As
higher education in New Brunswick is summarized on a separate page, the text below relates primarily to primary and secondary education. From the year of the scission of the province from
Nova Scotia, 1784, until 1802 there was no law in New Brunswick about government-funded education. In 1802, an Act to enable Parish Schools to be funded publicly was passed by the Assembly. Later on, in 1805 and again in 1816 Grammar Schools were enabled; it seems that the Grammar School (and its attached funding) was available only to county shire towns. The Parish Schools, which were permitted only elementary education, were initially controlled by the Justices of the Peace; later they fell under Parish School trustees. By contrast, the Grammar Schools by fiat from the first had instituted boards of governors and were responsible for both elementary and secondary education. Grammar Schools were to teach English Grammar, Latin, Greek, Orthography, Geography, and Mathematics. The 1816 Act granted each Board £100, provided that the local contribution was at least £50. Neither Parish nor Grammar schools were free at this time, however regulations mandated that a small number of students (usually four or five) were to be admitted free of charge. The first schools in the province were often only one-room schoolhouses. After 1833, school boards were required to divide their territory into districts, and £20 per district school was granted by the province if the work were considered satisfactory. The local voters were taxed to fund the other £20 of district expenditure. in 1910. The churches were of course free to operate schools without interference from the government. This occurred in a great number of places; the Catholic church in particular constructed prominent and grandiose buildings, such as the Convent at St.-Louis-de-Kent depicted at right. The Catholic church, not being restricted by mundane things like taxes and electors, could afford to establish residential schools wherever it seemed propitious. along the lines drawn by
Andrew Bell. The Anglican system was useful, notes a biographer of Bell, "when funds were sparse and teachers in very short supply." Prior to the establishment in 1848 of the Teacher Training School, the appointment (in rural areas at least) of a new master to a position of provincially governed responsibility included the certification of (as the case was) the local magistrate and/or board of trustees that the candidate was known to them to be of good character and repute, and that he could carry out his duties in a proper fashion. Two property owners in the neighbourhood seem also to have served as witnesses, upon which the Lieutenant-Governor appointed the candidate. The budget seems to have been paid in arrears at mid-year or at year-end on a satisfactory report of progress from the supervisors. In 1847, the syllabus at one Grammar School was: Science, History, Geography, Arithmetic, Bookkeeping, Grammar, and Latin. The first Teacher Training School in the province was not established until 1848. A Superior School teacher earned in 1858 roughly £125 a year. Superior Schools, one per Parish, were established in that year apparently so that residents would engage competent teachers. The Superior School teacher designation was obtained from the Teacher Training School. Principals of such schools were required to have an additional qualification for Latin and for Mathematics. Superintendent Bennet was pleased to note that parallel rows of hardwood-topped desks facing the teacher's rostrum and blackboard had replaced the old system of pine desks with backless benches arranged around the periphery of the schoolroom. Bennet made his case for larger schools, in which graded levels would be the norm, whereby a greater number of teachers could further specialise their lessons. A new set of regulations was instituted in 1863. These included that 1) the Master of a County Grammar School be degreed or have a certificate of qualification issued by the provincial Board of Education; 2) the school have no less than 150 cubic feet of air per pupil; 3) the school have "all necessary appurtenances"; 4) the school required at least 15 pupils aged 10 years or more; 5) at least five of whom were to study Latin, Greek and Mathematics, and ten of whom were to study English Composition and History. The Free Schools Act of 1871 added to the taxpayer's burden the cost of the education system. the place of religion in the school system was a topic of debate as early as 1863, and this Act was its ostensible solution: schools became non-sectarian. Opposition was directed at Sections 14 through 18, which concerned the levy of taxes on all private property throughout each (newly ordained) district, and Section 60, in which a non-sectarian system was specified. The grammar schools were allowed until 1884 to operate independently. By 1876, a high school principal earned a yearly stipend of $500.00. In 1893,
New Brunswick Supreme Court Justice
John James Fraser was commissioned by
Lieutenant-Governor Samuel Leonard Tilley to investigate complaints related to the "School Law or Regulations" in
Gloucester County. Some Protestant ratepayers were very concerned that the Catholic administrators of the Bathurst Grammar School had infringed them, especially the non-denominational nature of the School Law. One item of complaint was that the catechism was taught using school facilities during lunch hour; another, that the application of a Protestant teacher had been discarded without good reason by the administration; and several others. The Commissioner found, after a very full investigation, that no blame could be attached to the Board of Education. Since the Compulsory Attendance Act of 1940, children have been required to attend classes; parents otherwise faced fines. In contrast, the US state of
Mississippi in 1918 was the last state to enact a compulsory attendance law. School buses were not seen in great numbers until the early 1960s. was passed in 1981 by the government of Premier
Richard Hatfield. It provided independent
school boards for both linguistic groups. Its principles were later expanded and incorporated into the
Constitution of Canada, through the insertion of section 16.1 in 1993 under the government of
Frank McKenna: Until 28 December 1997, New Brunswick had under the
Schools Act, publicly funded school boards which were led by elected representatives and which had been administered at arm's length from the provincial Department of Education. On that date the
Education Act was written in the
53rd New Brunswick Legislature to replace the
Schools Act. As of September 2012, the Government of New Brunswick decided to merge and rename all the school districts changing the number of districts from fourteen to seven. By doing this,
Jody Carr, then the province's minister of education, estimated that $5 million per year would be saved in administrative costs. At the time, New Brunswick had a total of 321 schools, which were filled on average to less than 60 per cent of capacity. In 2013, the
Council of Ministers of Education, Canada sponsored a test called the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program, which was administered to a sample of more than 32,000 Grade 8 students from across the country. "Level 2 was designated as the acceptable level of performance for Grade 8/Secondary II students." The lowest proportion, 87%, of students meeting "level 2" in the science test was found in New Brunswick Students were asked, for example, "to classify substances according to their physical properties, and to describe how the movement and tilt of the Earth affects cycles such as years, days and seasons". New Brunswick lengthened its school day by 30 minutes early in the oughties in hopes of improving its academic performance, and in recent years some school districts ended "potato break", a two-week break that allowed students to work during the fall potato harvest. As a result, the province now has the longest school year in the country, at more than 1,000 hours for high school students, according to
Statistics Canada. Yet its students scored below average among Canadian provinces on 2014 international math tests. New Brunswick ranked 22nd among the 26 comparator jurisdictions in the 2014
Conference Board of Canada How Canada Performs study. Overall, it rated a "D", while both student and adult math, literacy and science skills rated very poorly. School buses have become an issue of contention since at least the year 2000. In that year, the
Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decided in
Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island that the by-population French-speaking minority of Summerside PEI could exercise their Section 23 Charter right to native-language local education. The analysis of this decision by Ministry staff posits that separate-by-language buses must be operated along with separate-by-language schools, and such has been applied. In the 2014-15 school year, New Brunswick budgeted to spend $64.8-million in order to bus 90,000 students; or in other words, $720 for each student. The
Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick's only Acadian MLA in March 2015 threatened to split from the party if discussion were re-opened on school bus re-unification. However, the SCC decision at paragraph 61 states that "The Appeal Division erred in... concluding that buses could be considered educational facilities." The 2016 results were released in October 2016. On 17 November 2016, the Gallant government backpedalled and withdrew its reference case on the constitutionality of bilingual school buses, and said it would leave the issue in the hands of
District Education Councils (DECs, see below). A new policy to be implemented by the province would state that the DECs' remit would include the ability to decide whether they 1) operated their own transportation services; 2) shared costs of this service between Francophone and Anglophone districts; 3) engaged the private sector for these services. On 22 November, the CBC NB Morning TV show hosted a number of students who complained that the policy on "inclusive classrooms" wasn't working and was hurtful to their lives and future well-being.
Policy 713 Policy 713, an
educational policy which ensured a safe and welcome public school environment for
LGBTQIA2S+ youth in the province, became effective in August 2020. In May 2023, the
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development put the policy under review due to "concerns and misunderstandings of its implementation." As a result of a small protest being held due to a
sexual orientation and
gender identity learning session for teachers,
Bill Hogan, the department minister, denied department involvement in the session and redirected questioners to contact the
New Brunswick Teachers' Association. ==See also==