Despite underperforming the national average for student outcomes, Manitoba’s NDP government is slashing educational standards for teachers in math, science, English or French, history, and geography.
In late October, the Manitoba government quietly made amendments to the Teaching Certificates and Qualifications Regulation. The regulatory change would no longer require Manitoba teachers to receive 6 credit hours in math, 6 credit hours in a physical or biological science, 6 credit hours in English or French, or 6 credit hours in history and/or geography.
Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives have slammed the government for a regulatory change that they say will result in the province further plunging in its educational outcomes relative to the rest of the country.
At a press conference, Anna Stokke, a mathematics professor at the University of Manitoba, said that the regulatory change is “unacceptable” and will harm students.
“The people who are going to suffer here are the children,” said Stokke.
“The government’s talking about removing barriers? Well they’re removing barriers for adults to enter the teacher education program with literally no math skills and they are going to create barriers for the students that they teach.”
In question period on Wednesday, the NDP’s acting Minister of Education Tracy Schmidt justified the claim by pointing to the province’s teacher shortage and is proud of the government’s regulatory change.
“The truth of the matter is, is that after seven and a half years of a failed Heather Stefanson government, where teachers and educators were driven out of the system by cuts to operational funding, in some parts of our province, we are seeing a teacher shortage,” said Schmidt.
“So these regulatory changes that we have made, that we are very, very proud of, are actually going to bring us in line with most other jurisdictions across Canada, and are going to remove barriers to allow more educators to come into our system to serve some of these amazing students that are here with us today.”
Critics of the regulatory change to lower standards for teachers are concerned that the already low-performing province will see an even greater drop in educational outcomes for students.
The OECD’s 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment found that among fellow Canadian provinces, Manitoba students have the worst educational results in math and science, and are the second worst in reading, right behind New Brunswick.
The 2022 PISA assessment reaffirmed the earlier findings, stating that Manitoban students perform below the Canadian average in math, science, and reading.
In question period, PC MLA Grant Jackson pointed out that original educational requirements for teachers were in line with British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and some Maritime provinces, while Quebec has even stronger requirements for teachers.
According to PISA’s 2018 study, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia perform above or around the national average in math, science, and reading, with Quebec performing far above the national average in educational outcomes in math.
