First among Unequals by Marland Alex;Kerby Matthew;

Author:Marland, Alex;Kerby, Matthew;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

BACKGROUND

The influence of the Christian churches is engraved in the social and economic fabric of Newfoundland & Labrador, but perhaps it is most evident in the province’s system of education. The first Education Act of 1836 envisioned publicly funded schools open to children of all denominations; however, early attempts to reach agreement on how such schools would be organized failed. Funding for education was instead divided on a proportional basis among the Christian churches, inscribing in the Newfoundland way of life a denominationally based system that lasted for more than a century and a half (McCann 1988). By the turn of the century, there were separate publicly funded schools for adherents to the four major Christian faiths – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, and Salvation Army – creating the conditions for a long legacy of separation and underfunding.

The problems inherent in providing adequate funding for duplicate school systems came to light early and persisted until the end of the twentieth century. In the 1860s, politicians and the public complained of “widespread illiteracy, uneducated teachers, and deprivation arising from grants apportioned per head of denominational population, rather than on the basis of need” (Rowe 1964, 47). Almost a century later, when Newfoundland entered Canada as its tenth province, general educational conditions were still quite backward – underdeveloped, poorly resourced, regionally disparate, and inaccessible to many citizens (Rowe 1964). Annual expenditure per student for elementary and secondary education was approximately $35, about one third of the $104 Canadian average (Crocker and Riggs 1979; Wisenthal 2008). After Confederation, the new provincial government had a difficult time making up for lost ground. Teacher qualifications remained low, and the system was in dire need of expansion and upgrading. However, an unprecedented 63 percent rise in student enrollment (approximately fifty thousand students) between 1950 and 1960 stifled any real progress towards meeting the government’s goal of advancing education to Canadian norms. Even though $70 million had been spent on education over the ten-year period, Premier Joey Smallwood admitted that in relative terms the situation in the late 1950s was worse than it had been in 1949 (Andrews 1985). When Philip Warren released the findings of the report of the Royal Commission on Education and Youth in 1967, he confirmed that many schools in the province still had only outdoor washroom facilities or no washrooms at all; few had gymnasiums, libraries, or science labs; most teachers had not completed university degrees; and few rural students made it to high school. The impact of these conditions was reflected in the achievement outcomes of the province’s students. In the 1960s, grade 9 pass rates typically fell in the range of 50 to 55 percent (Newfoundland and Labrador 1967). By the 1970s, there had been some improvement, but more than a third of students still failed to reach grade eleven (Galway 2011).

As the 1980s approached, the education budget was nearing $300 million (Crocker and Riggs 1979), but the province was struggling to keep pace with school construction and maintenance, teacher salaries, pupil transportation costs, and an expensive and geographically isolated duplicative infrastructure.

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