "In reality, changes are always under way because education is dynamic."

"But the North should not make the same mistakes that happen elsewhere -- where changes come from the top down," he warned, "Educators should sit down with the minister and create a plan."

Jarvis also echoed recent debate in the territory when he referred to the Sparrow Lake Study, which argues every dollar invested in early child care saves $7 on social spending down the road.

Alberta Teachers' Association president Bauni MacKay stressed the "chronic underfunding" in education and said both Alberta and Canada are preparing for the teacher shortage already evident in the North.

"If the Northwest Territories wants to compete with the rest of Canada and the rest of the world, it has to invest in the system," she said.