Since the Campbell government came to power, BC has 11,000 fewer K-12 students, 3,000 fewer teachers and 91 fewer schools. If you listen to the Minister of Education, Christy Clark, doing the talk shows during the first week back to school, you might hear her say that funding is increasing in spite of decreasing enrollment. That is what economists call "money illusion". If prices increase but budgets increase by less, then there are fewer real resources even though there is more "nominal money". In the case of education, enrollment has gone down by 2% since the Campbell government came to power, but the number of teachers has been cut by 10% (those numbers come from the Ministry of Education website at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/k12datareports/course_reports.htm).

It sounds like a lot when Christy Clark says there are 11,000 fewer students, but according to the Ministry's figures for public schools, there were 589,913 full time equivalent students on September 30th for school year 2000-01, and 580,406 full time equivalent students on September 30th of school year 2002-03 - a drop of 1.6%. Relative to those big numbers, Clark's talk about fewer students is put into its proper small scale. The Ministry's figures also show that the number of full time equivalent teachers dropped from 36,113 in 2000 to 33,900 in 2002 - a drop of 6.1%. The precise numbers aren't out yet for 2003, but media reports say that there are another 1,000 fewer teachers and 2,000 fewer students - that means much larger class sizes, 2% fewer students and 10% fewer teachers in Campbell's New Era.

It must be irritating for teachers who worked hard to earn a teaching certificate to listen to Minister Clark who, according to the published resumes, didn't complete any university degree. According to the BC Progress Board's indicator number 11 (http://www.bcprogressboard.com/about.html), in 1992 only 15.2% of BC's population had completed a university education, while in 2001 that had risen to 20.1%. A university degree doesn't necessarily make a person any smarter, but it has been noticed by many political observers that some cabinet ministers suffer from a disease sometimes called "ministeritus" - that means that one thinks that being appointed as a government minister automatically makes one more knowledgeable than everyone else. Others will have to determine whether Christy Clark suffers from that affliction. Meanwhile, those who are concerned about education should focus on hard data rather than on ministerial opinions and trial balloons.