As soon as the curriculum draft was released, there were a lot of problems pointed out by members of the public, as well as school divisions and teachers. These issues were not limited to one or two subject areas but were identified across the board from music to history, from math to languages, and within science. The vast majority of school divisions rejected the opportunity to trial the new curriculum and I would have done the same. I therefore support the current Board’s decision to not pilot the draft curriculum.

Over the last decade in Alberta, K-12 curriculum has become highly politicized, and we really need to get the curriculum out of the election cycle and back into the hands of key stakeholders. There are many simple elements of the past few iterations of the curriculum that should be updated that have stalled as political casualties.  

On the whole changes to the curriculum need to be more informed by education experts and other stakeholders, with an iterative and meaningful public consultation process before being run in smaller trials, finalized, and broadly adopted.

I was part of the public consultation of the last draft curriculum. It too had shortfalls like removing the space unit from elementary school but it had meaningful consultation and I was hopeful that these shortfalls would be improved on.