Governance

When I first saw the topic “governance” on the slides for our professional teacher class I was less than eager to start learning.  Government has never really interested me and I find the multi-layers to be confusing to navigate but in this post I will try my best to explain how the government affects our public education system.

In Canada, the provincial governments are responsible for the programming of schools.  They oversee all of the programs and hand down mandates if they deem the education system to be lacking in some manner.  An example of one of these provincial mandates would be the initiative to bring up the math scores of Manitoba students, which were recently shown to be low among the Canadian provinces.  The Manitoba provincial government follows the Public Schools Act and governs accordingly.

The next level of governance is the school board which sets the policies and budgets for the school division.  An interesting fact about the school board is that it is composed of members of each given community and the people are elected.  It is at this level that the Superintendent sits, and he acts as a liaison between the school division and the schools themselves. 

At the school level, the principal acts as a liaison between the teachers/ community and the superintendent.  One of the discussions in class brought forward the fact that teachers are supposed to work hand-in-hand with the principal to ensure that the initiatives of the province are being met and reported back to the provincial government but this is not always the case.  It was disheartening to learn that teachers are often left out of the governance equation because they are in essence at the lowest level of the totem pole.  I believe that this points to something that the new generation of teachers must really focus on... building strong relationships with administration with open lines of communication.  I think that people must work hard to keep these relationships positive and they must always check back with one another with the best interests of the child always in the forefront of their minds.  

After the classes covering the material on governance I can honestly see why it is important to know but I still think the subject matter can be rather bland.  In my future career I will be taking a closer look at the government structure though, because I think it is important to know my roles within it and what is expected out of me if I ever decide to take an administrative position at a different level.