HANSARD

 

 

NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

 

 

COMMITTEE

 

ON

 

HUMAN RESOURCES

 

 

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

 

 

COMMITTEE ROOM 1

 

Department of Labour and Advanced Education

Re: Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning /

Agency, Board and Commission Appointments

 

 

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

 

 

 

 

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

 

 

Mr. Mat Whynott (Chairman)

Hon. William Estabrooks

Ms. Becky Kent

Mr. Jim Morton

Mr. Gary Burrill

Hon. Wayne Gaudet

Mr. Zach Churchill

Hon. Christopher d'Entremont

Mr. Allan MacMaster

 

 

[Hon. William Estabrooks was replaced by Mr. Howard Epstein.]

[Mr. Allan MacMaster was replaced by Mr. Eddie Orrell.]

 

 

 

WITNESSES

 

Department of Labour and Advanced Education

 

Ms. Karen Gatien

Director, Adult Education

 

Ms. Michelle Thomason

Manager/Registrar, Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning

 

 

 

In Attendance:

 

Ms. Jana Hodgson

Legislative Committee Clerk

 

Mr. James Charlton

Legislative Counsel

 

 

 

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2013

 

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

 

9:00 A.M.

 

CHAIRMAN

 

Mr. Mat Whynott

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning, we'll call the Human Resources Committee to order. I will ask all members of the committee to introduce themselves.

 

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Some of our usual members on the committee are under the weather today so I think there might be one other person, Becky Kent, from the NDP caucus, who will be joining us. I think she is just running a little bit late.

 

We'll begin with your presentation. Thank you very much for coming today. Usually the way this works is you folks do your presentation and then we'll try to divvy up the time for questions with each caucus. Then our committee does have a little bit of committee business afterwards, so we'll just do that quickly before we finish off today.

 

We'll ask you to introduce yourselves and, again, thank you very much for coming.

 

MS. KAREN GATIEN: Thank you very much for inviting us actually. My name is Karen Gatien and I am the director of the Adult Education Division. The Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning, or NSSAL, is our primary adult learning initiative. We're always happy to talk about it and always happy when people have an interest in it, so we really do appreciate the opportunity.

 

My colleague, Michelle Thomason, is here. Michelle is the manager and registrar of the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning, as well as our chief GED administrator.

 

You have the slides in front of you; I'll just walk through it. NSSAL's primary mandate is to provide tuition-free educational programs to adults in both English and French. They are delivered across the province, as you can see from the map that we distributed. You can see the breadth of our programming, it's in almost every region and community, actually, across the province.

 

In terms of adult learners, the individuals who are eligible to participate in NSSAL's programming must be 19 years of age or older, at least one year out of school, and not have a recognized high school diploma. In recent years we have made some exceptions to that criteria around the high school diploma because we found that there are a number of adults who might have a high school diploma but for a variety of reasons have relatively low literacy and essential skills and could be advantaged by participating in some upgrading, especially in the areas of English and math, which will better support them in post-secondary studies, as well as even in the workplace. So we have opened up the opportunity for them to participate in some of our community learning programs across the province.

 

As I said, the programming ranges from basic literacy right through to high school completion. NSSAL contributes to the social and economic development of the province by ensuring that individuals have employability skills that they need to fully participate at home, at work, and in their community and they have the foundational skills, knowledge, and credentials to support them to do that.

 

On the next slide is a brief overview of some activities that we actually coordinate. In terms of adult literacy and basic education, we actually have a four-level adult learning program. We have our own adult learning program curriculum with two curriculum consultants who developed that and it is aligned to the public school program curriculum. So that ensures the quality is there and that when we award a high school diploma to adults, it has the same rigour as the so-called regular high school diploma that the Department of Education awards.

 

Beyond that, the programming is offered, as I mentioned, in community-based organizations. Levels I and II - what we consider more basic literacy, and on some occasions Level III - are delivered by our community learning partners. Levels III and IV are delivered in English at the Nova Scotia Community College through their School of Access; in French, the French equivalent - the FGA - is Levels II to IV. We also partner with five regional school boards that have adult high school programs and they deliver only public school program credits, but they do allow adults who meet our criteria to participate in their programs as well.

 

We also support family learning initiatives across the province. The focus there is on building the skills of parents in that family context. What we have found to be successful about those programs is it's often a hook - it's often a way that adults will return to learning if they think they're there to build skills to help their children be more successful in school, and then once they get involved they will often continue on in the programs.

 

Seniors' Literacy is a partnership that we have with the Department of Seniors where community learning organizations and seniors' groups in different communities come together to offer programming to seniors to increase their information, awareness, and knowledge around their health, financial, and nutritional information that they need for a better quality of life. Those are relatively small programs. It's about a $40,000 grant program.

 

As I've mentioned, the community learning programs - we support a number of programs that are very specific to targeted communities. There is an Acadian Literacy Network that does programming specifically for the francophone population in the province. They don't necessarily limit it to Acadians, but of course that would be our largest francophone population here. We also support programming with Mi'kmaq communities and the Mi'kmaq Friendship Centre for on- and off-reserve Mi'kmaq, as well as two organizations that focus their programming on the African Nova Scotian population.

 

Our two main credentials are the GED certificate and the high school diploma for adults that I mentioned earlier. They are often confused. A number of people will often say, oh yes, you do the GED, not really understanding what that is. The GED is an international high school equivalency testing program. It's a series of five challenging tests for individuals who don't have a high school diploma. The tests are in Math, English Language Arts Reading, English Language Arts Writing, Science, and Social Studies. Once an individual passes all of those five tests, they then can receive their GED certificate.

 

The high school diploma, just to distinguish it, is a 12-credit adult diploma, as I said, aligned with the public school program diploma issued by the Department of Education. The difference is their diploma is 18 credits; our focus is on Grades 11 and 12 and we see the Grade 10 as foundational, so we don't actually count credits for adults towards that.

 

Finally, the Recognition of Prior Learning work that our division does - we have for a long time offered a transfer credit assessment service. If individuals have taken prior learning, we will look to review the outcomes of the programming that they've participated in to see if we can give them credits towards their high school diploma. A great example of that is actually the Red Seal. If you were a tradesperson who had their Red Seal in a particular trade and for whatever reason began your apprenticeship without a high school diploma or perhaps even a GED - many of them do have GED certificates - we will automatically give six credits towards your high school diploma so they're already halfway there.

 

On the next slide, I just wanted to highlight a few programs that we have that are particularly innovative. Though we like to think of NSSAL overall as being an innovative program, we're always looking to see how we can better meet the needs of individuals as time passes, to prepare them for the workforce and for future learning. In particular though, we have created a Link Continuing Care Assistant project. It was a direct response to a labour market need for additional continuing care assistants in the province. Individuals who don't have a high school diploma can complete their high school diploma, the post-secondary continuing care assistant certificate, as well as get work experience as they go - all within a 22-month period.

 

It was hugely successful. All of the graduates were able to find employment, with the exception, I think, of maybe two who went on to do the licensed practical nursing, so to us that was a success as well. It was so successful that Université Sainte-Anne also decided to offer a cohort. Theirs, again, was equally successful and now the NSCC is on their third iteration of this project and Université Sainte-Anne is running their second. What we're doing now is getting together with our colleagues at both campuses to say, okay, what other Link-like projects could we do? Are there other occupations where this model might work quite nicely?

 

Then we have the adult learning program, GAP or ALP-GAP; we kind of come up with a lot of little nicknames. The ALP-GAP was really a response to a need in the Guysborough area - it's where it was created. It came out of a need for people with relatively low skills, who may or may not have had a high school diploma - so this is an example of what I spoke about earlier - and they had very limited work experience. What we put together was a relatively short program - it's about 20 weeks, I would say - where they get some up-front employability training, as many certifications as we can build in that would be useful in an employment situation such as first aid, WHMIS, and safe food handling. They get an intensive academic upgrading period of time and then work experience where they get a little bit of job coaching as they go through.

 

Many of these individuals have actually secured employment as a process - this is for entry-level positions in relatively rural communities, so it's actually meeting an employer's need as well. In addition, those who didn't find employment, many of them have gone on and studied further. Some of them transferred into the ALP program at the college and some have just continued on to upgrade their skills a bit further.

 

Next is our GED Boot Camps. This is a relatively new initiative, we started this about the Fall of last year, I think. What we were finding is that we had a number of people - as I said, the GED exam is challenging, particularly math and English, those are the two exams that people find most difficult. We also had a number of individuals who were really close to passing, they had passed the other four tests and they had one - the pass mark is 450 and they were in that 400-above range. We put together a series of fairly intensive workshops to help them prepare for the test that they had not passed. We invited them to participate and after they participated in those workshops, we had them write the test. We now have 33 individuals who now have their GED and they didn't earlier. So we're looking at how we can expand that pilot to other areas of the province now.

 

Probably our largest Recognition of Prior Learning project that we've been able to put forward since we've received jobsHere funding - we received $1.2 million to increase our programming and develop our RPL work a little bit further - we created a Record of Achievement project. Essentially what that means is we've developed a framework for assessing standards - it's a standards framework - called an Essential and Employability Skills Framework. What we can do is take the learning and the skills that a person has and have something to measure against. The biggest problem in the past with prior learning assessment is that our piece, the recognition piece, was missing and you need a quality standards framework to compare against, so that's why we put so much time and effort into the development.

 

It will assess an individual's personal management skills, their continuous learning skills, their communication skills, and from that the culmination will be a transcript-like document or a skills record called a Record of Achievement. It will only talk about their strengths - the individuals themselves will know where they have areas that they need to strengthen. They will also be given information about how to do that and there will be programs offered to help them with that. The idea is that they will be able to take this document to an employer and say here's what I know and can do, in order to access front-line, entry-level positions.

 

Our next step in that project, of course, is to engage employers and get their input into it, to see how they feel about it, what feedback they have for us about how it could work, how we could improve it. Ideally, the implementation will happen in the Fall of 2014. What we're finding is that employers are really interested in the focus groups and presentations that we've done. There have been quite a few who have said please let me know when that's ready; I'd like to take a look at it.

 

The next few slides are just to give you some highlights of facts and statistics. I understand that our latest statistical report was circulated ahead of time, so hopefully you have all seen that. Just to highlight: since 2001, when the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning was created, 5,269 adults have earned their high school diploma in the province; we have over 150 programs which are delivered province-wide; approximately 4,400 adults are enrolled in NSSAL programs each year, and these numbers have been fairly consistent; Nova Scotia was the first province in Canada, actually, to offer the GED tests, so we have a long history in that administration - it has been offered since 1969; and presently there are 58,236 adults who have received their GED credential.

 

I should add that there's no restriction; if a person has a GED credential, they can still pursue their high school diploma if they wish to do that later. If they had a Record of Achievement - the idea behind a Record of Achievement is for people who don't have a formal high school credential. They can continue on, they can do their GED credential. They can also do their high school diploma after. It's just to give them alternate pathways to employment.

 

On the next slide I've just pulled out some key statistics from the report that you have a copy of. First of all, 59 per cent of our learners are female, 41 per cent are male. Again, that's fairly consistent, it has been about a 60/40 split for a number of years. Over 51 per cent are under 30 and, in fact, around 70 per cent are under 40, so it's clearly the working-age population. That is often a surprise to people, the expectation is usually that people would be much older who don't have a high school diploma or are having literacy challenges.

 

Over 51 per cent have been out of public school for 10 years or less, so it has been a relatively short time since they've disengaged. Then there's the split between how close they were to completing, so 55 per cent have completed Grade 10 or higher, with 39 per cent completing Grade 9 or less. So you can see the need for some other way of giving them documented proof of the skills that they're building as they participate in programs.

 

On the next slide, in 2007 we conducted a graduate follow-up survey just to check in, to see how our graduates were doing, how they found the program, what were they doing with their diploma, how successful were we making their learning experience. What we found was that 99 per cent were satisfied with their overall experience; 86 per cent had either pursued or were planning to pursue post-secondary studies, and of that number, 96 per cent felt well prepared for those studies. Then finally, 86 per cent were participating in the labour force.

 

The pie graph you have in front of you is the before and after. In terms of employment and financial assistance status of our individuals, I really just want to highlight the blue and the green - I think you have colour copies. Before they came into the program, the graduates, 38 per cent of them were employed full time and 22 per cent were in receipt of funding from the Department of Community Services. You can see that number has grown to 53 per cent following graduation for employment full time and the number of individuals who are receiving income assistance had dropped by half, to 11 per cent. This was within a five-year graduation range.

 

On the final slide I just wanted to give you a highlight of what is next for NSSAL. We are always in a process of continuous improvement. So what's next? How do we attract those learners who aren't presently engaged in our programs? We know they are out there and we know that it is challenging. Adults, first of all, are a transient population, life gets in the way a lot of times, and school was not something for many of them that came comfortably so there are challenges for participation. But are there alternative delivery options where we could better support individuals as they are employed? We're thinking in terms of on-line learning options, more evening classes, more programming over the summer, what could be possible? How do we expand our GED Boot Camp initiatives? Could we expand it beyond just that group of people who are 400 to 450, close to the pass rate? What would that look like?

 

We have a pilot about to start in February in the Truro area, actually, which will be more in keeping to the previous one that I mentioned, where the individuals were very close to passing.

 

Programming partnerships - the success of NSSAL is heavily dependent on partnerships. Without them - our partners deliver our programs, they help to inform us in how we develop new programs; are there areas with Status of Women that may be gap areas for women that we just haven't thought of yet? How can we work a little differently with them, given that 60 per cent of our learner population presently is female?

 

In terms of justice - in the next bullet - programing for under-represented communities, unfortunately, as we all know, a number of the under-represented communities are disproportionately over-represented in our justice system. We do administer GED testing in the federal and provincial facilities, but what more can we do? We have certainly shared our Adult Learning Program curriculum with the instructors that are working with the incarcerated individuals in the provincial system, but there may be other programming options that we could certainly work on together.

 

In terms of programming for under-represented communities, I've mentioned a few that we certainly still partner with, but we know there's a huge need out there and we are always working with organizations that specialize in those areas, to get their advice on what might work, what might work better, how we may engage. Particularly with young men in the African Nova Scotian community, for example - how do we engage with them to return to learning in a way that will serve them well to attach to employment?

 

Record of Achievement - how do we expand that? As I've mentioned, we're going to implement that fully, hopefully in the Fall of 2014 - how we can really ramp up our engagement of employers to ensure that individuals who walk into a place of employment with a Record of Achievement will have it recognized by employers.

 

Finally, as I've mentioned, our continuous improvement process - we've developed a NSSAL evaluation framework and we have started that process of implementation now. We're first going to do a process evaluation where we're really going to pull apart how our programs are being delivered, what assessment methods are being used, those kinds of things. While we do monitoring all the time and have done it for a long time, this is really to look deeply at how the processes are implemented by our partners and by ourselves to look for areas of improvement and look for areas of best practice.

 

The second phase will be an outcomes evaluation. What we hear time and time again from adult learners and from our partners is, it's great you know how many people graduate and it's great that you know how many people come in and take a seat, but what you're not capturing are those other outcomes which are, frankly, really difficult to capture Our increased self-confidence - our increased self-confidence to go and even apply for a job, we don't capture employment well, certainly. We have always been about education: how many people have participated in the programs, how many people have graduated, how many people have achieved their GED certificate?

 

We haven't done a great job for those other people who may or may not have a high school diploma, who have built their skills and their competencies, and now are in a completely different place in their home and in their community. That's what we're trying to get with that outcome evaluation and it will be part of an ongoing process of evaluation for us.

 

Thank you very much for your time. I hope I didn't go over my time.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you - no, no you're good. Right now I have Ms. Kent and then we'll go to Mr. Churchill and then Mr. Burrill.

 

MS. BECKY KENT: My apologies for being a little late and I'd like to go on the record as being in attendance. I'm the MLA for Cole Harbour-Eastern Passage. My apologies to you for coming in after you started.

 

Thank you, first of all, for coming in, but thank you for doing what you do. It's an incredibly important element of Nova Scotian learning and society, frankly. As an MLA, certainly you know that we have a variety of issues that come before us and this is one of the ones that, I don't know, I just dig a little deeper and try very hard to help. We all are quite passionate about different things. But learning - particularly I find for our little older generation, those young people that may have - and I have young men I'm raising; 18, 20, 22, various stages in their life learning, but sometimes they mess around in high school and don't do as well as they would like. I have constituents who come in and did not get through high school, but at a younger age they have a little more gumption in them and they're a little more prepared to go out with a little bit of steam in their engine to pursue what they just screwed up, to be frank.

 

When you talk about - and this is what I'm so proud of and I want to hear a little bit more, is the recognition of prior learning and the Record of Achievement. When we have a certain age level of population who are considering this in their life, to go back and recapture what they were not able to get, for whatever reason it was, there's a lot of anxiety associated to that and to the life skills and the life learning that they have achieved over the course of their life. They have every right to be proud and have that recognized, I think, so I'm really encouraged and want to certainly know more as you develop the future stages of that.

 

My question on the Record of Achievement, is this Record of Achievement when we identify the skills, if they do pursue, where they would have some form of evaluation on a high school diploma, is there a movement from the Record of Achievement into some form of a credit or is it recognizing the Record of Achievement and then that gives them - I don't know - motivation and esteem and knowledge, obviously, to be able to pursue that particular course which gives them a credit and gives them points towards their diploma - does that make sense?

 

So that's one question. I'll let them answer that and then I'll have one more, Mr. Chairman.

 

MS. GATIEN: The reason why the Record of Achievement really was created is we were finding there were a number of adult learners in our program who did not have a high school diploma and they had plateaued. In the Adult Learning Program it's only Level IV that actually earns credits towards the diploma.

 

There are a number of people who can get there or almost there but, for whatever reason - it could be life circumstances, it could just be a question they just can't do the academic piece, but they have built skills, they have definitely built their competencies by coming into the program but also by participating in the program. So it was a way for us to give them another pathway to an entry-level position in particular and also a form of recognition even for further training, should they choose to come back.

 

Adults leave for all kinds of reasons, as I've mentioned, you can tell from our statistical report; 23 per cent have reported they have diagnosed mental illness or mental conditions, so that is one more barrier in front of them, which is a significant one. The benefit of the Record of Achievement to us is that they will have a way to obtain employment, first and foremost, because they don't have a high school credential. That would be our primary focus.

 

Down the road, our hope of course is that we could use it maybe towards standing in other learning programs, potentially the Adult Learning Program, if it was someone who left and had to come back. Actually, in our placement assessment for the Adult Learning Program, we do a bit of process: we look at prior learning, we do an assessment of their reading and writing and their math to place them. We don't necessarily say okay, you've got all your Grade 10 credits, great, you're right into Level IV, because if you haven't done math in 20 years, you're going to need a bit of a transition, potentially - right? So it's all part of that system. I don't know if that fully answers your question.

 

MS. KENT: Yes, I think it has. If I could go back to the - frankly, I guess, I'll continue to call it a bit of an anxiety or overwhelming, I guess an element of being overwhelmed when you are - and I'm speaking when I say "you," it would be someone who feels they want to try to achieve this. Some don't want to share that with anyone, that in fact they don't have their high school diploma. It takes a lot for them to come to somebody and say I need some help.

 

My question is, is there - I mean, this map is wonderful and all these options are great but is there a point person who we can direct people to that says this, start here, and then they'll help you see what fits you best? So I'd like to hear more about that. How is that communicated to our public?

 

We have incredible potential and future opportunities before us now, which is exciting, and everybody should have the opportunity to pursue those. No doubt we have people out there now, Nova Scotians who are thinking that I could do this but where do I start, and they're not quite ready to come out and say to anyone that they need this. But if they saw something in communications and publications that says this is a phone call to start, they can do that without having anyone else in their community potentially, including their MLA or their church pastor or whomever, that they have to divulge. Usually, probably after that when they - I'm hopeful - get to whoever that point person is, they get encouraged and then it gives them the strength and resolve to share a little more so they can continue to look for the supports that they need. Does that make sense?

 

MS. GATIEN: Absolutely, yes. On the map, which I'm hoping that you'll take to your constituency office, should you get calls . . .

 

MS. KENT: I love that.

 

MS. GATIEN: . . . and we're happy to send you more if you need them. There is a 1-800 number on the map as well as our Web site, www.goNSSAL.com. We have adult education coordinators across the province who, when someone calls that 1-877 number - sorry, not a 1-800 number - they'll be directed to the coordinator's office in their region - it's sort of like the pizza line we used to call when you call Pizza Hut. They're the best people really to start with, so what kind of programming are you interested in? They'll know what's available in their region; they know their regions really well. They are for the most part all educators; they've all been educators themselves so they know the challenges.

 

MS. KENT: What's the turnaround on that kind of call or access to it?

 

MS. GATIEN: It's quick. Usually the phone is answered right away, there's usually a clerk and when they call this number, the clerk will take the first line and get their information and if they can answer the questions and direct them, they will. If they need a more in-depth conversation then one of the coordinators would either take the call if they're in the office or call them back, absolutely. If for whatever reason - some of our regional offices are relatively small - someone isn't in that day, the phone call gets forwarded to another region that can also answer the questions, it's no problem at all.

 

In terms of how we get our message out, it's challenging. We've done ad campaigns, we've put ads in papers, we've put our graduation ads around graduation time, we tried a number of years ago a television ad campaign as well. What we have found is that the number-one way that people hear about our programs is through word of mouth - their cousin, their brother, somebody else did it - and we get a number of referrals from our Community Services colleagues, certainly.

 

But it has been an ongoing challenge for us and some of that is the stigma associated with the term "literacy." People have this misconception that I can read when it's not about reading; most of us can read. It's how well you read, how well you use information, how well you can adapt to change in the workplace. As you all know, I'm sure, it's a number of issues and it's trying to get the people engaged in learning to understand that's something we all have to do for the rest of our lives.

 

A number of our community learning organizations have actually changed their names to learning versus literacy because they felt it was keeping people away, which is unfortunate. It's the reality of the term and you're totally right. It is a very challenging thing for an adult to come forward, particularly one who has children in the school system, and say this was something I was not good at and I need help to do better. The Record of Achievement came out of that because we didn't want them to feel that they had failed yet again when really they hadn't; they had built skills. So how could we start to document that and give them different pathways?

 

MS. KENT: Thank you.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Churchill.

 

MR. ZACH CHURCHILL: Folks, thanks again for coming in. I've got one of the adult learning centres in Yarmouth and from what I hear they're a very successful program that's run through there. I've had the chance to go in and actually talk a bit about politics to some of their classes. I don't think any of us disagree with how important adult learning is.

 

I've got some questions around the facts and stats. With the numbers you have for the adults that have earned their high school diploma and received the GED credential, those represent the individuals who completed the course. What is the completion rate right now of adult learning centres in the province? Do we have that information?

 

MS. GATIEN: Well, they don't graduate from the Community Learning organization, they can only get their high school diploma from either a regional school board doing the Public School Program credits or Université Sainte-Anne, en français, Level IV or the NSCC Level IV. I would say last year, for example, I think the graduate number - do you have the graduate numbers here? So graduates last year, our enrolment was about 4,400 and the total grads, 771. So just to give you the breakdown: 219 were from the adult high school system - again, those are the regional school boards, there are five of them, and in this year there are actually six because the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board had an adult high school at the time; 535 graduates from the NSCC; and Université Sainte-Anne had nine.

 

The reality is that because of the way the program works, many individuals of those 4,400 may already have a high school credential or they may already have a GED, so it's not a question so much - it is confusing for people. It's not so much they come in and, how come you're not graduating more people? For many people, if they have that percentage - on the next slide it talks about 39 per cent have completed Grade 9 or less. That's a very long road to a high school completion and for many of them it's probably not going to be the option.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So it's not black and white, you can't just look at completion rates and look at whether they get their diploma . . .

 

MS. GATIEN: No, it isn't - actually, thank you for recognizing that because a lot of people do think, how come the graduation number is not higher? As I said, some already have a credential; they just need to build their skills. But also, they may never receive their credential and it also doesn't include the GED number in the high school graduates. So it's really about what we need to do to get them to where they need to be and in many cases it is employment.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So do we have a number on folks who aren't completing what they need to complete in the program that are dropping out or anything like that?

 

MS. GATIEN: We could access that from the NSCC.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Do you know if it's a high number?

 

MS. GATIEN: No, it really isn't. I think usually what happens - the trick with the NSCC numbers, too, is sometimes they track everything, so if someone makes a phone call, it will show up as a withdrawal. What we're trying to do is have a better sense of what really is a withdrawal. The last year they've made great inroads in that area. What we're trying to get at is how we can work to get them back in. Why are they leaving, how do we get them back in? We're hoping to pull that information out through our evaluation, get a better sense of that because we don't have a really strong sense of it yet.

 

We do know that when they meet with - if the adult says I'm not going to be back, there's a whole conversation with an Adult Learning Program counsellor at the college and Université Sainte-Anne to say, why are you leaving, what can we do, always come back kind of thing. Many adults don't make the phone call, they just stop coming.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So right now we're compiling the data on how many people are leaving, why, and why they're not succeeding necessarily in their program.

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: When will we have that information?

 

MS. GATIEN: Well, it's not going to be quick, I'll be honest. We're hoping that in the next year and a half - so the first year will be, as I said, a process evaluation. We're new to this evaluation piece so we don't know for sure how long that will take. Then the second piece is the outcome evaluation. We expect there will be negative outcomes; there may be outcomes that we learn about the reasons why they left.

 

Our biggest impetus for doing the evaluation, aside from learning more about our program, was we were so pleased with what we found out through the Graduate Follow-up Survey, but what it shone a light on is this is who it worked for - what about the people who did disengage, how do we answer the questions that you've asked?

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Okay, perfect, I look forward to seeing that information when it comes out.

 

The graduate survey produced some pretty favourable numbers. I assume the percentages here are just of those surveyed.

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes. At that time - I can actually tell you exactly - we had, I think, about 2,500 graduates at that time and 882 graduates participated in the survey.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: That's a good sample.

 

MS. GATIEN: It is; it's a good sample size.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Excellent. There have been some concerns raised in the public - I know from areas ranging, I think, over three different school boards in Cape Breton and on the mainland about closures to adult learning centres. Have any closed to date?

 

MS. GATIEN: Adult high schools have. As I mentioned, we have our Adult Learning Program at Université Sainte-Anne - the FGA, sorry; the Adult Learning Program at the NSCC; our Community Learning partners across the province that deliver the basic adult literacy pieces; and then there are five regional school boards that have what they call an adult high school.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: That's what we have in Yarmouth.

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, you have a little bit of everything in Yarmouth. You have the campus, the Community Learning. The Chignecto-Central Regional School Board last year did make a decision to close the four sites of their adult high school. That is the only one to date, although every year there's funding pressures.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: The concerns are coming pretty directly from government cuts to education, and to have something as important and critical to our people's success as adult learning being cut is a pretty scary thing. What conversations have you folks had with the Department of Education around those cuts to education that are impacting these programs? Have you had to bring money to the table because of those funding cuts to save some of these programs?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, we have. To be fair though, we used to be with the Department of Education. I'm sure you're mostly aware of that.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: I can't keep track.

 

MS. GATIEN: Until the Department of Labour and Workforce Development - so our predecessor was formed - we were with the Department of Education, so to be perfectly frank, our contribution to regional school boards was relatively minimal. Most of the funding came through the transfer grant that they would have received from the Department of Education. Over the last few years, through increased funding that we were able to access through the Labour Market Agreement, we had started to provide additional funding to school boards to meet our share of funding for those adults who are 19 and older in the adult system.

 

In terms of Chignecto-Central Regional School Board's decision to close the adult high school, my understanding is they certainly made mention of the funding cuts, but also it was felt that it was no longer their mandate - the adult programming. It was very disappointing to us, clearly, but we have been able to transition the affected learners quite successfully to the Adult Learning Program at the college. The college was actually a really great partner. We were able to work together with the school board to facilitate that. I've had no formal notification from other school boards that the decision is pending. It's every year with budget discussions. I expect it will continue to come up. We have been able, in the last few years, to provide additional funds that they needed to continue their programs for sure.

 

There was a second part to your question - conversations with the Department of Education. We have ongoing conversations with the Department of Education just to say - as they're going through their budget deliberations, I share what we are thinking in terms of funding for our school board partners as well.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So for those adult learners that lost their programming in their region because of government cuts to education, where have those learners gone?

 

MS. GATIEN: They are still in programs in their region. It just looks a little bit different. Because some of them didn't know what it would look like to be in our ALP classroom versus being in a public school classroom, which typically is more traditional - what you would remember from school yourself - ALP, there would be a teacher at the front of the classroom; it would be small group work or whatever. We ask the college, from the four campuses; so it would be Amherst - there is a site in Amherst, the campus is actually in Springhill but they have a site in Amherst. They have a campus in Truro, a campus in Stellarton. They were willing, through a partnership with the school board, to continue to pay the rent on the space that they had been using to offer an off-site location in the Elmsdale area. So the learners actually had to move physical buildings, but they didn't have to go outside their region for programming.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So there is the risk that this could be happening in other school boards as we look at potentially further cuts to education. The Minister of Finance has indicated they're not going to be able to balance the books this year as promised, so it's clear that other austerity measures might come into place. Education has been a target for this government in terms of cutting. Are you hearing from other school boards' potential concern about funding cuts that will impact these programs in particular?

 

Also looking at other things that some school boards fund like transportation or child care - we've heard that these things could be on the chopping block as well. They're looking at an adult learning group of people, having child care and transportation so they can go to school in the morning is absolutely critical. How are we working around this and dealing with the inevitable financial pressures that are going to be placed on these school boards with these cuts coming down sooner rather than later?

 

MS. GATIEN: The conversations I've had - it's one of concern only at this point - is that they expect the conversation may be raised again this year. A number of school boards raised it last year and we were able to confirm what our funding would be, and then they were able to stay open. The same exists this year, they've explained to us that they are concerned. The people who have raised it, frankly, are the people who are administering the adult high school piece, for the most part. I've asked them to keep me posted, let me know and we'll sit down and we'll talk about funding possibilities. But we are ready, should we unfortunately have to put in our transition plan for the adult learners, they will remain out first priority, so how can we transition them so that they can continue in programming?

 

Because of the breadth of our programs, there will be programming for them, it just unfortunately may not be where they're studying presently, which as adults can be challenging for sure.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, thank you, Mr. Churchill, you had about 12 minutes there. We're going to go to Mr. Burrill.

 

MR. GARY BURRILL: I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about the Link program. I would say that the people I know who have been through the Link CCA program, this has been as life-transformational as any adult education experience I can think of, so I'd like to just understand it a bit better. Could you explain first actually how it works, how it's organized and funded? Is it through the School of Access in NSCC?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, so we would fund the School of Access to deliver the program. Because we own the Adult Learning Program curriculum, we are able to make modifications - of course, in partnership with the college. So what we've been able to do is to infuse health information and relevant educational resources and material as they go through the high school diploma, so they're almost doing like a dual accrediting at times towards their continuing care assistant program.

 

We do careful recruitment and even in the first iteration, I think it was we had 34 individuals enrolled in Link and 33 completed. The other one went into ALP because they realized this was not the career for them; that's still a success. We try to get them exposed as soon as possible to the field so that they understand what it looks like, so it's really completely intertwined. It's not that they do the high school diploma and then they do the continuing care assistant program - they're doing the programming at the same time, as well as getting work experience as they go through. It's over about a 22-month period. We bring employers in to talk to the students and of the graduates, they all got multiple work offers actually.

 

MR. BURRILL: It's funded through your department entirely?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes.

 

MR. BURRILL: As I thought about why it is that this works so wonderfully, part of the reason seems to me is that it's so focused. It's one thing to say I need to interrupt my life in order to get my high school - that's a bit of an abstraction. But then, I need to interrupt my life in order to get high school and a job at the new nursing home - that's not an abstraction, you can organize more resources for that.

 

Could you say a little bit about the scope of this program now, like where it's being offered? I think in the area I serve, it's every second year it takes in Truro. Where else is it?

 

MS. GATIEN: What we've been doing - the first year it ran in Middleton, Truro and Sydney. What we learned is that there's a bit of a glut in Sydney for continuing care assistants so we didn't run a second one. In terms of the year that we were offering it there, those individuals were able to get employment but we looked at the labour market information and realized okay, let's not do another cohort there.

 

The second year we ran it in Truro again, very successful. This year it's being offered in Bridgewater and in the Amherst area. It was solely based on where there was a need for continuing care assistants. Now we're being a little bit more, okay, where in the province do they actually have a need, and then we move to those regions to actually offer the program.

 

What we've learned through Link, aside from the benefits of having more continuing care assistants, is that attachment to an employment piece is hugely important. It's not that we didn't know that, but I don't think we were as deliberate about it. So we've really learned a lot through that process, that attracts a whole other group of adults to the program, as well, when they know this is concrete, this is what I can do. The sooner we can get them introduced to material that's relevant for that occupation as we do in Link, the better off they will be and the more engaged they are actually.

 

MR. BURRILL: About the scope of the program, is it true when you run them in Bridgewater, Amherst and Truro - it's a two-year program, right?

 

MS. GATIEN: About 22 months.

 

MR. BURRILL: Those are staggered entries, so they're not all first year all being offered in Bridgewater, Amherst and Truro? In other words, in any one year a person ought to be able to get in somewhere.

 

MS. GATIEN: Somewhere, yes, that has certainly been the process. Now we may not run Link CCA forever because it will depend on labour market need, but we're hoping to build other Link-like models, as I mentioned, based on where there is employment needed. I think the college still runs continuing care assistants, but not in this way.

 

MR. BURRILL: Right. In the years that they don't take in for the Link CCA they do the normal CCA, as I understand it?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, that's my understanding.

 

MR. BURRILL: But a person could get into Link CCA if they were willing to move?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes.

 

MR. BURRILL: When a non-professional educator sees this at first, I mean it works so well that you're inclined to say what a wonderful thing and what are the rest of your Link programs, then you find out actually this is only for this one thing. Can you say anything about where this model might be expanded?

 

MS. GATIEN: We're actually doing quite a bit of work right now. We've received some labour market information for particular regions. We're hoping to use it to inform all of our programming to be frank, are there other programs to prepare people that we could develop, but are there sectors where it would fit really nicely? The reality of Link is it almost needs, at this point anyway, a one-year post-secondary certificate program attached to it, or occupational training in some way. If it was a program that ran over two years and the person didn't have their high school diploma, that's a three-year commitment or more so it doesn't fit obviously with every set of occupations.

 

A couple that we've explored are the trades, of course, is there a trade that it would fit nicely with - office administration, because it's a fairly generic field. The reality of our adult population is they want to be educated in the area where they live, they don't often want to relocate and they want to be able work in that area so that's why we want to look at the information that says, okay, where are the jobs and are there other kinds of models that we can work with? We're hoping to offer a different Link as soon as the upcoming Fall, but we still have to pull apart what field that will be in.

 

MR. BURRILL: Thank you.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Orrell.

 

MR. EDDIE ORRELL: Thank you very much for your presentation. Mr. Churchill asked a few questions about actually how many schools in the last Education budget were cut and you said it was just the Chignecto areas, as in adult high schools or was it more than that?

 

MS. GATIEN: I can only speak to the adult high schools so it was only Chignecto school board that cut their adult high school. There were only six of the eight school boards so the Acadian school board and the Strait area school board have never had an adult high school. Chignecto cut theirs so there are still five remaining.

 

MR. ORRELL: Okay. Where did those students end up going when they couldn't go to the adult high school itself?

 

MS. GATIEN: They went to an NSCC campus or an off-site program delivered by the NSCC. In the case of the individuals that had been - so the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board had a site in Amherst, a site in Elmsdale, a site in Truro and a site in New Glasgow. The New Glasgow students went to Stellarton Campus; the Truro students went down the road a little bit to the Truro Campus; the Elmsdale students stayed exactly in the location that they were, because the school board offered to keep the building open for the year and keep the heat and lights on. In the Amherst location the NSCC already had an off-site location there so they took those learners in there.

 

What we did is we met with all of the affected learners, we had school board representatives that they were familiar with: their teachers, staff from my office, and the people that they would be engaging with at the college - the counsellor and the academic chairman in that area. We met with all of them to answer the questions, to explain the process, to tell them what it looks like, and they repeatedly check in with them to see how they're doing.

 

MR. ORRELL: So would they be students of the NSCC or students of the adult high school?

 

MS. GATIEN: They are students of the NSCC, but they will graduate with the same high school diploma for adults.

 

MR. ORRELL: To go to NSCC, it's a career college - it's privately funded, I guess. Who pays for these students to go to the NSCC part of the school?

 

MS. GATIEN: Our programs are all tuition-free. They have to pay books . . .

 

MR. ORRELL: So someone could go to that high school part of it free and the guy in the next class who is taking a trade or . . .

 

MS. GATIEN: Well, that's a post-secondary program. If they're in a School for Access they're working towards a secondary diploma, right?

 

MR. ORRELL: But there are teachers and so on and so forth?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes.

 

MR. ORRELL: They're funded by you guys or are they funded by NSCC?

 

MS. GATIEN: Well, it's a mix because the way that the funding envelope works, most of the funding to the college would come from our higher education colleagues, the transfer grant there, and then we provide the NSSAL grant for the Adult Learning Program piece of it, so it's a combination of funding.

 

MR. ORRELL: Would that be more or less expensive than having an actual school where they'd all get together?

 

MS. GATIEN: I think overall it's challenging to tease out exactly the school board funding, to be honest. It worked out to be exactly the same; it cost us no more. We transferred basically what we had funded the Chignecto-Central Regional School Board for the delivery of the Adult Learning Program is what it cost us, and actually maybe a little bit less for the delivery of the college because they already have the infrastructure, as well, at the college.

 

MR. ORRELL: I guess my biggest thing with that is I know if I was going back to school at 30 or 19 or older - to go into an area where we were all doing the same program compared to being in a community college where they're doing different areas, the stigma with that would probably be a barrier to learning, I would think. I'm not sure on that, but if it's costing the same amount of money, why close the schools and put them around in different areas, I guess is one of the biggest questions that would be a focus for me. If it's not costing any more money to deliver the services, we're not saving any money.

 

MS. GATIEN: It didn't cost us any more money, but it was a school board decision. I can't speak for the school board.

 

MR. ORRELL: So they must be saving money.

 

MS. GATIEN: I will just add, if I could - what we have found - because that is a concern that has been raised about the stigma of being in the college. What our learners have told us is that they actually like being at the college. Most of our learners actually go on to college programs. It has actually served them very well, but it is a concern that we continuously look at because, as you say, once they take that step, which takes a lot of courage to engage in learning, you don't want anything to discourage them.

 

MR. ORRELL: You said that 5,269 people since 2001 have gone on to get their high school diploma. Do we have an approximate number of how many of those people went on to a post-secondary, university or Nova Scotia Community College program compared to - percentage-wise - a regular high school diploma? I would think it would be a little higher because of the motivation aspect of it.

 

MS. GATIEN: We could tell you of the individuals who participate - I don't have the number with me today, but I could certainly get it - of those who participated at the college, how many went on to a college program. The school board, I'm pretty sure, does not track that number. Do you know, Michelle?

 

MS. MICHELLE THOMASON: We'll check.

 

MS. GATIEN: We can check with them, but it tends to be because once they graduate - our Graduate Follow-up Survey tells us how many reported they went on and pursued, but it wouldn't be a hard number. I can certainly get it for you.

 

MR. ORRELL: Is there any talk of doing an on-line or distance learning type of program with the adult high school? They were talking about doing some remote areas where there would be, say, an honours chemistry course that couldn't be taught in - well, I'll say North of Smokey for me - where there would be only one or two students who would want that. Is there talk of that happening with the Adult Learning Program or is it happening already?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, and actually North of Smokey is the community I always reference so I was very careful not to today because I'm sure Michelle is sick of hearing it, but I do think of the individuals in that area because GED is their only option right now. There is no campus and there is no adult high school. It is a big reason why we're looking at on-line options and are there programs within the Virtual High School that we could work and develop for adults, because they're not adult-appropriate at this point. But likely our conversations will happen mostly with the NSCC because it's our Adult Learning Program, they already have the infrastructure, they do distance delivery. Université Sainte-Anne already does a fantastic job of that and they do use it. So yes, we do plan to pursue that.

 

MR. ORRELL: If I may just one more. Your Link CCA program, I think it's a great idea; it's linking your people with a job when they finish. But they're going through basically free of cost, I would think, because they are an adult learner.

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes.

 

MR. ORRELL: The person who has a high school diploma that takes the CCA through a program has to pay for that, either with a student loan or out of their pocket. Would there be a possibility that someone who had the diploma could get into that program if the area was under-serviced and there was space?

 

MS. GATIEN: Not at this point. One of the big reasons the cost has been able to be affordable is because the health bursary from the Department of Health and Wellness has offset the tuition part, in the way that it does actually for a number of post-secondary students as well. At this point we have not looked at allowing people to participate in the program who already have a diploma.

 

MR. ORRELL: Or financially, for someone who couldn't financially afford to do it, student loan-wise or whatever.

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes. The post-secondary piece is largely paid for by that bursary, though.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morton.

 

MR. JIM MORTON: Thanks for the presentation and the discussion so far, it's very helpful.

 

I wanted to just comment on your evaluation plans, I guess. I was really pleased to see that you're thinking about looking at some of the intangibles. I've had the pleasure, really, of attending a few adult high school graduations and it always strikes me not only how apparent it is that the self-esteem of the graduates is affected, but also of all those other people in the room who come to participate in that kind of ceremony. It has a community effect, I think, and it would be good to take a closer look at that. I think we need in Nova Scotia more confidence in ourselves and this is one of the ways that that's building.

 

I also just wanted to ask you a little bit more about the Record of Achievement. It occurred to me recently that there is a similarity between maybe the Record of Achievement and a grant that the Kings volunteer centre has just received from the federal government, to develop what they're calling a volunteer passport. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

 

MS. GATIEN: No.

 

MR. MORTON: Their idea sounds quite similar. It would try to work out what kinds of credentials could be listed on kind of a volunteer passport that could be taken to employers or potential service providers to help them choose the volunteers they wanted to go on to select, so there might be some collaborative possibilities there.

 

MS. GATIEN: Absolutely.

 

MR. MORTON: I guess I'm interested in what your thinking is about working with employers into the future in terms of the Record of Achievement, as to how it might actually be something they could see as relevant to the recruitment process, I guess.

 

MS. GATIEN: What we've done to date is several presentations to employer groups, Greater Halifax Partnership as well. We've done focus groups with some particular employers who have, as I've said, expressed an interest, and we've already learned to keep it short. Not a surprise, but our first Record of Achievement was maybe a little bit long, first draft - what is it you're looking for; what kind of information would be helpful to you to know what a person knows and can do to engage in your employment or your industry? They've been very useful in terms of, I just want the high level - I want to know that they have strong communication skills and give me an example of what they know and can do in that area and, as I say, keep it brief.

 

We will continue to engage them. We're realistic - it's for entry-level positions; it's for people who don't have a high school diploma, so it will be industries. Some of the businesses have been Elmsdale Lumber; Pete Luckett, Pete's Frootique - not Pete himself but his hiring manager, of course. What would you look for in an individual who would come into this, and also work with the person to know how to talk about their skills and knowledge so that they know how to market themselves. That has been a big problem for adults. They, as you say - like volunteer experience, that's great, that should be on a Record of Achievement; their technical skills; their volunteer skills; as well as the other measures that we've assessed.

 

MR. MORTON: If I may, I was also interested in the family learning component and I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that. I was particularly interested because how families work has been something - I'm a social worker by trade - that has been particularly important to me over many years. Part of what I'm curious about is to what extent instructors in the adult school program have an understanding or training in family theory. Are there any kinds of things you could say about what's happening in that area?

 

MS. GATIEN: Sure. We regularly develop and deliver a practitioner development program. We also support practitioner development through Literacy Nova Scotia, which delivers more of a foundational piece. A number of our instructors have had some training in that area - not necessarily delivered through us, there are other agencies that do that. What we were finding is, as I'm sure anyone who had children knows, children go to school, there are interventions for them, and then they go home to parents who may not be able to support what they've just learned in school. Our focus is very much on building the skills of the parents in that family context.

 

We bring community organizations together to do that and talk about what families need to increase their skills. How do we get them engaged in learning in the family? It starts with Read to Me, reading to their children, their babies, there are Read To Me bags that new parents receive, there is great early learning programming and I think it's even getting better. There is school-age literacy, so how we can support the parents as part of that continuum has really been our focus more than working with the children.

 

MR. MORTON: What kind of community agencies would be involved in the collaborative process?

 

MS. GATIEN: Usually family resource centres, certainly our Community Learning organizations because they deliver the program. We even have a couple of programs I'm thinking of in the Valley where the Valley Community Learning organization goes into schools when the Primary children are there, before they go to school and they're getting kind of oriented. So they're there to work with the parents, and the children are participating in an early learning program. There have been a number of different ways that we do it.

 

Schools work beautifully in some communities and in other communities it's not an area where the program can be well supported, so we do it in another location. But it's any family-serving organization really partners with us.

 

MR. MORTON: May I ask one additional question? Just along that same line in terms of collaboration, I'm assuming that you would work collaboratively with the Department of Community Services. I'm also assuming that a great many potential students might be identified through the Community Services assessment process. Could you say something about how you are working with DCS and what the linkages are?

 

MS. GATIEN: Sure. We've had a long-standing partnership with DCS; they were at the table when NSSAL was created in 2001, helping us to develop it. They are a funding partner, we get a funding transfer every year from them, $600,000 to put toward NSSAL. The vast majority of our learners, as you said, are referred by Community Services and we meet. The director of Employment Support and I meet regularly, a couple of times a year for sure and often in between - you know, what are your clients needing; what are you seeing in terms of pockets in the area where maybe you have a larger number in this caseload, in this region; is there a program?

 

That's where the ALP-GAP program came from in Guysborough; it was actually a partnership with Community Services. There was a large population of people who had limited work experience and could benefit from such a program. We are regularly working with them and the referral process works back and forth. They will often let us know when they've referred a client and maybe it wasn't the right program for them, what suggestions we have maybe for a different referral, so it's a very strong relationship.

 

MR. MORTON: Thank you very much.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: We're going to go to Mr. Epstein, please.

 

MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: Thanks for the presentation, it has been very helpful. Can I ask a question about one of your slides? When you list the activities that are coordinated by you there's one item called GED Certificate and there's another item called Nova Scotia High School Graduation Diploma for Adults. I don't know the difference; could you tell me the difference between these two, because they sound very similar on the face of it to me?

 

MS. GATIEN: They do and a lot of people think they're the same thing. The GED certificate is an international high school equivalency testing service, there is not necessarily a program. A number of our GED test takers may never have taken a preparation program, may not have participated in the Adult Learning Program. They will prepare on their own, walk in and write the test - sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

 

Once they pass five tests - Science, Social Studies, Math, Language Arts Reading, and Language Arts Writing - once they pass all five of those tests they can get their GED certificate, which is signed by the Minister of Education, it always has been.

 

The high school diploma for adults is an actual - they take high school credits, so either Level IV of the Adult Learning Program at the NSCC or FGA at the Université Sainte-Anne, or they can take Grades 11 and 12 credits of the Public School Program at one of the adult high schools. I know that's confusing, it's kind of two program systems.

 

It's a 12-credit diploma and it is aligned with the 18-credit diploma that the Department of Education awards, the main difference being we only consider Grades 11 and 12 credits because Grade 10 is foundational. We've determined that Grade 10 is foundational for adults.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: Is there a practical difference for people who receive either of these; that is, would they look the same to employers?

 

MS. GATIEN: Not always. Usually the GED certificate has strong recognition in the employer community and many people with a GED certificate can certainly go on in post-secondary studies. The reality, though, is depending on what you want to do at a post-secondary level and what courses you took in your high school diploma, that diploma may serve you better in terms of preparing you for post-secondary studies. Some employers prefer the diploma but we haven't seen a huge distinction with employers.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: The other slide I was very interested in was the before and after slide. It's quite striking, especially the comparison between those who are employed in full-time work before and after, where the number jumps from 38 per cent to 53 per cent, these are very striking numbers. What I wondered was how long you have been gathering these statistics, how you gather them, whether you do any longitudinal studies about the outcomes. Can you talk a bit about the validation of these numbers?

 

MS. GATIEN: Sure. NSSAL was created in 2001 and this was our first graduate follow-up survey and our only graduate follow-up survey to date. We're in the planning stages now, accompanied with our evaluation of planning for the next one.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: So when was this done?

 

MS. GATIEN: This was done in 2007, so it would have encompassed the graduates from within a five- to six-year range - 2001 to 2006, I would say.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: I'm just making a note about that. What cohort did you survey? Did you survey everyone who had finished between 2001 and 2006, or whatever?

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, and 882 graduates agreed to participate in the survey. So at the point where we cut it off, there had been about 2,500 graduates. It was largely a phone survey. A number of questions were asked, there was a company hired to do it, to administer it for us.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: All right, that's very good; thank you, that's useful. I have another question, too, which is it's my understanding that either your agency directly, or relying on other sources of assistance inside the provincial government, actually tries to seek out under-represented or marginalized or disadvantaged groups to encourage them to become involved in your programs. Can you just tell me how that works?

 

MS. GATIEN: Sure. We will basically, quite frankly, talk to anyone who will talk to us about helping adult learners. That's the truth. We try to be a little bit more proactive in that, as well, though. We work with the organizations presently that are servicing those populations, to gather ideas in terms of programming ideas they might have that maybe they didn't come forward with, what they are seeing in terms of the learner population. We do learner focus groups, we also meet with other organizations that would represent or work with those communities.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: Let me ask you this, would you link, for example, with MISA?

 

MS. GATIEN: Absolutely, yes.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: So immigrants would be a target?

 

MS. GATIEN: Absolutely. We actually also are responsible in our division for international credential recognition initiatives, so we have an ongoing relationship with ISIS and they've been incredibly helpful. We work with - the department has four employability tables that are focused on different communities. I have done presentations with them and we would work with them regularly.

 

MR. EPSTEIN: Can you give other examples of communities that you've targeted or that you've formed . . .

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, the Mi'kmaq community. We actually go right into Mi'kmaq communities to talk with them about their learning needs and we used to at one point partner with a literacy organization to go in and deliver the program. By actually engaging in conversations with the Mi'kmaq community, we learned that didn't work for them. That's why they weren't engaging - it was better if it came from their own community in partnership with us. We've had real success in certain areas like Eskasoni, Chapel Island, Wagmatcook, Waycobah, so we're starting to look at what other communities on the mainland - there's one in Bear River now and Indian Brook - where else can we use that model?

 

As well, we've met with leaders in the African Nova Scotian community to find out, what are your needs there, what other programs - that's where the hook with employment has come across quite loudly to us; they really need a reason to come. They need to see that they're going to get a job out of it, so we're starting to look at what other opportunities are there.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Epstein. We'll go for our second round to Mr. Churchill.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: What is the overall budget that goes into NSSAL?

 

MS. GATIEN: Our budget in the past year is about $11.2 million; $2.75 million of that is Labour Market Agreement funding though, that's not provincial funding.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So that's coming from corporate partners?

 

MS. GATIEN: No, sorry. Labour Market Agreement is funding from HRSDC that we get specifically for this population really. It's for low-skilled adults who do not have an attachment to employment insurance. So about $8.4 million of our funding - we received an additional $1 million through the jobsHere allocations as well as the $2.75 million that we received through the Labour Market Agreement this year.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: That's funnelled through you folks and the Department of Education?

 

MS. GATIEN: That's our funding. I don't have the numbers for how much funding the Department of Education gives to school boards. It goes in one lump sum and then it's the decision of the school board how they allocate the funding. So I only know what our department . . .

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So the high school learning centres or the adult high schools receive funding from you folks and the department?

 

MS. GATIEN: Right.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: How aggressively do we market this program?

 

MS. GATIEN: I would say we market it as aggressively as within our means. We have done, as I said, television ads. We've done poster campaigns on buses, we've done ads in papers, and we've put ads in newsletters, community bulletins.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: What is the marketing budget? Do you know offhand?

 

MS. GATIEN: No, we don't really. To be honest, there is no set-aside marketing budget.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Have we noticed that there is an increase in demand for these services? The reason I ask is because looking at the job numbers that we're dealing with in the province, especially the recessed economic numbers in certain areas - especially along the South Shore, Cape Breton and other places - is there increased demand for these sorts of services? Are we having a lot of people coming back that are out of work saying, I need to upgrade my skills right now in order to make ends meet? Are we tracking that at all?

 

MS. GATIEN: They don't report to the learning organizations that they're coming back because they can't get employment. What we have been hearing - we don't have the numbers, it's all by word of mouth, to be honest, which is, again, the purpose of the evaluation. But what we've heard loud and clear from the learners that we have spoken to through focus groups and our partners is that they're starting to think about learning in a different way: I want to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that are out there and I need to get my education to do that.

 

I don't know whether that's because it's a younger population now and they have a different mindset or there's more optimism because of opportunities, or as you said, there are no job opportunities in their region, but more and more our numbers have grown in the last few years. In 2009-10, I think our learner enrolment was about 3,200 and we're at 4,400 now.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: So one would assume that there is increased demand for these services, probably primarily because the nature of jobs is different now as well.

 

MS. GATIEN: That's right. And I think people understand that this is something I'm going to have to keep doing. You don't finish school and then never look back.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: Lifelong learning.

 

MS. GATIEN: Yes, that's right.

 

MR. CHURCHILL: That's why it's of such a concern now that we're being put in a situation where because of government cuts we're having Adult Learning Programs potentially cut or we're being put in a situation, as we were in Chignecto, where you need to have a reactionary, ad hoc approach to deal with the crisis. I really think that we need to take a long-term look at this program and I think there should be enough money; I think the government should prioritize money for this program in Education. If we're going to deal with the reality where a government is in place that isn't going to prioritize these areas there needs to be a strategy in place to deal with this. I think having a reactive, ad hoc approach to this - which isn't any fault of your own, you're just dealing with what you can deal with - I think we're going to be leaving a lot of folks who require these services behind unless we do something differently.

 

If you look at what has happened in the Liverpool area, for example, we had a big company get $50 million to basically leave with and now we're put in a situation where we're at risk of losing adult high schools; it's a bit scary and nonsensical to me. All I can say is I think we need to be working closer with Cabinet, the government and other departments to put forward a strategy to deal with this situation. It's only going to get worse if these cuts keep happening to our Education Department.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Kent.

 

MS. KENT: You know it's interesting because I've heard a couple of comments that I just want to note. Mr. Orrell, our member for the Progressive Conservative Party, a committee member, it almost sounded like he was suggesting for a minute there that investing in adult learners in the way of no-cost programs and such by comparison to those who might be learning in their post-secondary education really, it sounded to me like maybe he was questioning that charge. I would argue that they're very different and I think you certainly described where it's two different layers of education and one certainly will lead to the other, we hope, for many Nova Scotians.

 

Also, my colleague for the Liberal caucus has suggested, as well, this potential for cuts to child care and such, there's no talk of that and frankly, it's fear-mongering. But that's a conversation for another day; I don't think it's anything we need to talk about here and you certainly don't have to respond to that. In fact, the whole notion that what you're doing is reactionary in crisis, it sounded to me like you have a good plan, you're strategically making decisions based on good partnerships, the opportunities available to us in the future, the development of feedback from those who are succeeding in this. I would encourage you to stay the course, I think you are on the right track and I certainly heard something very different than what my colleague did.

 

I think the comment, needing the money to do it, is an absolute reality. We, as a government, have to be fiscally responsible to all Nova Scotians, but all Nova Scotians deserve the right to have a bright future, the education for whatever reason that they may not have gotten when they were in the Public School Program, they have a right to that. On the notion of supports or even on the issue of supports such as child care for an adult learner, that's a very real concern and a real issue and we, as a government, have invested significantly in child care in Nova Scotia, quite frankly. Also, the costs associated to adult learning, I can't think of a better way to invest our Nova Scotia taxpaying dollars than to invest in people's futures at whatever age they might take advantage of those Nova Scotian taxpaying dollars.

 

As far as being fiscally responsible, we are also, as a government, at the whim of federal support and federal program changes. We have, for instance, the Labour Market Agreement cuts and changes, so at this stage I would ask if you could comment on the effects of that decision, that federal cut, how that has impacted any of the programs that we would pursue, and then also maybe relate the government investment of $1.2 million in Labour and Advanced Education and if that is filling a gap of a federal cut that we are then, as a Nova Scotia Government, really bringing up the slack, but not in an ad hoc, crisis way - in a very strategic, careful, considerate way, based on the successes that we are showing here in Nova Scotia.

 

MS. GATIEN: To answer the question about the Labour Market Agreement, we have not experienced an impact at this point to any reductions to the Labour Market Agreement. That agreement - this version of it anyway - will end in March 2014. If it gets cut and $2.75 million is removed from our funding pot, it will have a significant impact - there is no question. Our program has been able to change and grow better supports, to Community Learning in particular, and has made a significant change to programming. I think that, coupled with the extra $1 million - we received $1 million through jobsHere for the Nova Scotia School for Adult Learning. In addition we received $1.2 million specifically just for RPL initiatives.

 

The $1 million has made a huge impact. It allowed us to offer additional Link projects. It also offered our ability to increase programming for adults at different hours, to start to experiment with evening hours and summer offerings. When you only run programs from October to May, it's pretty difficult for individuals to make much of a progress so we've been able to expand the programming, coupled with the Labour Market Agreement funding.

 

In terms of the $1.2 million that we received for RPL initiatives, we've created the Record of Achievement. We're also beginning some work around creating standards for particular occupations. Not surprisingly, we're starting with adult literacy practitioners, but also career development coordinators. We're going to approach sector councils at our employer groups to say, what are some occupations that you have where this sort of competency assessment process would work?

 

We were also able to work with the Public Service Commission. They've done some competency development work, as well, for some excluded positions. It has really allowed our program to go to the next level, to be able to better serve the adults that are coming forward and to recruit new adults into our programs that really, quite frankly, two or three years to work on their high school diploma was just too long a period of time for them. They needed work - so how can we help them to get it?

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Mr. Orrell - just to check on time here, we do have some committee business as well.

 

MR. ORRELL: I just want to clarify the comments around the costs about the Link - I had a student who was accepted into a program, couldn't get the funding to go in the program. That was my question around could they piggyback on the program where you guys are paying through an adult school, but they had a high school diploma and couldn't get the funding to go to the school that they had been approved in. The question I asked was not around using the program; it was could they piggyback if the program wasn't full or if you didn't have - which you answered quite nicely, thank you. I appreciate that. It was misunderstood by the other side.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Did you have any closing comments that you wanted to say?

 

MS. GATIEN: No, I really just want to thank you for your time. I wasn't underestimating our appreciation really. It is, to answer your question earlier, too, around marketing - it is difficult to get people to even be engaged and to ask questions. So we just appreciate your time and hopefully if you do ever have someone who knocks on your door, please have them call us. There are wonderful programs that are happening across the province and we would love to be able to support them as they engage in learning.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time, as well, for being here. We only have a couple of appointments so we'll just do these quickly. We won't have to adjourn. Let's just do these and then we'll adjourn the meeting.

 

We're moving now to the appointments to agencies, boards and commissions. We'll begin with the Department of Finance, Nova Scotia Credit Union Deposit Insurance Corporation. Mr. Morton.

 

MR. MORTON: Mr. Chairman, I move that William (Bill) Legge and Lantz Siteman be appointed as board members to the Nova Scotia Credit Union Deposit Insurance Corporation.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

 

The motion is carried.

 

The Department of Health and Wellness - Mr. Burrill.

 

MR. BURRILL: Mr. Chairman, I move that Paul V. Beesley be appointed as a board member to the Pictou County Health Authority.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any discussion? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

 

The motion is carried.

 

Thank you very much, everyone. Our next meeting is on February 26^th. We will have the Nova Scotia Community College talking about the Ships Start Here readiness.

 

Thank you, the meeting is adjourned.

 

[The committee adjourned at 10:31 a.m.]