Rural Education. A Brief to the Rural Development Consultation from the British Columbia Teachers&apos; Federation
Author: British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) (Canada)
Date: 2018-02-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Rural Education,Rural Schools,Small Schools,Access to Education,Rural Development,Educational Quality,Educational Finance,Educational Needs,Equal Education,Funding Formulas,Government Role,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Released Time,Educational Resources,Student Needs,Canada Natives,Distance Education

In many school districts, rural life in British Columbia continues to be a geographic and economic fact. Delivering equal school services and ensuring equal educational opportunities to areas with thinly scattered populations continues to be a challenge for the provincial government and school districts. Rural schools offer many positive benefits to students and their communities. They tend to be smaller than their suburban and urban counterparts, with smaller class sizes and more interactions among staff, parents, and students. Rural school districts are often the largest single employer in the area, and rural schools often serve as the social, recreational, and cultural foundation of their communities. The value of a school in a rural community goes far beyond its primary purpose of educating children. Rural schools have positive economic and social effects, provide a resource for community development, and offer a delivery point for local services. In BC, many rural school communities face a host of challenges: under funding, unemployment, geographic isolation, small population base and declining enrollment, difficulties in transporting students to schools, higher per-pupil costs, inadequate facilities, and high turnover among teachers and administrators. This report outlines some recommendations for ensuring that students in rural and remote communities across the province have access to quality education. They are as follows: (1) The rural development process should champion the value, benefit, and importance of rural and small schools; (2) The provincial government should increase education funding to meet the educational needs of the province's students and to ensure equality of educational opportunity for all students in the province; the provincial education funding formula should also take into account the unique circumstances facing rural and small schools; (3) The provincial government, school districts, and the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) must work together to develop strategies to promote the recruitment and retention of teachers in rural and remote school districts; (4) Special measures need to be taken to improve the availability of teacher professional development programs in rural areas of the province, including consideration of additional professional development funding and release time; (5) The Ministry of Education and school districts should provide a variety of learning resources to assist teachers in meeting the needs of students in rural schools; (6) Encouragement and resources should be provided for schools to work with Aboriginal communities to meet the needs for education that supports Aboriginal success; and (7) Distributed Learning should be considered a positive offering for rural schools within the BC public school system only when fully supported by adequate staffing, funding, and resources. Rural schools are at the heart of their communities in a way that is not possible in a suburban or urban setting. The BCTF urges the government to champion the value, benefits, and importance of rural and small schools.