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Albertan organization comes to Medicine Hat to spark discussion on education system

Apr 7, 2019 | 4:49 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — An Albertan organization is trying to spark a discussion about the education system in Alberta.

“What we’re trying to do is ask Albertan’s to engage in a conversation around their public education system and say ‘look, we spend $8.4-billion dollars a year on our publicly funded system, could we be doing it better?’” said Pat Cochrane, Chair for the Together for Students Campaign.

The discussion made its way to Medicine Hat on Saturday afternoon. Cochrane believes that the framework for Alberta’s education system might be due for a change.

“The main framework was created in 1905. Should we be challenging and questioning that framework in 2019?”

Cochrane says she’s heard many Albertan’s talking about the need for a more inclusive education system.

“What I’m hearing from communities is it should involve equity of opportunity. Kids should be learning together,” said Cochrane, “why are we separating communities out for alternative programs of choice, about language, or religion?”

Cochrane said she’s heard many other concerns as well.

“We hear a lot about transportation stresses, children with special needs whose needs may not be met, small rural divisions that can’t provide a lot of specialized training and programming and underused facilities.”

Another goal of the campaign is to gather enough feedback to get to a point where people may start approaching politicians, saying the system needs to change. This is a change that Cochrane doesn’t think will happen quickly.

“It wouldn’t happen suddenly because we’ve got over 700,000 students involved so we’d enter it carefully but over time move to a more inclusive system.”