The last couple of days have been busy but extremely enjoyable. Sarah has pipped me to the post again so I wont describe the general itinerary of what the team has been up to over the last couple of days, as these are ably described below (with pictures!).

28th April - My meeting with Doug Pearson (Superintendent for District 83) on wednesday proved to be very interesting. The first half of the meeting was to discuss the roles and responsibilities of the various tiers of Government with respect to education - federal, provincial, district etc....Being so used to a highly centralised system, I found it particularly striking that each province is a seperate educational authority with a differing curriculum and a different qualifications framework. Some similiarities to Surrey in that as a school district it performs relatively well but is finding it increasingly difficult to sustain - particularly with less and less coming in from Government. It seems the strategy is to invest more into early years education as a way of 'frontloading' underperformance. The other striking part of the conversation was how unionised the teaching profession is in Canada - it seems that teacher strikes are not uncommon which makes for a fractious relationship between schools, their staff and the elected boards. We briefly discussed the issue of 'choice' - something very popular in the UK - this is something that Canada is also relatively keen on - particularly interesting was that the Government will fund private schools up to 50% if they can demonstrate an alignment with the curriculum and approach set by the School district.

I then went on to Salmon Arm secondary school (Jackson Campus) - unfortunately I was unable to meet with the principal or vice principal because of a minor emergency but I did get the chance to look around the school. Serving 400-500 kids (guess) it was impressive. Design focussed on natural light which gave the school a very light and airy feel. Departmental, the school had a central hub with 4 arms extending from it like a star. Interestingly I was told, that the innovative approach to school design was something that the present government had rolled back from since SA was built 10 years ago. The ministry of education put out a statement along the lines of "schools should be functional, their purpose is not to be aesthetically pleasing or architecturally significant" - not something you will find in the BSF literature.

29th April - again all very well explained by Sarah below. Tim Horton's was good, but for me the hydroelectric dam was the highlight - I was impressed to hear that over 95% of BC's power is sourced from hydroelectric power. It seems to me to be an incredibly reliable, clean, relatively low impact way of generating energy. Although not a vocational day, I did speak to a lovely couple of people when in Revelstoke about special schools. I was amazed to hear that in BC there are no special schools and all pupils are educated in a mainstream setting. Kids with SEN are graded between 1 and 3 in terms of need and funding follows that pupil usually in the form of a 1:1 teaching or learning assistant (which rarely covers the true cost). Inclusion is a hot topic in Surrey I think they would be interested to hear that there are not special schools at all and the pupil referral units were all scrapped two or so years ago - consequently there are relatively few exclusions. This all sounds great, but I do wonder how the teachers and parents feel about it, as this has to put a challenging burden on a workforce not always adequately prepared for kids with severe learning difficulties.

30th April - run in the morning to mount creek then a really nice day trekking, hay barn BBqing and learning about the First Nations in Canada. Many similarities it seems with Australia and aborigines. Past injustices on a collosal scale, 200 years on and you find a disadvantaged native people who score poorly on most socioeconomic criteria against the national average. Lots of interesting discussions with Bill and Zina and Fred and Lynda as well as a tour guide who took us to look at Tee Pees and Kekuli's on what the issues and respective challenges are.

Return home to meet up with Bill and family for one a beer before bedtime.