Manitoba’s Minister of Education has announced that the much-anticipated K-12 education review will be released in full detail this coming Monday.

During a press conference today, Cliff Cullen reinforced his faith in the review and also emphasized a point that has long been feared; education administration costs are running too high in the province and that needs to change

“We’ve done an analysis specifically across western Canada and, just to cite one example, the administration costs on our budget were 48 per cent higher in Manitoba than they are in Ontario.”
Cullen notes that comparison is not based on per capita statistics either; Manitoba is actually spending 48 per cent more money on administration than Ontario is. Shocking data like that, he says, only highlights the need for a reset.

“Clearly we would like to take some of the money we are spending on the administrative side and get that to the front line where we think the students need it best.”

A lot has happened in the past year and some worry the review, which was completed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, may now be obsolete. Responding to those concerns, Cullen says the health crisis actually reinforced the study’s findings.

“A couple of things that we did learn from Covid is that the system is quite resilient, it is able to adapt to change which I think is quite positive,” he describes. “But on the other side, we realized we had thirty different entities out doing their own thing and it was difficult to manage that from a government perspective.”

With roughly three dozen different local school boards in Manitoba responding in slightly different ways to COVID-19, Cullen says the system’s inefficiencies were made obvious.

Ongoing speculation around the review suggests some school boards will be dissolved and some divisions will be amalgamated; Cullen says both matters will be clarified early next week.