The evolution of professionalism - Centre for Policy Studies in ...

Cameron’s wage freeze was followed, in 1993, by the election of the government
of John Savage and another defi cit fi ghting campaign, one that saw teachers’ wages
effectively rolled back 2 percent by the imposition of four days of unpaid leave
(dubbed Savage Days). The fi scal crisis probably reached its lowest point with
respect to teachers in 1994, when the Savage government announced a 6.4 percent
cut in education funding and predicted that between 600 and 800 teaching positions
would be cut from the system, before entering into contract negotiations with
the province’s teachers. A provincial teachers strike was probably avoided by a
muddled strike vote, in which the results were confused by an unclear question and
a behind-the-scenes early retirement deal negotiated just prior to the crucial stages
of contract negotiations. 5
Following the labour turmoil and rounds of consultations of the early 1990s,
the middle years of the decade were marked by a series of policy documents aimed
at restructuring the province’s education system at the level of curriculum and
governance. While there is considerable disagreement about the nature of educational
change in Nova Scotia over the past decade, there is broad agreement that the 1994–
96 period was a policy watershed. The Department of Education introduced a series
of key restructuring documents in the mid-1990s (NS Department of Education,
1994a, 1994f, 1995a, 1995d, 1996b, 1996c), along with a new Education Act (NS
Department of Education, 1995b). These changes led to a regional reorganization
of curriculum with a series of APEF outcome-based foundation documents, a
major school board amalgamation initiative, and the institution of a process for the
implementation of school councils. One school board offi cial called this process
“change mania,” while a Department of Education offi cial admitted, in late 2002,
that the Department was still in the midst of implementing the wide-ranging changes
set out by these key change documents.
The Department is still in the process of setting in place the structures and
processes envisioned in the restructuring documents of the mid-1990s. The
government’s most recent direction-setting statement, Learning for Life (2002),
addresses a wide range of issues, including curriculum, governance, teacher
education, accountability, inclusion, and health. As of 2005, the vision from
Learning for Life has been more tightly articulated with accountability initiatives
and coupled with the language of population health and active living, as well as
with a discourse of social equity (Nova Scotia, 2005). Other initiatives include an
increased emphasis on technology and ongoing work in school governance (mainly
board restructuring and mandated participation of visible minorities in school
boards). While governance restructuring initiatives have been more or less successful
or are still in process, other recent changes have met with mixed success.
In an attempt to deal with its fi scal crisis, the Department engaged in a series of
failed moves that skirted the edge of privatization. The fi rst of these was Knowledge
House, a private company that specialized in electronic learning, and which
contracted with the Department of Education for various services. After a fl urry
of highly publicized announcements and futuristic visions of the electronic school
through 1999 and 2000, Knowledge House, the Department’s major e-learning
collaborator collapsed in September of 2001. It came crashing down amidst a series
of very public scandals, the most notable involving an RCMP fraud investigation
152 Section 4: The Atlantic Region