Government says curriculum pilot will give 'strong indication' of effectiveness, despite low uptake
CBC
Fewer than one per cent of the province's teachers are pilot testing a new draft elementary school curriculum in classrooms this fall, Alberta's deputy minister of education says.
Alberta Education says about 7,800 students are involved in the pilot, which is about two per cent of K-6 students in the province's school systems.
The government's initial goal was for at least 10 per cent of students to try out the draft curriculum before it becomes mandatory.
The Opposition NDP say the sample size is too small and too selective, to properly validate the proposed new material.
"If I was teaching science and this was somebody's science fair experiment, I'd say, 'You don't have a valid sample'," NDP education critic Sarah Hoffman said on Tuesday.
The number and variety of students testing the proposed K-6 curriculum is too limited and fails to represent the diversity of Alberta students, Hoffman said.
No francophone school board would agree to test the curriculum, which has been panned by education experts as developmentally inappropriate, Eurocentric, and unsupported by current research.
At an all-party legislative committee meeting on Tuesday, Opposition MLAs grilled departmental officials about the curriculum validation process and government's management of the COVID-19 pandemic in schools.
Andre Tremblay, the deputy minister for Education, would not provide a percentage of Alberta students that needed to participate in pilot testing to consider the results valid.
"In terms of statistical relevance, the fact that we do have over 360 teachers piloting the curriculum across the system with all grades and all subjects will give us a strong indication of the effectiveness of the curriculum in the classroom," Tremblay said.
When NDP MLA Marie Renaud pressed him on whether it was a large enough sample to give the government the feedback they needed in light of widespread public opposition, he deflected her questions.
Later, Hoffman told reporters the United Conservative Party government considers the curriculum a "political prop," and is disinterested in assembling meaningful feedback from the public, educators and students.
"What we do know is that it is a very small number of students in any public, Catholic or francophone school who are being exposed to this really harmful curriculum, " she said. "That of course is a relief to many parents and educators who have rightfully discredited this horrible curriculum."
The education minister's office has refused to disclose which schools or school divisions are piloting the curriculum, and what subjects and grades.
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