37 Replies to “Education Costs In Saskatchewan”

  1. So spending goes wayyyyyyy up, while our students get dumber & dumber?
    I think teachers should quit if they’re not happy with their jobs. Option B is to privatize the education system, become a better teacher, and get a job in a good school.

  2. I alway wondered how Saskatchewan ranks on # of hours students are in class (Not recess or lunch)each day and the # of days in school each year. I am thinking we don’t have good number there either.

  3. Unmentioned is the number of teachers in 2000-01 and now. 12% is a bit much in these times (or probably any time) but if they get anywhere close to that watch what all the government unions will be demanding.

  4. I’m curious about non-teaching staff. Have the numbers grown a lot since 2001 and do they get paid a lot? My guesses are yes and hell yes.

  5. One thing to look at in reducing costs is to investigate the abuse of special needs programs. The first school our kids went to had over half the kindergarten class in need of speech therapy. Our new school has almost none.
    The KidsFirst program in the town of 5000 had at least 3 new minivans picking kids up at home and delivering them to and from daycare or school. It also had a parenting program that, after its failure to interest its target group of low income, native and single parents, ended up being a tax-payer subsidized social/support group for middle class white mothers. The school and local charity also provided morning breakfast and not just for students but their entire family (I’m not sure of the funding arrangement details). Then after breakfast you would see these poor folks talking on their cell phone on the way to their car.
    IMO, these and other programs have problems ranging from expensive and unnecessary to redundancy to downright suspicious.

  7. The CTA numbers in this video must be greatly under-stated. Do they include an amortization of capital costs? The numbers shown represent a per student increase from just under $6K to just over $10 if my calculation is correct. How much will this increase if the capital costs are included?

  8. There are a few things that are being missed out here. Costs will always go up in any sector from year to year, because of inflation alone. The educational costs are not solely the teachers salaries. You have the cost of the buildings, maintenance, books, heat, power etc. You may not be too happy if your children are taught in tents when its 40 below. How many students do you want in a classroom? 20? 30? 40? Most classrooms a few years ago averaged over 30 students. They soon realized, this was to many for quality education, and stress levels. So, it has been lowered slightly, thank goodness. It should also be noted that the teachers salary is the lowest for any degree program. Any engineer, lawyer, or accountant would scoff at such a pittance.

  9. The first school our kids went to had over half the kindergarten class in need of speech therapy. Our new school has almost none.
    Must be something in the vaccines.
    /sarcasm
    I have kids of school age — just finishing Grade 3 and SK as we speak — and I am surprised by the number of kids in their cohort who have speech problems.
    Theirs is the “better” school in the area — the French Immersion / “poor man’s private school” school — and the kids in the school do not seem to have cognitive issues. They tend not to be afflicted with the typical things that haunt kids in the poorer-performing schools in our area (single mom/multiple dads, addiction in the home, etc.). But the rate of speech problems — lisps, really out-of-whack-vowels, and other things of which I don’t know the names but I know ’em when I hear ’em — is quite striking.
    Just wondering if anyone else has noticed that.
    Humph.

  10. I noticed the the opposite, Lickmuffin, most of the kids had little or no noticeable speech problems. I noticed a bit of the R$L pronounced as W but that isn’t uncommon in young kids. Most of the little kids I babysat as a teenager were unable to properly pronounce my name but all of them outgrew the problem eventually.

  11. Ooohh I wasn’t aware of the taxpayer funded speech-language-pathologist scam, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least.
    As others have mentioned, teachers no doubt need a kick in the pants, but there is probably an army of overpaid clerks driving up costs too. Are we still allowed to call them clerks?

  12. Albertans are even more hooped. If you look up salary grid for teachers that border Saskatchewan. Say in the Buffalo Trail Division the mid level teacher with four years of education starts at 55,766 and after 11 years experience gets 88,547. If a teacher has 6 years of experience they will get 95,380. Starting in September 2011 they will get an additional 4.5% putting the upper end over $100K. I agree with parity. Alberta should be bringing their salary down to Saskatchewan levels.
    In Saskatchewan it is the same for the whole province.
    The annual rate of basic salary of all full-time teachers for the period September 1, 2007 to August 31, 2008 shall
    be determined by the application of the following schedule according to the regulations governing the classification
    of teachers and the provisions of Article 3.
    Step Class C Class I Class II Class III Class IV Class V Class VI
    1 35963 35963 35963 35963 43124 45569 48550
    2 37550 37550 37550 45588 48128 51228
    3 39137 39137 39137 48051 50686 53905
    4 40724 40724 40724 50513 53245 56583
    5 42312 42312 42312 52976 55804 59260
    6 43898 43898 43898 55439 58361 61938
    7 45486 45486 45486 57903 60919 64615
    8 47073 47073 47073 60366 63478 67293
    9 48661 48661 48661 62828 66036 69970
    10 50247 50247 50247 66301 69604 73659
    15 51798 51798 51798 67851 71155 75210
    Article Two2007-2010 Provincial Collective Bargaining Agreement • Page 3
    2.1.2 For purposes of the schedules set out below and as detailed in the Step Placement Chart, Appendix G:

  13. It should also be noted that the teachers salary is the lowest for any degree program. Any engineer, lawyer, or accountant would scoff at such a pittance.

    No sympathy here if you didn’t do the average salary research before going for a degree. Or is the B. Ed easier to obtain than a degree in engineering or law? I think we know the answer.

  14. I don’t complain about the tax burden of the education system.
    I complain about the inferior results.
    Max, don’t waste your time complaining about an army of clerks. The bureaucratic burden has grown enormously over the past 20 years at the local board level with all of the special mandates and regulations that have been dumped onto the education system. A board can’t ignore the provincial government, so all these new special programs have to be administered and implemented.

  15. “the French Immersion / “poor man’s private school” school –“_ bingo! (not just for poor men though, there are no private middle school options for rich folk in S’toon either)
    I put my over achieving daughter in the Accelerated Late French Emersion Program JUST to get my kid out of the soul sucking public school hell hole.
    The results have been amazing. Because the ALFEP is a relatively new program, the instructors and the Principal are very motivated to have the program be a success. Without doubt, I can say it’s the attitude and the effort which separates these teachers and this school from the hell hole my daughter was attending which had what I call a “culture of losing”.
    BTW, coincidentally the French Public Teacher’s Union has settled on a new labor agreement whereas the Public system has not. Coincidence?

  16. The problem with the Public School system is simple: it’s the Union stupid!
    Here’s how you fix the public education system: Fire the high paid (older) staff and replace them with cheaper (younger) staff.
    Here’s the bottom line; in education, experience doesn’t necessarily correlate with improved work performance as it does in typical industries; yet, the pay scale works this way.
    In my industry, you start at the low end of the pay scale because a) you don’t know jack; and b) you’re not worth much. Now, when I got out of school I couldn’t comprehend what I didn’t know. I thought I knew! Today, five years later, I am much more valuable because of my knowledge and networking. Five years from now, I expect my income will double. Again.
    Now, in the case of a teacher, whether it’s five, ten or fifteen years of experience, it has no bearing on work performance (check that, my wife will argue that the longer you teach the less well you perform your job teaching, but I digress) but it is the only factor in their pay. That’s the difference.
    Cut the high priced but not high valued labor and replace it with middle priced middle valued labor.
    Also, this would help the unemployment rate for young people that Progressives are so concerned about.
    It’s simple really, it’s a bunch of old crooks who’ve convinced the young dopes that it’s in their best interest to shoot themselves in the foot.

  17. [quote]You have the cost of the buildings, maintenance, books, heat, power etc.[/quote]
    I know that Canadians have never rejected a TAX, (its the Royal right) but really.. Sask Taxpayers own the Power/Gas/ Phone systems.. why bill Gov’t enities at all, much less create a false profit that is passed onto the education taxation system. Double,triple,taxation by any means….
    Sask power, Sask Gas, Sask Telephones need to null the costs of services to shareholders(taxpayers). Why create a false profit that is invested in other Countries

  20. South Koreans spend more money on private education with better results.
    The students, the families, the culture, the schools, the teachers must all have their heads in the game before I consider a pay increase worth it.

  21. Just for kicks I looked up teachers salaries and was shocked I tell you, shocked!!!!! Obscene pay. Granted good teachers are worth their salt. When people spend their entire lives in a classroom, they sight of reality. The public sector unions have us by the short and curlies. Almost always have a job to go back to. Not so much in the private sector.
    Somehow I was able to raise a family on 2/3 of what an Ab teacher earned at the same time. 2 kids, 1 in was in college 1 grandchild (no child support) and had an ailing parent living with us. It was difficult most of the time but we managed. No weekend golf retreats or Mexican holidays but we had fun.
    Whatever happened to eating breakfast at home and packing a lunch? WAY to many school programs to enable the lazy and unimaginative.

  22. When comparing teachers wages to other jobs with a degree you would have to add 30% to the teachers pay as they on work roughly 9 months.

  23. I am a teacher, and feel the need to weigh in on this one. I have three main points.
    First, during Question Period on May 5th, Premier Wall (whose party was far more respectful during the opposition’s questions than the opposition was during his answers) mentioned that his party had increased funding for education by 20% during their tenure. As no significant teacher salary changes occurred during that time, it begs the question, “What did the school divisions do with that extra money?” I cannot speak for other divisions, but ours hired some extra assistant superintendents, more consultants, and sent senior administration to more workshops. When they returned, they implemented “bold new initiatives” which further drained the morale of teachers and decreased the learning of students. The money is not just going to teachers, folks.
    My second point has to do with beginning teachers automatically getting some fairly hefty raises. I agree that this is unfair – I work with many new teachers, and frankly, many of them are still too full of ideas from their years in the college of Education. Their students often learn very little aside from how to be disrespectful and unproductive. Most good teachers are aware of how poorly many of us did in our first few years of teaching. However, our STF, in its socialist wisdom, has continually asked for greater increases during those initial years in order to lower the gap between older teachers and younger ones. (Must never have gaps, you know!).
    My third and final point is that the “elephant in the room” for both sides of these contract negotiations is what is actually happening in the classroom. Thanks to our progressive policies that senior administrators and College of Ed. types are pushing (and younger teachers are swallowing without question) many teachers are very dissatisfied with their jobs. The phrase “I’m not getting paid enough to put up with this!” comes to mind. On the taxpayers’ side, they wonder why they should pay more, given the inferior results they are observing. The source of conflict is not just finances, it is also the current education theories that make the lives of many teachers miserable and the results of our “education” system questionable. And please don’t mention merit pay. If you want merit pay, it will have to be awarded by those same Head Office types who have given us whole language, CELs, social passes, and now no consequences for assignments not handed in. The downward spiral would increase exponentially. We need private schools and charter schools in this province, so that parents can at least have some choice. The theories that are harming us all are too widespread to avoid altogether, but giving parents some choice could at least mitigate some of the harmful effects. Personally, I would take a pay cut if I could return to actual teaching, rather than pretending that we are preparing students for much other than receiving social assistance.

  24. You can do a pretty good mid-tier private school on 10k per student per year. And everyone knows the bottom tier of private education is far better than the public system. It just doesn’t have cool playgrounds and free breakfast and counselling for stupid parents (actually it usually does in some unspoken form).
    Think about it. You get 100 students at 10k per, run say grade 1 to 5 at 20 each. You have two teachers on average per grade (they can teach to their core competency) at 50k each on contract – they don’t work in summer remember. Then you have 500k in opex and you have a good biznis going. I’m sure you can lease a building and buy books for less than that.
    Of course you get some donors who believe in the coz and all that and you are set. Flex the plan to suit. Just saying.

  26. [quote]I would take a pay cut if I could return to actual teaching, rather than pretending that we are preparing students for much other than receiving social assistance.[/qoute] First timer
    Well Said! Until parents grow up and take responsability fot the state of the school system it will only get worse… The Salary of teachers
    is NOT the problem… It’s the crap added to the system… You get what you deserve in the real world.. why is that suprising…
    Unions power is the result of lazy, uncaring, worthless parents..
    JMHO
    BTW: Taxation is NOT a right, and when Gov’t lose the moral argument they are finished…

  27. Its the old and tired comparison with Alberta. If a teacher likes the pay in Alberta – by all means, move there.

  28. I know plenty of graduated-in-the-past decade teachers who would love to have permanent teaching jobs, but can only find casual substitute teacher jobs. Until these people are employed on a full-time permanent basis, why should the government offer up a raise?

  29. I want “first timer” working for the Education Ministry.
    Anybody reading what she has to say?

  30. Education is not indoctrination. Until parents face the fact that their children are not being educated but rather indoctrinated; with far left fairy tales, in public schools, Canada will continue to produce illiterate citizens.
    Teachers today are encouraged to wriggle into student’s lives; the daily lives of students are not the business of teachers, teachers business is teaching the ‘little darlings’ the basics in math, reading, and writing. If a student can manage the basics then they can proceed to subjects that require the basics as prerequisites. Checking the contents of lunches, challenging the thoughts and actions of parents, making breakfast (except in home economics class), etc. are not jobs for teachers.
    Most students will never work for NASA but given the proper environment most students can be taught to think for themselves and function as an adult in a civilized society. Nanny teachers are destroying the mental growth of students, IMO. For refusing to comply with the very basic terms of their contracts, most teachers should be fired. The wages paid to these glorified baby sitters should be minimal as the results are minimal.
    The fact that teachers joined a union should be a clear message to parents that the motive of most so called ‘educators’ is the money and the benefits. Professionals generally do not join unions because unions limit the scope of their jobs. Unions have done their job on teachers, teachers are now first union members.
    Hire an over 60 man or woman with a grade 5+ education if you would like to see your own child educated: that old woman/man will know how to comprehend what they read, they will know and understand how to do long division, how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions, how to find the X and Y in algebraic problems, they will know how to write a proper sentence, how to formulate a paragraph, how to use the parts of speech properly and how to punctuate sentences. The senior citizen will give your child the key to further education by teaching your child to think for him/herself because the ‘basics’ require independent thought as a prerequisite.

  31. Schools are more concerned with massaging a student’s self-esteem than with teaching them basic skills.
    Their teachers are more eager to subject them to therapeutic curricula that instruct them about socialism and the glories of homosexuality, than to teach them history, political philosophy math and the hard sciences.
    Professors are more worried about turning students into global-warming cultists and “tolerance” fundamentalists rather than citizens worthy of political freedom.
    Our education system is a cesspool of socialism from top to bottom.

  32. Some problems with the education system.
    Student Teacher Ratio – Not the real problem but the specialty classes that have 6 students means that a math class has to have 30+ students for the school to maintain the ratio.
    To much administration that justify their jobs by creating paper work for the teachers taking them away from their prime responsibility the students.
    No standardized testing so there is no way of evaluating the teachers and no reason for for a certain percentage to perform at their best.
    The wage structure; based on degrees not the function of the job, so a kindergarten teacher can make more then a high school chemistry teacher.
    Lack of defined goals for the school systems and too many options. The original mandate was the 3 R’s, I would hate to have read the mission statement that defines all the crap the school system provides today.
    The idea that bigger is better, small schools provide better service than the large monoliths that are being created today.
    Too many philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and political scientists defining the systems for teaching.
    This is just a small sampeling, there are many more problems.
    I have speant the last number of years at a post secondary institution and get to the see the product of the system up close and am totally dissapointed in what I see. We are not getting our moneys worth, not even close.

  33. It’s just so, so silly to be looking at facts and data when it comes to the public sector and unions. Just pay your darn taxes and let’s put more money in the system. We can always extend the retirement age for private sector workers if we run short of money.

  34. A good teacher is worth the money but a bad teacher isn’t worth 1/2 the base pay. Mediocur teachers aren’t worth the base pay either. They want parity with Alberta – Alberta is laying off teachers. There needs to be some kind of pay based on results or effort like extra pay for extracurricular activities and a pay scale based on success of students based on standardized testing (or improvement of students or something). I’m sick of these increases for everyone irregardless. How about we just lower taxes and then EVERYONE can keep more of their money? Now that’s a novel idea.

  35. When discussing teachers’ pay it’s always important to consider hours worked annually. Most professionals work about 2,000 hours a year. Teachers can get by with only 800 hours. The short workdays and lengthy holidays add up.

  36. I see all this debate, and nobody doing the math
    TEACHER PAY…
    lowest paid, starting= $35,963/year
    highest paid, experienced = $75,210/year
    Now school is generally 9-3:30, with a full hour for lunch, so you have a “base day” of 5.5 hours.
    Let’s give them credit for every minute, PLUS, another hour and a half daily. A 7 hour day. We’ll say they ALWAYS work until 5:00.
    The school year is 180 days, but let’s give them credit for 190 days. There must be AT LEAST 10 days of teacher conferences every year, and they deserve to get paid for those days
    7 hrs/day * 190 days = 1330 hours.
    Can anyone make a case for more than 1,330 hours being worked? I can’t.
    Lowest paid teacher = $27.04/hr
    Highest paid teacher = $56.55/hr
    Regardless of experience, that is absolutely FANTASTIC PAY. I’m a professional computer systems analyst. I’ve been at my job for 13 years now. I work 8 hour days, after taking out my 4 weeks of paid holiday time, I work 232 days/year. I have an education. I’m employed professionally. I WORK IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, IN A NON-UNION POSITION. I’m pulling down $39/hour, but I have to work 526 more hours year just to make less pay than a teacher who’s put in the same 13 years.
    I’m very happy with my job, my employer, my salary.
    Where do those teachers get off going on strike to demand MORE OF MY TAX DOLLARS, when they’re already better paid than I am, with far fewer specialized skills, and their paycheck COMES OUT OF ****MY*** TAXES!?!?!??!
    Let’s got back to private education. FIRE EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM, shut the whole godless system down, and let them find work in the new private school system we’ll replace it with.

  37. The CTF video suggests phoning the Minister of Education. If I could add, it is really most effective to couple that with calling your own MLA. Education will not change in this country until the local MLA’s feel the pinch of their electorate and start leaning on the ministers from the inside.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation