- Shift authority down to regional school boards where possible;
- Empower parent choice in education;
- Have funding follow the student;
K-12 education has consistently underperformed its objectives for longer than we can remember*. This has been met with a chorus of groups demanding more funding, and this funding issue has consumed virtually all discourse on public education for decades. Depending on how it’s measured, funding has both been increased and decreased for varying periods of time.
But is the dollar amount of funding really the most important factor in whether our children will receive a quality education? There’s little evidence to prove that it makes much of a difference either way.
BC Libertarians believe that to ensure access to a quality education for every child, parents should have more choice in determining the way it is delivered. It’s already well-recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach results in far too many students being left behind. The logical extension of that view is that the availability of more approaches will leave fewer students behind.
COVID-19 and the closure of schools offered an opportunity to test out a number of alternative approaches like online learning, student pods, homeschooling and private tutoring – to wildly varying degrees of success. We believe education should be an innovative process in normal times as well, where the exploration of new methods can lead to discovery of better matches for individual children.
BC Libertarians will act to move as much decision-making as possible away from the Ministry of Education and toward local school districts, where parents can have more of a say in policies and procedures. We will consult with educational providers about how we can best introduce a system whereby public education funding can follow the student, on an opt-in basis, and be used at parents’ discretion within an expanded menu of educational options.
A quality education should not depend on the geographical location or the financial means of their family. Educational choice is how the playing field can be leveled between the underprivileged and those lucky enough to live in close proximity to the best schools. Indeed, the present system has failed to achieve this for long enough.