Alberta Education is embarking on an ambitious, sweeping $64 million curriculum redesign, which will focus on literacy and numeracy, while also covering indigenous history and culture, climate change, mental health and sexual and gender diversity.
Parents, students, teachers and other interested people can weigh in on the redesign through an online survey that will be online from now until Nov. 18, as well as during an engagement session to be held next Tuesday at St. Paul Regional High School.
“Basically, this is their opportunity, for all stakeholders including parents . . . to have their say on how curriculum is redesigned in all of the subject areas,” said St. Paul Education Regional Division chair Heather Starosielski of the survey, noting the redesign will be for Kindergarten to Grade 12, in six subjects - arts, language arts, math, social studies, science, and health. The review and updates will happen in both official languages simultaneously.
Parts of the curriculum are eight to even 30-years-old, according to Alberta Education, which stated, in a release, “To ensure student success, we need our curriculum to be relevant, meaningful and engaging for all students.”
Starosielski agreed that it is time to bring the curriculum into the 21st century, but noted the proposed redesign is ambitious in scope, and expressed her hope that teachers would not be overloaded with changes. As it stands, the K – 4 curriculum is slated to be completed by the end of 2018, Grades 5 – 9 finished by the end of 2019, and high school curriculum finalized between 2020 and 2022.
Consultants and ministry staff will be looking at the changes, but local teachers have also been selected to be part of the process.
First Nations, Metis and Inuit community members will also be invited to take part in consultations with the view to ensure the curriculum reflects their history and teaching, in keeping with the calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation process, while the history and contributions of francophone people to Canada will also be part of the new curriculum.
Marc Dumont, superintendent for Conseil Scolaire Centre-Est, said the francophone school board has been working hard alongside other school boards to ensure the francophone perspective is reflected in the provincial curriculum.
He too felt it was important for the curriculum to develop students to be able to deal with the challenges of the 21st century, “but also meets the needs of our francophone communities . . . East Central supports this endeavour and will make sure that it fosters positive and honest parent engagement.”
For her part, Starosielski said she is glad to see the province moving faster in redesigning mathematics curriculum, with an emphasis on getting back to basic numeracy, as of literacy and numeracy, she says, “Those are the building blocks you can’t move away from with our children.”
While acknowledging that the project is ambitious in scope, she said, “I think it’s completely necessary as long as it’s done carefully.”
Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills MLA David Hanson said he supported the aim of the redesign if it was to improve Alberta’s education and maintain its students’ competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world.
“If, however, it is just another attempt by our current government to take advantage of the situation to pursue an idealistic agenda, at the expense of taxpayers and the risk of our students, I will definitely have something to say against it, and I am sure parents will as well,” he wrote in an email to the Journal. “My concern is that by the time a new system is found to be ineffective, what happens to that generation of students that get left behind? We owe it to our students to be certain any changes will actually be beneficial before implementing.”
Hanson said he would like parents to have a look at the online questionnaire and said he would be happy to receive feedback from the community on it.
Anyone who is interested in completing the survey can visit https://education.alberta.ca to access it. The survey is in two parts, with Part A talking about the Government of Alberta’s general direction for the development of its new curriculum, while the second part asks people to answer what they see as the strengths and gaps of the current curriculum.
If people want a further opportunity to discuss the proposed changes and direction of the curriculum redesign, they can also attend the Nov. 8 meeting hosted by the Learning Network Educational Services at St. Paul Regional High School from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. All parents/guardians, teachers and community education partners are invited to attend, and can learn more about the evening and its goals at https://www.learning-network.org/uploads/programs/1736.pdf
