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

tenure with Bill 39, the original revised Education Act (Nova Scotia, 1995b). The
recertifi cation initiative survived several changes of government and a concerted
union lobby, and was fi nally implemented in 1999, requiring teachers to complete
and document 50 hours of professional development work over fi ve years. By the
beginning of the current decade, both the Department and the NSTU began to
express concern about potential teacher shortages in the near future (NS Department
of Education, 2001e; NSTU, 2001).
Governance, School Board Amalgamation and Boundary Questions
At the beginning of the 1990s, Nova Scotia had 22 district school boards,
which roughly paralleled the geography of individual counties. In 1991, Nova
Scotians were fi nally granted fully elected school boards, bowing to public
pressure and ending a system of partly elected, partly appointed School Boards.
Despite this apparent democratization, it soon became clear that an overhaul of
the province’s schools’ governance structure was in the offi ng. Both the Cameron
and Savage governments hinted broadly at sweeping changes to the educational
system through 1992, 1993, and 1994, justifi ed by talk of economies of scale,
duplication of services (particularly administrative services), and the way in which
small school boards were often unable to provide students with a wide range of
educational service.
One indicator of the scope of the rhetoric came in 1993, when the Savage
government established a pilot project to investigate the feasibility of site-based
management. While the site-based management concept was not pursued, the pilots
did serve as a model for the development of mandated school councils throughout
the province, beginning in 1996. Most of the province’s schools now have school
councils with little or no control of funds and governing authority largely limited to
internal school improvement plans 7 .
In 1996, the Department amalgamated the 22 district school boards into seven
regional school boards, one of which is a separate francophone board not confi ned
to a particular geography. The newly formed Conseil Scholaire Acadien Provincial
(CSAP) operates schools in various parts of the province, including a school in
the metro Halifax area and schools in Clare and Isle Madame, where signifi cant
francophone populations reside. In 1996-97 these large regional boards were
constituted by including all members of the former district school boards. The brief
initial mandate of these boards (some which had more than 50 members) was to
prepare the administrative framework and policy processes for the new regional
school boards, which were, in turn, charged with the broader mandate of public
school administration under the new Education Act of 1996.
The restructured boards now range in size from the the Halifax Regional School
Board, which serves close to 60,000 students, to the Strait Regional School Board,
with 10,000 students; the Conseil Scholaire Acadienne Provincial serves fewer
than 5,000 students. The boundary review concluded that the new restructured
boards were functioning well, with the exception of the Southwest Regional Board
(SWRSB). This led to the SWRSB board pilot project (2000-01), and the eventual
splitting of this board into two educational jurisdictions (the Tri-County and South
Chapter 8: Nova Scotia 155