Another yardstick would be to look at exams from grades one—thirteen from the 1950’s and before and compare them to the exams that kids write today.  You’ll see a huge difference in what kids are expected to know nowadays, compared to 60 + years ago. 

Kids are graduating from university with poor writing spelling and grammar skills; dreadful numeracy skills; and I suspect that some have never been challenged academically; yet consider themselves well-educated.

Comparing exams from 60 years ago and today’s exams would be a startling eye-opener as to how much more accumulated knowledge and skills children had years ago compared to today.  In other words, high school dropouts, from 60 years ago, had better skills than many of today’s university graduates.  Why?  Unlike today, kids to pass exams in order to go into the next grade level and the curricula was much better. 

The U.N. says that Canada is well-educated simply by looking at the number of university graduates.  What a poor measure to use.  The U. N. didn’t plum the stats in order to look any deeper into Canada’s educational systems.  What a superficial simple-minded analysis!

1. “Provinces make a priority of developing their capability to track children’s progress through the system”
2. “The design of social programs incorporate a needs-based, universal approach.”
3. “Provinces develop policies aimed at changing the trajectories of disadvantaged children within and also outside the school system”

The three recommendations will never happen if the pubic K to 12 education establishment has anything to say about. The tracking of all students including student mobility of students moving from public to private or vice versus, students moving from one school to another within a school district to students moving to other school districts within the province and outside of the province work against the self-serving interests of the K to 12 education establishment is a) not collected or tracked b) collected, but not published c) collected and published d) collected for the purposes of controlling education services for subgroups of students but are never published.

Obviously, Tom’s study belongs in category D. Here is another study on ESL students. http://ajer.synergiesprairies.ca/ajer/index.php/ajer/article/viewFile/628/611
ESL students are at great risk at dropping out, becoming low achievers because they are not receiving the education services required in the 3 Rs. The higher income ESL students, have the ability to pay for private tutors to addressed their language needs that the BC public K to 12 do not provide. Otherwise, the ESL students are located in the inclusive classrooms along with the other subgroups of students who are NOT receiving supplementary funds to address their lower achievement via through education/SE services.

I spent a fruitless morning, looking for evidence of tracking systems across Canada. The only other study that I came up with is this CMEC study that will described the disjointed and disconnected tracking systems on student mobility and student transitions. http://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/223/data-student-level-mobility.pdf

However, all thanks to the BC Teachers’ Union and by the end of this post, they are not going to like what I will be saying about teachers’ unions and their private agendas. What school data is being tracked, is the school data that advances the private agendas of the teachers’ unions and the other components of the K to 12 education establishment that best serves their interests. The only adage, the numbers don’t lie rings true this morning as I did some old fashioned number crunching on the SE population of BC. The same numbers that I did in 2006 in my province, showed up in the province of BC. One would swear the provincial education ministries get-together once a year behind close doors to talk shop on how to keep the lid on having no more than 4 % LD students province wide.  Talk shop about the different methods at their disposal to block students from receiving corrective remediation on reading, writing and math. http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/2012EdFacts.pdf

Even though education funding for SE, ESL, low-income, Aboriginal students have increase since 2001, nothing has change for the student achievement in the higher risked groups of dropping out to low literacy and numeracy rates. My focus since tracking the SE numbers in NL from 2006 has always been connecting the funding to the students and movement from one grade to the next. For the SE students, all the numbers are tracked by the province but are never and I will repeat never published. Such as Tom’s Winnipeg study, only to discover the dismal 75 % failure rate. The failure rate is far worse for the SE population where at least 94 to 96 % become the lowest achievers. Next comes the Aboriginals who sit adjacent to the SE low achievers. No doubt if a study was conducted, the high-income Aboriginal students are achieving but like the other high-income students are paying for private tutors or have parents who are tutoring their children. Approximately, 80 % of Aboriginal students are low achievers in Ontario, and just happen to be low-income as well.

As I stated in another post, the key is the education funding formulas of the provinces. The second key is the tracking systems, and what is and what is not being tracked at all levels of the K to 12 education system. The third key is what the K to 12 establishment is willing to published and make public. The fourth key is the hidden secret data of the K to 12 that is never published. The fifth key is what the individual schools, school districts and education ministries are willing to provide in education services for all students. The sixth key, is how the education funding is distributed that first addresses the agendas of the K to 12 establishment versus the needs of the students.

I issuing another challenge to the K to 12 educrats across Canada. Provide a full accounting of the numbers and funding or rest assure, other professionals with the expertise will step in to reveal the less than honourable and manipulative actions of the K to 12 establishment. I am quite sure there is a few multimillionaire LD Canadians who would be willing to provide the funding to reveal the dismal numbers for LD students that will show clearly the LD students are not being well-served by the public K to 12 establishment. The K to 12 LD students of BC, received no supplementary SE funding at all, along with the gifted, the mild intellectual disability students and moderate behaviour support and mental illness. This groups of students’ are at higher risk of low achievement, dropping out and all sorts of other high-risked activities if the school district does not provide the education services they are in need of to progress and achieve. http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/2012EdFacts.pdf

Two recent stories that should raise some eyebrows. The growing trend of schools to screen for mental illness as early as kindergarten, but not screen for reading difficulties and dyslexia. http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/07/algorithmic-management/

The second story is indeed a silver lining coming out of the teachers’ strike. “On Thursday, two days later, Finance Minister Michael de Jong took the opportunity to announce the government would not be swallowing the money, but instead using it to pay parents $40 a day per child to temporarily replace the school system – should the teachers continue their strike into September.
With this very intriguing move, Minister de Jong said, “Parents can utilize that money to acquire tutoring for their children; they can use that money to explore other educational opportunities as they see fit and for some parents, it’ll be basic daycare.” - See more at: http://www.mrtimes.com/opinion/just-saying-teachers-union-cutting-own-throat-1.1273258#sthash.7o3tQGHx.dpuf

It goes on to say - “It won’t take long for the parents of today’s elementary-aged children to discover that if the parents of 15 children band together, they will have $12,000 per month collectively to educate their children. The curriculum is not a secret. It is the same curriculum that all home-school, religiously based, and private schools follow – which they claim to enhance.  
If the BCTF is not careful, they might end up with one of the most liberal voucher systems for education in North America.”

As you can see the K to 12 establishment would rather track mental health numbers instead of dealing with the fallout of low literacy and numeracy levels of students from poor instruction and curriculum. I bet the strike won’t last long, the last thing the K to 12 establishment would want is to have parents in their neighbourhoods pool their money for home schools. $12,000 dollars a month buys the students a superior quality education in terms of knowledge and skills, that the K to 12 really no longer want to fund, and rather spend the increases in education funding on pet projects on monitoring the mental health of their students.

Is anyone surprised by this data? I’m not.  Of course it kicks the legs out from under the central SQE thesis that there is no connection between poverty and achievement.

The experts have been looking at this very type of data for mant decades. Coleman concluded 80% of achievement gap is outside of school factors ie poverty.

To fix poverty we:

Raise minimum wage

Raise welfare and EI rates

Strengthen unions

Stimulate the economy

Provide high quality public childcare from an early age.

Attention to low birthweight babies

To strengthen IN SCHOOL achievement.

OECD says Canada needs the childcare above as ECE.

SMALLER CLASSES but only in poor areas

Afterschool/summer programs

Incentives for best teachers to work in poor areas.

free tuition in postsecondary

Vision, dental, nutrition empasis

All of this and more are needed to solve or even mitigate Tom’s problem.

it sure wont be solved by charters vouchers and phonics.

Very good post!

The Ontario Ministry of Education never met a number it couldn’t twist to its advantage and the high school graduation rates have been suspect for some time.

I find their reporting mechanism somewhat suspect as well in that it is now impossible to tell how many high school grads. are doing so in the required 4 years or are still taking those victory laps.  It’s possible to mess with those numbers too…...and I believe they do.

This government has been very good at playing Fun With Numbers or Who Do You Believe when it suits them.

We can anticipate more of the same thanks to the majority of the 38% in Toronto and Ottawa.

What puts Canada 1st Katie are university and college grad rates not high school.They rigged as well?

Nobody wants to change the election system but everybody wants to complain when their enemy wins with 38%. Bob Rae got 72 seats with 37%.

Katie,

You cannot escape the fact that Canada has yhe world’s best education system. It is just a fact.

Doug, I take it you don’t read the links. Here is a few more gems of the BC education system regarding SE students. Quite frankly, I don’t know which is worse - Ontario or BC?  The only way to find out is to conduct a study to determined the substandard education being received by SE students of each province. I would not be at all surprise that both provinces are operated multi-tiered education services of poor, poorer and no education services depending on where one falls on the social-economic ladder. I would not be at all surprise, that the only data that classroom educators received are the social-economic status of students with special codes to signify the level of support that a student should receive. It sure would explain the small percentage in the single digits of LD students arriving at the first day of grade 9 classes being encourage to enrolled into Applied program even though the students are high achievers. You see, Doug the K to 12 school districts does what the veteran LD parents calls, the disappearing of LD students in the data stats. Sometimes only one student is left with the LD ranking, and even the one student has to fight tooth and nail for accommodations from the classroom educators who keep on insisting they don’t need accommodations.

One gem - “School districts receive a funding supplement for students designated in special needs categories A–H in addition to the base per-student allocation. The amount of funding
depends on whether the special needs category is Level 1 ($36,600—A, B), Level 2 ($18,300—C, D, E, F, G), or Level 3 ($9,200—H)”

“The opposite was the case for students with special needs who do not receive a funding
supplement outside of the base allocation. The number of students in these categories (K, P,
Q, and R) decreased from 48,084 in 2001–02 to 33,221 in 2011–12.” 

“Type of special need by designation
A Physically dependent, B Deafblind, C Moderate to profound intellectual disability, D Physical disability/Chronic health impairment, E Visual impairment, F Deaf or hard of hearing, G Autism Spectrum Disorder, H Intensive behaviour interventions/Severe mental illness, K Mild intellectual disability, P Gifted, Q Learning disabilities, R Moderate behaviour support/Mental illness”

Priceless - Having the funding to track and measure the mental health of students from K to 12 but no funding at all to the students with learning problems in the 3 Rs. Brought to you by the K to 12 crowd of private agendas and self-serving interests. Another priceless moment of the K to 12 education crowd - In Ontario sending SE children home - “Almost half of elementary principals and 41% of secondary
principals report they have recommended students with special education needs not attend school for the full day. http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/special-education-2014-WEB.pdf

Also in the report - “....special education is $2.72
billion, more than 10% of the total K–12 education budget.” All that money and few precious dollars are dedicated to the achievement of SE children. Priceless is when the K to 12 uses the $2.72 billion dollars to nagged Ontario Health and physicians of what they should be doing. After all, physicians don’t have the expertise of the K to 12 educators who are all abreast on the political poverty theories that will supposedly instantly solved the low achievement. Meanwhile, students go without to support the self-serving needs of the K to 12 establishment. I do hope there is a class-action suit slapped upon Ontario for the LD students. I know of some cases that will truly show the discrimination of the LD students in its full glory. The students eventually had to leave the public K to 12 for private LD schools. Meanwhile the LD students who don’t have the option, are treated to measurements of their mental health but never are they assessed and tested in reading, writing and numeracy to improved achievement.

Oh, how I would like to see Bob back with his Rae days…..there is a man who saw the necessities though the party faithful vilified him and continue to do so except when a knee jerk hiccup comes out.

Bob Rae made the NDP unelectable for 25 years and then became a Liberal. Brilliant.

Tom

Can you name a country with a better post-secondary graduation rate?

Tom?

Although Doug’s challenge has nothing to do with my blob posting, he is right about Canada’s postsecondary achievement in a very specific context.

Canada is a leader in college attainment, not university attainment.  And we are a leader because our older citizens were well educated, we are far from the front comparing 24-35 year olds.  It is not that our kids aren’t doing better that their parents, but rather that other countries started from a lower base.  Their poorly-educated parents pull down their averages.

We were #1 in 2010, but in 2012 Korea passed us.  We will steadily drop in the rankings as older uneducated generations die off in other countries.

Here’s what the OECD says about Canada in 2012:

“Although tertiary education attainment among 25-64 year-olds has been growing at an annual rate of 2.4% over the past few years in Canada, growth has been more pronounced in many other countries, including Ireland (with a growth rate of 7.3%), Korea (5.2%), Luxembourg (6.9%), Poland (7.2%) and Portugal (5.7%) (Table A1.4).

Canada’s high ranking is largely due to its high college (tertiary-type 5B) rather than university (tertiary-type 5A) attainment rates.1 Canada ranks first among 34 OECD countries in the proportion of 25-64 year-olds with a college education (24%), but it ranks 8th in the proportion of adults with a university education (26%).

When considering the tertiary education attainment rate of 25-34 year-olds, Canada’s ranking drops to 15th of 34 OECD countries (Table A1.1a). As the recent OECD Economic Surveys: Canada suggests, rates of participation in education will need to grow if Canada is to remain competitive in a globalised labour market as its population ages (OECD, 2012).”

Thank you Tom,

Very good analytical work ! Fascinating, so the top ranking is founded upon the strong education foundation of us 50 and 60 somethings….Too bad we couldn’t dig back and see how some of the working class(read impoverished) students attending the Separate Schools when the nuns frequently lead them did..in the 50s and 60s.

I was talking with my brother(30+year OECTA High School teacher) about his experiences 7 years after mine.  Apparently, the Loretto Abbey nun who lead the school at the time, developed her own approach to dealing with immigrant children who had education from their native land but no English. (this is long before there was any formalization of the English as a 2nd langauge programs of today)  Note, I am sure that contemporary educrats would likely brand this principal a child abuser..(though the recipients of the approach might argue very strongly on the other side)

Well her approach was to put them (regardless of age) into the grade one class and when they were proficient in the fundamentals, move them to the next appropriate grade…interestingly it took typically took 24 months for one my brothers best friends(an 10 year old at the time) to move from zero English to almost par with his classmates in grade six).  The principal teacher in this case ran her school with an iron hand and there was no rebuttal open to her teacher staff. This particular individual ultimately became a scholarship student at University and has had a 30 year career as an Engineer….wonder how he would do today

That totally insulting process of putting older children in grade one caused the Chinese community in BC to start their own schools, pay for it themselves and reintegrate them later. It is part of the ignorance of the time.

The reason the 2, college and university are combined is that the proper balance off the workforce is attained this way. Being first in university overproduces philosophy majors and under-produces technicians. Canada has both the proper balance and the highest total.

Having the highest % of post-secondary grads is far more important and appropriate than having the highest university %.

USA with its awful education system produces one of the highest university % because their mentality seems to be high education for half the country and nothing for the other half.

In the schools of my youth, the Catholic school did the same thing as what Frank has outlined. My public school did it differently. Students who had little to no English, were all put in one classroom regardless of age. It operated like a one room school house focusing on the 3 Rs. The average stay was one year, and the student enter the grade that usually corresponded with their age. My school was the regional school for all immigrant students with little to no English to be bussed in for intensive upgrading on English and math skills. The students would return to their assigned school, ready and prepare to learn with the rest of the students.

On another matter, I found an interesting data byte in the BC files regarding adult education. “The population of school-aged students in public schools decreased by 3.8%, while the adult student population increased by 51.3%.”  On page 9 - http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/2012EdFacts.pdf

Adult education of the 1960s and 1970s was plentiful, numerous courses and easy access points at the local high schools and colleges. Today, that is no longer the case and has not been the case since the 1990s. I went looking for further data in other provinces, but as of yet have not found any. I suspect that adult education has increase ten-fold and the powers to be will be making plans to decrease the numbers of accessing what is left of adult education programs by changing the criteria since adult education is funded by federal, provincial and sometimes municipality monies.

I think it has more to do with the locked doors at the access points of entering the education system at various stages, that keeps the rates of participation lower at the post-secondary levels. As Frank has suggested, time to look at the education data of the 1950s to the 1970s…....

Frank X,
that Loretto Abbey nun wouldn’t have been Sr. Pauline would it? She was principal of the lower school at the Abbey in Toronto during the 50’s & 60’s.

They did the same at my own schools ‘back in the day’ as well. The children came up to speed pretty quickly.

Oh great dictatorship endorsed.

Mussolini got the trains to come on time as well.

College and BA degrees are the new high school.

The question is: do these graduates work as professionals in their field? Do they get paid professional salaries?

Or are these degrees just a way to get your foot in the door for slightly more qualified, cleaner, better conditions jobs that require really just high school skills .. but the employers choose post-secondary graduates for.
Well the employers can do that since there are so many post secondary graduates and the employers will do that since graduating high school no longer guarantees any competencies.

Grade inflation and credentialism are happening everywhere in the world, not just in Canada. I guess it happens because the societies - either parents or governments - are righ enough to afford it.

Personally I think it leads to massive confusion, entitlement and that in time, since the jobs are scarce, it will lead to who you know being one of the most important factors in getting a good job.

So now we have the world’s highest % of post-secondary graduates and a better blend of university-college than almost everybody so Mr Europe says that is not good enough.

Job creation is not the roll of the the school system. That is the roll of government and the private sector.

To give weight to Europe’s post - the BC report - on page 42 - “Of concern is that nearly one out of seven Canadian workers with a university degree, aged 25 to 64 years, earned less than $12 per hour in 2007 (Statistics Canada, 2008). The 2008 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report, Education at a Glance, shows Canada having the highest proportion (18%) of highly-educated individuals earning less than half the median wage—the worst record of 27 OECD countries.”

on page 46 - “Over 7 million adult Canadians lack the functional literacy they might need to adjust to the changing economy. Canada’s performance on adult literacy measures is about average when
compared to 16 peer countries.
• Average numbers of university graduates in science, math, computer science, and
engineering disciplines.
• Low numbers of Ph.D. graduates.
• Lack of focus on work-based skills training and lifelong learning outside traditional academic
institutions.”
http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/2012EdFacts.pdf

France goes through these wrenching fights every few years. The government always wants to force more people into science engineering then there are gigantic demonstrations in Paris whete students tell the government to back off they, the students need to be free to choose there program.

The fact that many graduates are unemployed or underemployed is neither the fault of the students or the education system.  It is the fault of government and the private sector. Unemployment is not an intractable problem like cancer.

It is the result of fighting inflation over unemployment, failure to stimulate the economy, lack of a modern strategy, in the end we have what 7.5% unemployment up to 12% with discouraged workers

5% unemployment is considered full employment. A different set of policies could reduce that dramatically. Choices.

Oh really Doug? Then why should we have our children attend public schools if the K to 12 is no longer willing to ensure the students have the skills and knowledge bases for the jobs of the future? That said, I am really wondering what the K is 12 is really up to? What is the game plan in the near future? Earlier today, I came across this article of the biggest teachers’ pensions doing some union busting of their own. http://www.teamsters464.org/news/ontario-teachers-pension-plan-union-busting

Really Doug, there will be class actions lawsuits bearing down upon the K to 12. Better be careful what the K to 12 states or members of the K to 12 - the past just might bite the K to 12 in the future. The K to 12 really have no choice, but to improved the graduation rates of all students or face the future consequences.

Three papers of different focuses describing the role of the K to 12 to the economy, jobs and yes even employment rates. All three papers stress that one of the functions of the K to 12 is to produced people with the required skills of the 3 Rs.

1. “The research summarized in this article shows that schooling is necessary for industrial
development. The form of schooling that emerged in the 19th century generates specific
cognitive, behavioral and social knowledge that are critical ingredients for the way industrial
societies organize: “
http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/eeg_what_research_says.pdf

2. The OECD report - The Skills Needed
for the 21st Century - http://skills.oecd.org/documents/SkillsOutlook_2013_Chapter1.pdf

3. “The School Economy: The Roles and Effects of the Growth of Schools and Schooling in the Global Economy”
http://jbsq.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/JBSQ_4C.pdf

Lots more where the papers came from Doug that are more or less talking about the same things. I could add a forth, a paper I read earlier today, a historical piece on the union busters of the late 19th century. One has no idea the measures taken to prevent the early education system from educating the working class with the skills of the 3 Rs. It had quotes and supporting evidence of the public K to 12 colluding with the robber barons of the era to prevent trade unions from forming. The paper wrapped up in the 21st century and the state of the unions and the state of the education quality.

I did not include it, since I wanted to provide the up-to-date data to stress the economists and sociologists of today know the public K to 12 will be shifting away from the 19th century industrial model but what they don’t know, what will be the new model. Hum, it sounds like the 21st century K to 12 are at a crossroads as their counterparts in the late 19th century.

The unemployed youth today are not unemployed due to their skills. They are unemployed because the economy is not producing enough jobs.

This is the job of mainly the federal government and the private sector.

The radical introduction of technology has totally rearranged the job market.

It should have meant workers working fewer hours for the same pay + inflation.

Instead the 1% corporate elite made off with the productivity gains all for themselves and threw the 99% on the scrap heap.

People like to idolize entrepreneurs like the late Steve Jobs who seng thousands of jobs to China.

If not for the control of the 1% we could all be working 30 hours per week without loss of pay and 4% unemployment and BTW the rich would still be rich just not absurdly rich.

Doug,

I woke up today and realized it was only 3 weeks until school. For some reason I had the urge to punch myself in the head. Instead I chose to read some more of your drivel

Oh, and this…

“Job creation is not the roll of the the school system. That is the roll of government and the private sector.”

Is the government going to roll down the hill?

Only you know what that means?

Invective wins few friends in debate.

Gov’t policy decides how many jobs there are.

Stimulus… interest rates…. amortization of mortgages…money supply….quantitative easing….fight inflation instead of unemployment….

You can easily have 5% unemployment. Biz does not like it. Creates wage pressure.

The K to 12 education system are the only ones that produces the employees of the future. Rather difficult, if the students coming out of grade 12 do not have the skills and knowledge bases for today’s jobs, let alone the jobs of the futures.

Of course, government policies play a pivoted role in the employment numbers. What Doug forgets or neglects to mentioned is the role of the K to 12 education policies on student mobility to content knowledge to everything between A to Z including the whacky expenditures of $165 to installed a pencil sharpener.

Nancy has the situation totally upside down.

There is no skills crisis.

The economy is simply not producing enough jobs. Period.

Doug, cannot prove his contention because none of the data bytes is being tracked and published. Such data bytes as tracking grade 12 graduates to the age of 25 to 30. One date byte that is being published in the 50 percent plus increase in adult education financed by the public K to 12 and their better half the Post-secondary and training. Adult education is all the stuff that should have been taught in the K to 12 such as upgrading skills of the 3 Rs to level 3 or higher to taking missing courses that are needed to be admitted to a college or university field of study.

As for Doug’s remark on -  “There is no skills crisis.”  Just asked him and his counterparts what they considered skills. Then asked the employers and one will get two polar opposite narratives. The K to 12 would rather produce students to maximized the greatest chances of the grade 12 graduates to return several times in the adult education industry to upgrade their skills in the 3 Rs. regardless of the needs of the employers.

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/14/1291972/-If-inadequate-skills-cause-long-term-joblessness-why-does-it-plague-all-educational-levels

We ARE the economy, and until recently small businesses and start-ups - people like you and me - were generating the majority of new jobs.

Some jobs don’t get created because the skills aren’t available:  http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21610337-what-shortage-workers-film-sets-georgia-says-about-america-behind-scenes

Some jobs don’t get created because governments have imposed steadily increasing burdens of regulation, licencing, and paperload.  The cost, risk, and complexity of starting a business has increased.

The government doesn’t ‘create’ jobs.  It can create an environment where job creation is more likely to happen.  Education is one of those tools, so is infrastructure.  Ontario’s declining schools, bloated bureaucracy, wasteful spending, and inadequate infrastructure are pushing us in the wrong direction.

Exactly Tom!

People ask me if it bothers me when I outsource so much work to contractors in the Phillipines, Pakistan, all over the world.

I’ll admit that $5 per hour instead of $30 per hour helps, but a large part of the decision is that I don’t have to worry about having a stupid safety meeting once per week to make sure no one falls out of their office chair, no pile of tax forms to fill out or keep track of, no entitled employees thinking they should get paid just for showing up, and I don’t have to create 5 documents proving that everyone’s office desk is ergonomically designed and certified! AND for as low as $1 per hour I get people who’s second language is English and yet they read, write, follow instructions, and generate a sophisticated spreadsheet better than a large percentage of the so-called university grads in North America!

So no, it doesn’t bother me one bit.

And I remind my kids once in a while what’s going on in the global labor market, and remind them that it’s up to them whether they’re running the show 15 years from now, or being subcontracted at $2 per hour by some Indian kid who got a good education.

Doug adds the tiresome narrative that skills of workers are not the problem nor is there a shortage of workers. It is a simplistic answer to what is very complex taking in the policies of government, employers and indeed the global policies. A few economists have put the narrative of skills into its proper context…“It’s time to put the so-called skills mismatch in perspective. Yes, Canada should invest heavily in public education and training—not just because it’s important to economic productivity, but because it’s essential to a democratic society. Yes, Canada should dedicate significant resources to job placement and adjustment services, to help willing workers…..”  - See more at: http://www.academicmatters.ca/2013/11/canadas-sluggish-labour-market-and-the-myth-of-the-skills-shortage/#sthash.rWlTHTfI.dpuf

From the Canadian Centre for Alternative Policies -
http://behindthenumbers.ca/2013/12/03/grading-canadas-economic-recovery-the-truth-about-job-creation-and-unemployment-in-canada/

Tym, stated his case based on an employer’s perspective. Here is another perspective, and that is all the locked access doors for Canadians to renter the education system to upgrade their skills or obtained a certificate in order to continued working in a field such as the accounting department or the assembly line of a manufacturer company.

Hard to complete with TFWs when Canadians do not have easy access to the doors of education for retraining and upgrading purposes. That said, my youngest was completing with the TFWs for the typical low wage jobs. It looked bleak for a time in search of a summer job and possible part time work while the constant narrative was reinforced that Canadian students just don’t have what it takes in skills and knowledge sets. My youngest did land a job with an employer who does not hire TFWs. Apparently, my youngest was hired because she had the math skills and the more important skill, her people skills. She is a hit with the customers including the grumpy customers. None of it would be possible if I did not intercede because the K to 12 sure was not going to ensure that my child had the skills and knowledge for employers or post-secondary opportunities.

Doug Little wrote:

“You cannot escape the fact that Canada has yhe world’s best education system. It is just a fact.
Posted by Doug Little on 08/05 at 04:27 PM”

Frank Gue wrote:

We don’t.

Doug,

You cannot escape the fact that Canada’s education system currently produces very poor results.

There is almost zero support for your position.

You are leading a one car parade I’m afraid.

In actual fact there is almost no support for your position.

The data says I am right. World’s highest post secondary education rate.

It is the circle you travel in. You fly with the ducks you start to quack.

Tym, re:  outsourcing—thanks for ‘telling it like it is’.  Many people don’t know what it’s like for manufacturing nowadays.  Our province is not competitive, and public education can shoulder the lion’s share of the blame, since our kids are graduating with poor literacy and numeric skills.  Besides as you said you’re very over-regulated by the government, who has little regard for what is best for manufacturing—our tax base. 
Wake up Ontario, we need to vote in a government that is business friendly; not government employee friendly.  It doesn’t work when a government panders to public sector unions and government bureaucrats, because they don’t generate tax dollars, they only receive them; it’s the private sector who is our only tax base.

There aren’t enough jobs, so job-seekers with post-secondary degrees compete for unskilled positions.  That devalues high school diplomas and forces students to pursue post-secondary credentials.

This drives our post-secondary rates higher without benefit to either the students or the economy.

Canada may have the highest post-secondary rate but Canada also has one of the highest percentages of underemployed numbers in the world. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/03/13/why_canadas_job_market_hasnt_recovered_goar.html

Funny

Every kid at my local Starbucks has a university degree or a college diploma and wears a green apron.

0% of the problem is the schools.

There is no country on Earth as well educated.

There was no time in Canadian history when were were better educated, more literate or more numerate.

The economy is not producing enough jobs mainly because the 93% who are working are not paid high enough wages to stimulate demand.

Yes Nancy,

Canada has high youth unemployment and also underemployment.

This blame is about 0% education system, 50% business 50% federal government.

Doug,

In my outsourcing example, the employment issue is about 40% government, 40% education, and 20% personal culture and drive.

I can tell you from first hand experience (not lame studies or manipulated statistics) that the best educated technical people are coming out of the slovakian countries. Hands down. It’s not even a close race.

The Americans have the raw gumption and “we can do anything” attitude that helps them create wonderful new things out of thin air, the Canadians plod along and turn out a bit of talent here and there, but most Engineers and other technically educated people from Eastern Europe (and some Western European countries) can out-design, out-calculate, out-plan, out-program, and out-build things better than 90% of their counterparts in North America.

Now they may not have the economy and infrastructure to follow through and own the big companies like the Americans, but the quality of their education provides them with the ability to think critically and design things properly. They are head and shoulders above everyone else right now.

Take a look at lots of the big tech. companies. The CEO is Indian, and a lot of the hardcore, backroom technical work is done by slavic immigrants or outsourced to them overseas.