Paid Skills Development Leave

Life-long learning is not a luxury but an economic necessity. As such, it should be encouraged and financed by all parties that can benefit from it: employers, workers and government. Given the rapid production of information in present day society and the functional relationship between information processing and productivity, it is essential that measures be put into place for workers to update their skills and knowledge. Adult women especially need paid skills development leave in order to upgrade their education in technical areas, such as mathematics, physics, computer programming, to mention but a few. This work-related learning that is essential for maintenance and enhancement of economic productivity must be available to all workers and should be financed by all beneficiaries of such productivity, employers, workers and government.

Education and Equality of Opportunity

Essential to women's struggle for self-reliance is a change in the basic attitudes toward women in society, attitudes in which women are regarded as subordinate to men, not capable of technical or scientific competence, weak, (and so on). A major role of our education system, apart from providing members of society with work related skills, is to provide them with the attitudes and values that are supportive of the fundamental ideals of our society, and compatible with equitable participation in the economy. Equality of opportunity is a fundamental ideal of Canadian society, an ideal that should be reflected in the content, form and process of the curriculum, the structure of the school and indeed, all educational institutions.

On a more basic level, equality of opportunity for women in the field of education means equal access to all parts of the curriculum, especially the science and technical training components of the latter. It also means equal access to all job opportunities in the education system, particularly those in decision-making areas.

The education system, however, is but one of many systems in society. Equality of opportunity in this system does not necessarily guarantee the same in other systems, especially in the economic system where equality of opportunity for women will increase the labor costs of businesses. It, therefore, becomes necessary to develop and implement measures to ensure equality of opportunity for women in all systems of society. Legislated equal opportunity and affirmative action programs in both the public and private spheres are some of these measures.

National Goals and Standards for Education

CCLOW agrees with the Commission that education should be the responsibility of provincial governments to implement. We believe though, that a serious need has emerged for the development of National Goals and Standards for the education of Canadians. The development of national goals and standards could then facilitate the solution of some of the critical educational and economic problems facing this country. Among these problems are a huge functionally illiterate population - 23.7 percent of the out-of-school population; and the large scale mismatch of skills now needed in the labor force and the present education and skills of workers. The present 'band-aid' approach to, and jurisdictional wrangling over the responsibility for, solutions to these problems, is dysfunctional. The establishment of national goals and standards with active citizen participation in their development, would provide a framework within which these and other problems could be addressed.

Of particular concern to CCLOW and many other organizations, is that National Standards for Access to Education be a component of national goals and standards. Standards for access would include the right to enter and utilize the education system; would ensure that the education system be organized in such a way that it would have a quality of being easy to approach or enter; and that the means of entering would be easily available. Equality of opportunity in education and training must be a primary goal of education in Canada.