By: Hayley Chazan
Senior government officials warned B.C.’s Minister of Education, Peter Fassbender, that a prolonged teachers’ strike could negatively affect international education in the kindergarten to grade 12 sector for several years.
A summer 2014 briefing note to the Minister and Deputy Minister of Education obtained through a freedom of information request, cautioned that a teachers’ strike would damage B.C.’s international education reputation and hinder the province’s future ability to recruit international students. Bureaucrats also warned of international students withdrawing from fall 2014 programs, resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue for public school districts.
The labour dispute between B.C. teachers and the provincial government began nearly a year ago, when teachers voted to walk off the job.
The strike began at the end of April 2014. A deal was reached on Sept. 18 after students missed the first three weeks of the school year.
While the strike put a strain on the entire education system, international students who had planned to begin their studies in B.C. in the fall of 2014 faced particular difficulties.
According to 2013/2014 provincial data, there were just over 14,000 international students in the province of B.C.
B.C. attracts international students from all over the world and parents pay between $10,000 and $15,000 per year to send their children to public schools in the province.
International students who enrolled for the fall 2014 school year had no choice but to ride out the strike and wait for classes to resume, said Randall Martin, Executive Director of the B.C. Council for International Education, the province’s crown agency responsible for international education.
Ministry of Education spokesman Scott Sutherland admitted that the labour disruption was challenging, but noted that the K-12 sector has actually seen a 20 per cent increase in international student enrolment in 2014/2015 compared to the previous year.
“We are pleased to see that districts reported no decline in international student enrolment this fall,” he said. “We have earned our reputation by proving to be a reliable and diverse destination for international students – something we continue to work diligently on.”
Cindy Anderson, a spokesman for the Delta School District said that despite the strike, the 2014/2015 school year did not show an abnormal number of student withdrawals from previous years.
Because the strike ended after the third week of school, only a small proportion of international education programming was affected, said Glen Hansman, 1st Vice President of the BC Teachers’ Federation. Hansman said that the bigger problem facing the international student community is what he calls chronic government underfunding of education in the province.
Charles Ungerleider, director of research at Directions Evidence and Policy Research Group, an education policy think tank in Vancouver, said that now that the labour dispute is resolved and a contract is in place, he believes that international parents won’t hesitate to seek opportunities for their children in B.C.’s public schools, as they are among the best in the world.
Despite the government’s assurances that B.C’s international education reputation is intact, Martin acknowledged that the strike might dissuade a small number of future students from applying to international education programs in B.C, though he said that it’s hard to say for sure.
Although the province’s international education reputation remained intact in the aftermath of the strike, Laura Schwertfeger, district principal of the International Student Department at the Sooke School District on Vancouver Island said she is keen to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2014.
“I think that all agents and school districts are carefully examining their paperwork to make sure that we are well-prepared should something like this happen again.”
—————————————————————————————————————————————-Assignment Components:
1) Original requests
3) Freedom of information request used to write this story – two-page excerpt
4) I used two particularly relevant pages of information obtained through a freedom of information request in order to write this story.
The information is a briefing note on international education in 2014 in the province of British Columbia that was prepared for B.C. Minister of Education, Peter Fassbender, in advance of the Ministry Estimates debate in the spring 2014 sitting of the B.C. legislature. The briefing note was subsequently used as part of the binder used to brief incoming Deputy Minister of Education, Dave Byng, after he was appointed in July 2014. The note was updated continuously throughout the summer of 2014.
The briefing note is from B.C.’s provincial government. It comes from the Ministry of Education.
The information was helpful because it explained, in part, the B.C.’s government International Education Strategy. The briefing note also provided an overview of how the international education program in B.C. works. This was crucial in order to understand how international education programs were affected by the 2014 teachers’ strike.
The information in the briefing note on which I based my story was on page two, bullet point three. This information was important because it showed that senior officials warned both the Minister and Deputy Minister of Education about the ramifications a prolonged strike could have on international education in the province. This part of the briefing note was the basis of my story and allowed me to reach out to school districts, government officials and B.C. teachers in order to find out if any of the government’s worst fears had actually materialized.