For years, we've been seeing a lot of things get bigger, in the hopes that they would also get better. Local hospital boards became health districts, then the districts became regions. Local school divisions that encompassed a few communities were amalgamated into divisions that encompass large parts of the province. Small schools have been shut down and their students bussed to larger schools.
Has this really worked? Are things better now? Or just different?
Last week, a report was released by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) that shows the best high school in the province is actually Englefeld School.
A school with an enrolment of 98, from Kindergarten to Grade 12 offers the best high school education in Saskatchewan?
Really?
Really, AIMS says.
What makes this ranking even more significant is that just over a decade ago, the local rural school division decided to close Englefeld School. But the people of Englefeld revolted. They fought, they plotted, they refused to give up, and eventually, they started their own school, in their own, separate, Protestant school division - the only one of its kind in the province.
Pretty ingenious, I say. They successfully worked around the system, and now are running one of the best schools in Saskatchewan.
This shows that smaller can be better than bigger.
In the case of schools, I think that holds true often, unless the school's population gets too small.
Small, rural schools have a definite advantage over huge urban ones in many ways. Sure, you may not have all the course offerings of a school with 1,700 students in Saskatoon. Maybe you won't get to take a psychology class, or law, or Native studies. But you can bet that when you're one of five students in the calculus class and you're having trouble, your teacher is going to notice. And they're going to care.
Someone instructing over a hundred students just can't have that emotional attachment to each and every one. Those that try tend to burn out.
Meanwhile, I know of teachers in schools in this area who have taught - and remember teaching - multiple generations of local families. You can't tell me that doesn't translate itself into the classroom, that it doesn't tie school and family and community all together to create a more positive learning environment.
Perhaps that's what AIMS found in their study of Saskatchewan schools, for many small, rural schools ranked higher than large urban ones.
Sometimes, all being bigger does is make everything more clumsy. It puts distance between these huge entities and the communities they serve, which isn't good.
Because once you get away from the grassroots, once you have to go up so high to see all you survey, you can't hear any whispers on the ground until they become shouts. And when the shouting starts, things can actually fall apart pretty quickly.
Perhaps "Bigger is better" isn't the mantra we should be going by anymore. Perhaps it should be "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
Because bigger isn't always better. Smaller can be more successful.
