“We are losing about 50% of the people who take the test,” says Jeff MacLean, Michelin Canada’s manager of employee relations and recruitment.

 

He says that while most of the people who take the test have graduated from Canadian high schools, barely half of them have the basic literacy and numeric skills needed to work in a modern factory. What’s worse, he says the “base skills” are those that are theoretically being taught at the junior high level.

 

It’s a concrete illustration of what many business leaders have been sensing for years: that Atlantic Canada’s education system is not providing the skills that employees need for the modern workplace. “There’s either a crisis or an impending crisis,” says Nova Scotia business veteran Allan Shaw. “We’re close to a serious problem.” 

 

Shaw is the recently retired CEO of the Shaw Group, the Nova Scotia building and real estate conglomerate. He’s enthusiastic and passionate about education: For 16 years he served on Dalhousie University’s board of governors, and he is currently executive in residence at the university’s School of Management. More recently, he was named chair of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce’s task force on education. 

 

Shaw believes it’s becoming clear that unless our recent graduates are better educated, it’s going to become increasingly difficult for Atlantic Canadian employers to find qualified workers. Couple that with a demographics problem—an aging population—and the fact that the brightest minds often flee the Atlantic region in search of more opportunity, and it’s evident that the business sector has a problem. “There’s an impending shortage of employees,” says Shaw. “Maybe there’s even one now.”

 

Pollster Don Mills agrees. As president and CEO of Halifax–based Corporate Research Associates Inc., he has made it his business to know what’s on the mind of Atlantic Canadians. He insists that education always emerges as one of the most important issues. “What we’re hearing anecdotally,” he says, “is that the quality of public education is not rated very high throughout Atlantic Canada.” According to Mills, the highest level of satisfaction is in Prince Edward Island, where 64% of residents rate the quality of education as excellent or good. In Nova Scotia that number drops to 48%, and it’s dropping more and more each year. The unfortunate result? It all has a bearing on business.

 

“I think students coming out of school are not as well prepared as they used to be, especially in terms of communication and language skills,” says Mills, who feels that even today’s university graduates aren’t up to standard. “From an employer’s point of view, we see it all the time—they aren’t as good as they need to be, and they still come out the other end lacking the necessary communication skills.” Mills’s company has had to implement an in-house writing-mentorship program to get literacy levels up to an acceptable standard, even among employees with MBAs.

 

The solution may be found in implementing a consistent school curriculum across the Atlantic region and measuring results with standardized testing, which Mills’s research indicates most people support. “Parents want to know where their child stands,” he says. “They want to know if they need help, if they’re keeping up, if they’re making progress.” But, more importantly, standardized testing allows for comparisons between schools. Adds Mills: “It’s the only way you’re going to find out if some schools are below and some schools are exceeding the standard.”

 

Shaw agrees that testing is a basic business principle—“If you don’t measure something, you’re indicating that it’s not important”—but standardized testing is easier said than done. For years teachers and their unions have been arguing against them. Why? Because they believe the results will be used to compare teachers and schools. Some also think the tests examine for skills and knowledge that often aren’t included in the curriculum.

 

So to truly reform the education system, some middle ground will have to be found. That groundwork is being laid in Prince Edward Island. “Tests can give us a sense of where our teachers need professional development,” says Sandy MacDonald, the superintendent of education for the island’s Eastern School District. “They give us a sense of where to spend money.”

 

To make testing more palatable to teachers, MacDonald has struck upon a deceptively simple compromise: he has asked his own teachers to devise tests that would relate directly to what the students are being taught in class. The results of the new tests, which teachers, parents, and students have received favourably, are being used to improve the effectiveness of the board’s professional development, which will in turn benefit teaching. 

 

Eastern P.E.I.’s approach to testing will improve the overall quality of education, a move that directly supports what the business community is seeking. “We should know,” says MacDonald, “if we’re spending our education dollars effectively.” Still, Mills isn’t totally satisfied. He feels that it’s up to the business community to start asking questions about why the public education system isn’t working, “because right now, nobody is asking those questions. There’s a dialogue that needs to be created around this issue. We need business leaders to start saying things out loud.”

 

When it comes to business and literacy, for example, there isn’t going to be a single solution. However, education experts agree that the secret to building a strong, confident, and well-educated workforce is to start early. “We’re learning that the primary years are crucial,” says Shaw. “If there are going to be failures later on, it’s because it starts early.” And though he agrees there is a problem with the current public system, he says it’s far too simple to suggest that education should be left solely to the school board. “Employers have a responsibility and are going to have to make more—and earlier—efforts to keep educating employees.”

 

For Shaw, the experience has a personal basis. Twenty years ago he implemented an employee-education program in his factories, with the goal of bringing his workers—many of whom had little more than a Grade 8 education—up to a Grade 12 standard. Though he faced initial opposition, the program, which provided much support and allowed employees to take classes on the premises, graduated a few hundred people, most of whom remained loyal—and grateful—to the company. “The biggest thing it did was give people confidence,” says Shaw. “For the first time, many of them could help their kids with their homework.”

 

Both Mills and Shaw agree that the public school system is the place to start building a strong future workforce, and that business leaders have a role to play now. “If you demand the right things, like a standard of education that’s consistent across the school boards, testing and evaluation of students, performance management for teachers, and management skills for the schools themselves,” says Mills, “then issues of low literacy will disappear, because kids will be coming out with the right skills.”