The Education Indicators for the Nova Scotia Genuine Progress Index

"I can protect myself from my enemies; may God protect me from my friends."

Education is a complicated undertaking and there is nothing simple about assessing it well.

The recent release of the GPI Atlantic report, which asked "How Educated are Nova Scotians?" reminded me of my favourite quotation from communications guru Marshall McLuhan. "School is the advertising agency," McLuhan wrote, "which makes you believe you need the society as it is."

One of the greatest intellectual skills is the ability to ask good questions, which is a prerequisite for discovering good answers. Nobody asks better questions than GPI Atlantic.

In Nova Scotia as in Canada, there's never been more, nor more expensive, education. And yet, there's no indication that levels of knowledge are increasing. In fact, "basic literacy is stagnant and there is evidence of low knowledge levels in areas like politics, health and the environment."
The quotation is from a big report, three years in the making, by GPI Atlantic, that was released this week but didn't get much ink or air time - perhaps a function of the complexity of the issue, and our confusion about it.

"Supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."

University students from less affluent backgrounds are burdened with a disproportionate amount of student debt, a new report says.

"We wanted to find out . . . do people know what they need to know to live a decent life, to improve their well-being, to live sustainably?" Ron Colman, executive director of GPI Atlantic, said Tuesday at a news conference at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Authors: Linda Pannozzo, Karen Hayward and Ronald Colman

Assisted by: Vanessa Hayward

"Education Indicators for the Nova Scotia Genuine Progress Index: How Educated Are Nova Scotians?" explores what is meant by an educated populace, how that can be measured, and whether Canadians have the knowledge required to create a healthy, wise, and sustainable society. Ideally, evidence of positive learning outcomes should be seen in desirable societal outcomes such as good health, equity, environmental stewardship, cultural diversity, and social wellbeing.

Specifically, this new GPIAtlantic report includes important information and trends in basic literacy, civic literacy, and ecological literacy, access to education (including student debt and tuition), the independence of university research, and financing of public education. The report also examines the inadequacy of conventional education indicators like graduation and drop-out rates, and the need for new indicators of educational attainment that assess how educated and knowledgeable the populace actually is. A comprehensive list of potential education indicators has been developed to provide examples of the types of indicators that can be used to create a broader and more meaningful assessment of knowledge and learning outcomes in the populace than is presently possible, along with descriptions of some of the best measurement tools currently available in these areas.