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CIDER Recording – State of the Nation 2013: K-12 online learning in Canada

April 2, 2014
State of the Nation 2013: K-12 online learning in Canada
Michael Barbour, Isabelle Farrington College of Education, Sacred Heart University, ConnecticutThis presentation will highlight the details of the sixth annual State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada report. Some of these highlights include:

  • during the 2011-12 school year there were an estimated 284,963 or 5.2% K-12 students enrolled in one or more distance education courses (an increase of approximately 40,000 students)
  • British Columbia and Alberta continue to lead the country, both in terms of the raw number and proportion of students participating in K-12 distance education
  • there were few changes during the 2011-12 school year to the regulation of K-12 distance education in Canada
  • common forms of regulation continue to be language in the Education Act or Schools Act, policy documents and contracts issued by the Ministry of Education and articles included in the collective bargaining agreement between the government and teachers’ union
  • British Columbia continues to have the most structured regulatory regime, while Quebec and Saskatchewan continue to have no regulation at all for K-12 distance education

A new feature in the sixth edition of the study was a focus on K-12 distance education programmes that fall under federal jurisdiction are accurately represented. All First Nations, Metis and Inuit (FNMI) education falls under the jurisdiction of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC). During the 2011-12 school year, there were five FNMI K-12 distance education programmes that operate under agreements signed between the education authorities that manage these programmes and AANDC, as well as provincial Ministries of Education in some instances.

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