Background

The Education Task Force was originally formed in the early 1990’s to help ensure that the needs of all children - and especially of special needs children - were not overlooked by the Ministry of Education. In the spring of 2002, The Education Task Force was reconstituted with a new Chair, new membership, and a renewed focus on issues currently facing the education sector in Ontario.

In its current incarnation, the Task Force is based on the recognition that we may be in danger of creating a generation of “disposable children”. Coined by an American critic of the child welfare system, this term describes the disturbing trend whereby a large number of “failures” have come to be accepted by mainstream public and social service systems in the name of providing supposedly better services for “some” rather than all children and youth.

Accordingly, The Task Force recognizes that decision-makers in the Ontario school system - whether they are directors, trustees, superintendents, administrators or teachers - are faced with tensions in terms of how their decisions will benefit individual students versus the student population in general. The pendulum swings back and forth between these two poles, as the purpose of education is alternately glimpsed through the lenses of government priorities, the needs of parent consumers, policy advocates, and through comparisons to other nation’s educational systems. While government policy had been the priority during some periods, at other times it has been educational researchers and theorists that have held swat over educational practice.

The Task Force believes that the current Ontario government educational policies aim to bolster the level of academic excellence for as many students as possible. At first glance this appears to be a laudable goal. These policies, perhaps unintentionally, sacrifice a subset of the Ontario student population for whom meeting standards of “excellence” proves extremely challenging given their needs and circumstances. In the end, the result of this philosophy will be the creation of a large group of children who are in fact “disposable” within our current education system; whose right to an equal education is sacrificed in the best-interests of the majority group.

Summary of the Sparrow Lake Alliance Beliefs About Public Education in Ontario (2002)

01	Every child in Ontario has the right to an education.
02	The education system is one important part of a larger vision for all who reside in Ontario and the basis for a healthy Province and society.
03	The school setting is a social community and reflects the kind of community we want to encourage in Ontario society.
04	Every child (person) has the right to feel physically and emotionally safe in the school setting.
05	There is a specific curriculum that must be achieved/mastered.
06	Every child is entitled to have specialized instruction and accommodations based on what is required by that child to master or achieve expectations within the curriculum.
07	Every child with unique physical and cognitive needs is entitled to have a specialized curriculum and identified instruction.
08	The school system can be the (is a) gateway/identifier to expertise services outside of education, not the provider.
09	The school years are the opportunity for all children to unearth and discover individual strengths and talents beyond mastery/ achievement of curriculum.
10	The staff of schools is our richest education resource.
11	An active community leads to a healthier school.
12	It is important to have an adult advisor/mentor interested in the academic achievement of every student.
13	Every child is entitled to have his/her fundamental dignity and individual learning needs respected and nurtured.
14	Every child should be prepared for a future and a meaningful role.
15	A healthy future for our Province is dependent on the educational success of all our children.

Major Publications/Projects

This Task Force created the publication Interagency Collaboration Guidelines for Schools (1994), to assist school personnel, agencies and community, to provide services to benefit children by working together. The Task Force also took the lead in developing the Alliance's Submission to the Royal Commission on Learning (1993), and the final report of the Commission echoed all the major recommendations in the Alliance's submission. As the debate continued around Bill 160, The Education Quality Improvement Act, the Education Task Force advocated strongly against this legislation on behalf of the Sparrow Lake Alliance, through formal correspondence with provincial politicians, bureaucrats, and the three Toronto daily newspapers.

As the June 1999 election approached, the Education Task Force along with the group People for Education prepared a Fact Sheet entitled, Speak Out: For Education. The Fact Sheet consisted of eight questions with corresponding background information. Its purpose was to inform members of the public about what was happening to education in Ontario so that they could question the candidates in their ridings.

Current Activities

In the spring of 2002, the Education Task Force was reconstituted with a new Chair, new membership, and a renewed focus on issues currently facing the education sector in Ontario.

In conjunction with Voices For Children, the Education Task Force, prepared a submission to the Education Equality Task Force, which was delivered by the Honourable Margaret McCain, on September 18, 2002.

The SLA Education Task Force then prepared a written submission to the Education Equality Task Force.

In summary, the written submission indicated that the membership of Sparrow Lake Alliance encompasses all of Ontario. Its members believe that the needs of schools in Ontario are unique to each community and that funding formulas based on 'one size fits all' philosophies are ineffective. (Profiles from two very different school scenarios, one a rural school, the other a special needs school in Toronto, were used to provide illustration.)

The following key points provided the basis for the submission:

		1) We share the Government's belief in Equality in Education. This comes, however, with a hefty obligation to provide equal opportunity to all children, and to accommodate student differences.
		2) The population of Ontario is very diverse; so too are our schools. This diversity must be recognised in the funding formula.
		3) Schools have always been the hubs of our community, and should reflect the kind of communities we want to encourage in Ontario society.
		4) A high percentage of Ontario children require serves by multiple ministries. Fragmented and disjointed serves to children are the result of each ministry's loyalty to its own mandate. The Ministry of Education must lead the way to move beyond this current situation.
		5) Funding formulas must reward and reinforce the efforts of any school to educate its students and create a healthy community. An exclusive focus on establishing the degree of need can lead to competition for a finite pot of money, instead of creative solutions.

To get the full-text of the written submission click » here.
To get the notes from the oral presentation click » here.