The Alberta Teachers’ Association

It Counts

How education is financed in Alberta

One might believe that how education is financed is irrelevant. In fact, it is very important in addressing equity, adequacy and allocation. When I joined the Alberta Teachers’ Association Teacher Welfare staff in 1972, education finance, the subject of much of my recent university study, was a hot topic. Education funding was derived from provincial and local sources: the general revenue of the province and the residential and commercial property tax base of school boards.

The big questions of the day involved revenue and expenditure at both those levels and the appropriate proportions of the totals that should be borne by each. The Association was an active participant in this dialogue, having adopted comprehensive policy and made submissions to government on how best to finance education.

Because school boards controlled local revenue and the traditional collective bargaining process shaped the single largest education expenditure—teacher salaries—the ATA required as much information as possible about the sources and uses of education funds. Local committees took on this task so that comparisons could be made about education funding across the province.

At the national level, the Canadian Teachers’ Federation provided provincial comparison data, calculated measures of ability and effort to finance education and sponsored conferences on education finance. Academic interest in this topic provided study opportunities throughout Canada and generated research on a wide variety of topics in both education finance and the economics of education.

By the latter half of the 1960s, a shift in the dynamic of resource acquisition was already underway in financing education. In both New Brunswick and Quebec, for instance, several school jurisdictions found themselves in near bankruptcy situations, compelling provincial intervention and the emergence of a provincial bargaining regime to replace the local negotiation of compensation and other conditions of employment.

This development was to play out throughout Canada over the ensuing decades, both formally and informally, centralizing the resource acquisition question at the provincial level. The growing disparity between relatively well-off school jurisdictions and their poorer counterparts also emerged as a political issue, prompting provincial governments to stabilize the situation through the takeover and redistribution of property tax revenues either in whole or in part.

Alberta joined this company in the 1990s, when it instituted a number of education reforms, including the restructuring of most rural school boards. Naturally, what some called a “tax grab,” others saw as equalization and fairness. In any event, the concentration of resource acquisition at the provincial level was undeniable. Judicial decisions, particularly in the area of “special needs,” also compelled provincial governments and school boards to discharge their responsibilities to a wide variety of children whose interests had been overlooked. Cost differentials, which school boards were hard-pressed to fund, inevitably led to provincial special grants programs and a further centralization of control over education funding.

And then there was health, the single largest and growing expenditure of provincial budgets, easily eclipsing education, which held that position in the 1970s when the baby boomers were still in school. Its size alone politicized most debates over resources because everything competed with it. There was, and remains, no more perilous challenge for a provincial government than to show itself incapable of managing this responsibility. Unfortunately, for education, the competition for provincial revenue with this behemoth frequently pits the young against the old despite assurances to the contrary. Health remains a magnet, drawing every interest into a central debate about resources.

In this highly competitive atmosphere, it is essential that all organizations involved with education maintain the highest public profile. The value of public education requires continuous explanation because the goodwill of the public and government cannot be relied upon to assure that the resources required to achieve our educational goals are sufficient. The decision about education funding, like other public services, is always subject to the pressures of the day. It is always best that the teacher voice be heard when that moment arrives. And how education is financed does count in decisions about how education is ultimately delivered.

Dr. Charles Hyman joined the Association’s executive staff in 1972 and served as a Teacher Welfare staff officer, co-ordinator of Teacher Welfare, associate executive secretary and from 1999 to 2002 as executive secretary. For more than four decades, he has been one of Canada’s leading experts in education finance.