Significant Trends in Education in Ontario

Significant Trends in Education in Ontario IJ. G. Althouse Within the past decade, public education in Ontario, and indeed throughout Canada, has manifested certain arresting characteristics which are often regarded as emergency conditions. These conditions, however rapidly they have developed , are not transitory; they will not be alleviated simply by the lapse of time. They have not, even yet, attained their full magnitude. They will continue for an indefinite period and will become progressively more worrisome. For they are part of a startling new stage of our country's development, and, as such, should be regarded as indicative of significant trends rather than as temporary embarrassments. For example, what has been called the "tide of school enrolments" is not a tide at all but an ever swelling stream. It has not yet reached its peak; indeed, there is little reason to believe that it will reach a crest and then recede. The flood may rise less violently a few years hence, but there is no reason to expect it to drop back to former levels or even to maintain a steady rate of flow. So far as we can see, it will continue to rise for a very long time. More children are being born in Canadian homes; more of them are surviving beyond infancy to go to school. They are attending school more regularly and are staying at school longer than did their parents or even their elder brothers and sisters. More of them are graduating from secondary school and many more are seeking admission to the universities and other schools of higher learning. Indeed, the provision of appropriate levels of further training for all of those who complete four or five years of secondary schooling has become a matter of serious concern to the professions, to business, and to industry, as well as to the universities and the Provincial Department of Education. The growing demand for engineering technicians in addition to engineers, and for nursing assistants as well as for graduate nurses, illustrates this trend. 232 More than one million boys and girls are in our schools today. Ten years ago there were only 651,000; by 1965 there 'may be as many as 1,700,000. Hitherto this trend has mainly affected the elementary schools; it has now begun to involve the secondary schools. In 1945, enrolment in those schools was 110,000. By 1955 it has risen to 170,000. By 1965 it will have doubled. To keep pace with the rising enrolment, the people of Ontario have built three hundred and twenty millions of dollars' worth of schools since January 1, 1945. They will have to continue to build at the rate of over sixty million dollars' worth every year until 1965. By that time there will be about one billion dollars' worth of school debentures outstanding in the Province. The annual carrying charges on this indebtedness will amount to about $80,000,000, which will constitute a first charge on the revenues of the School Boards of the Province. The volume of outstanding school debentures cannot be expected to fall until 1968, at the earliest, and the drop will not be substantial before 1975. The twenty years immediately ahead will witness substantial increases in the School Boards' requirements for salaries and maintenance; these will be anxious, critical years in school financing. The rising flood of school enrolments is taxing the resources of the Province not only to house the increasing number of school children but also to provide teachers for them. Here, as everywhere else in North America, emergency training plans have been necessary, and reinforcements from other provinces and from other parts of the Commonwealth have been welcomed. Welcome, too, has been the return to the schools of hundreds of married women, whose teaching careers had been interrupted by marriage and the responsibilities of home management. In the elementary school field, Ontario's Emergency Training Plan assures the new teacher of a full year's Teachers' College education, in addition to preliminary summer sessions, before the award of a regular Interim Elementary-School Teacher's Certificate. It is interesting to note that, during the years in which the Emergency Training Plan has been...