If you are a numbers wonk, there is some reassuring news about Canadian public education from the data people at B.C.’s Ministry of Education. It seems they have a boatload of current and predictive information.
Much of that information is being used to help plan public education for today and, more importantly, tomorrow.
Some of it, such as the prediction that 2075 will be the likeliest year that children now in kindergarten will retire, is just intriguing, and maybe even a little depressing.
So what do all the numbers tell us about the state of Canadian and B.C. public education and what the future holds for our kids?
Canada has the world’s highest proportion of working-age adults who have completed post-secondary qualifications — 55 per cent compared with an average of 35 per cent in other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.
Percentages can be misleading, but the percentage of B.C.’s 25-to-64-year-old population with a trade certificate or diploma from a vocational school is 11 per cent, right on the Canadian average, compared with 23 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador. So now we know why finding a good plumber is far more difficult than finding an English or math tutor.
In the most recent rounds of PISA tests, the ones that rocketed Finland to fame in 2001, Canada was one of a handful of countries to appear in the top 10 for math, science and reading. This places Canada far ahead of its geographical neighbour, the U.S., as well as countries with cultural ties such as the U.K. and France.
And the scores for B.C. 15-year-olds on that test exceeded the Canadian scores by enough to make it worth mentioning.
For school-district planners, the dark days of declining enrolment appear to be over, for the time being at least. B.C. schools are picking up about 5,000 new students a year, a trend predicted to continue at least for the next few years.
The number crunchers at the ministry point to a scale called the World Wide Education Index on which Canada scores 86.7 points, second only to New Zealand at 88.9 and ahead of Finland at 85.5. The index takes into account factors such as a country’s education-policy environment, teaching environment and socio-economic environment.
So far, so good. All very positive. So what is the bad news?
In 2001/2002, about 50 per cent of B.C.’s Grade 10 and 40 per cent of Grade 12 students felt comfortable that school was preparing them for a job in the future.
By 2016/2017, that optimism has declined to 30 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.
High-school students are also concerned about their preparation for post-secondary courses.
While 60 per cent per cent or so felt they were ready in 2001/2002, that has declined to about 40 per cent in 2016/2017.
So what are the kids worried about? Likely two things: Right now, we are told by the people whose job it is to keep track of this stuff, about 60 per cent of current possible occupations might have at least 30 per cent of their activities automated in the foreseeable future.
For the expanding fast-food industry, the publication Business Insider reports that the CEO of Taco Bell’s parent company says machines could replace human workers in 10 years.
“I don’t think it is going to happen next year or the year after, but I do believe that probably by the mid ’20s to the late ’20s, you’ll start to see a dramatic change in sort of how machines run the world,” Greg Creed, CEO of Yum Brands, (KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut) told CNBC in a recent interview.
Maybe, the fast-food industry was not what a student aspired to, but banking staff, paralegals, personal financial advisers, even accountants and journalists, are eying the world of automation nervously. Aspiring doctors see surgical robots and diagnostic software become increasingly precise.
As excellent as B.C. and Canada’s system of public education is, our kids are still left to wonder whether what they are doing in school now will be of any help in the future.
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
