My Speeches

School Board Advertising to Attract Students

Posted on Apr 21, 2010

The hon. Member for Battle River-Wainwright.

School Board Advertising to Attract Students

Mr. Griffiths: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was driving into the city
the other day, and I saw a Strathcona county school bus with a big
sign on the back advertising Elk Island school division. I’ve seen
other school divisions advertising on billboards and TV. To the
Minister of Education: given the need for accountability why in
these tight fiscal times are school boards spending precious education
dollars on advertising rather than on students and programs?

Mr. Hancock: Well, it’s a good question, Mr. Speaker. Locally
elected school boards do have autonomy over their funds and get to
direct them. They are restricted to 4 to 6 per cent on administrative
funding, which is where advertising would come from. Spending on
advertising comes out of that process, but it’s within their budgetary
discretion. It’s a good question, though. All last fall we talked with
school boards about whether the funds that we’re using in the
education system are helping us to achieve our outcomes and
looking to say: can we cut back in areas where we’re not achieving
our outcomes? That being said, the school boards do get funded on
a per capita basis, so they try to attract more students.

Mr. Griffiths: They try to attract more students. To the same
minister, then: given that they’re trying to attract students through
advertising, have any of them done a business case in their business
plans to show that spending money on advertising attracts enough
students to offset the cost of the advertising and improves the
students’ education?

Mr. Hancock: Well, Mr. Speaker, I wouldn’t be privy to that
information. That’s within the purview of the school board. We try
not to collect more information from school boards and put them
through more reporting processes than they absolutely have to do, so
I don’t have that kind of information. However, we do have a
system of choice. Again, school boards do compete for students,
unfortunately – that’s part of the system – so they do engage their
advertising dollars, but they have to be accountable to their electorate
for the way they spend their dollars.

The Speaker: The hon. member.

Mr. Griffiths: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the same minister:
given that social media, the Internet, word of mouth, and great
programs for students are the best ways to advertise and are free or
improve education, will the minister begin discussions with the
school boards to talk about curbing this policy so all dollars go to
actually educating students?

Mr. Hancock: Mr. Speaker, that’s precisely the kind of discussion
we engaged in last year and we’re going to continue to have. The
resources that we have are substantial, but they’re never going to be
enough to do everything that people want to do, so we have to focus
on making sure that as we use the public’s resources, we’re achieving
the outcomes in the system that we want to achieve. We need
every school board, we need everybody involved in the system, we
need every teacher in the school to look at every dollar that’s being
deployed to determine whether we’re getting the best value for the
money. So that discussion will continue, the value review that says:
are we achieving outcomes with the investment we’re making, and
is what we’re doing adding value? Every school board should be
doing that, the provincial government should be doing that, and
every school should be doing that.