Education: a good investment

An important part of the provincial government’s March 24 budget is the increase of $2.5 million in the amount allocated to adult basic education. This will move us one step closer to our goal of building the best adult basic education system in Canada.

Adult basic education includes the mature high school diploma for adults who did not previously complete high school, and adult literacy programs that bring adult learners up to high school entry level.

The program transforms the lives of adult learners and is effectively cost-free.

A recent study found that adult basic education moves enough people off Employment and Income Assistance, reducing government expenditures, and enough people into full-time employment, increasing income tax revenue, that it pays for itself in ten years.

In fact, it almost certainly pays for itself sooner than 10 years, because that number does not take into account the significant increase in incomes earned by graduates, producing a multiplier effect in graduates’ communities, and it does not take into account the well-documented reductions in costs for health and criminal justice that are known to follow from improved levels of education.

Investment in adult basic education is particularly productive.

That same recent study found that adult basic education builds learners’ self-esteem, self-confidence, and sense of optimism about their future.

Ninety per cent of graduates surveyed in the study said that because of their experience in adult basic education, they believe they’re well on their way to a good life. Ninety per cent said they are happier now than when they started the mature high school diploma program, and ninety per cent said their kids have benefited from their doing the mature high school diploma program.

This means that adult basic education is contributing to building stronger and healthier families, and children in those families are likely to do better in school.

Because of those benefits, the provincial government deserves congratulations for this year’s $2.5-million investment in adult basic education. And because of those benefits, the provincial government should continue to increase the budget for adult basic education in future years, aiming to create the best adult basic education system in Canada.

Manitoba is the right place to do this.

We consistently have the highest rate of child poverty for all Canadian provinces, and adult basic education is a proven anti-poverty program. The most recent data, based on 2022 tax filer data, show that just over one in five children in Manitoba are growing up in families living in poverty — 85,520 children. Winnipeg Centre is the federal constituency with the highest incidence of child poverty of any urban centre in Canada.

Three of the top 10 federal constituencies in terms of child poverty are in Manitoba. We know from the historical evidence that children who grow up in poverty are themselves more likely to end up in poverty.

Adult basic education can break this cycle.

Further, Indigenous people are more likely than the non-Indigenous population to be living in poverty, and Indigenous youth, on average, do less well in school than the non-Indigenous population, graduating high school at a rate about 30 percentage points lower than non-Indigenous youth.

Yet Indigenous adults are returning to adult basic education at a rate two and half times their share of the population, and when they do, not only they but also their families and their children benefit.

In Northern Manitoba, the same is the case. Fewer than 50 per cent of young people are graduating from high school. Many are not educationally prepared to take the important trades programs offered in the North.

If more economic activity is to take place in Manitoba’s North, as we are being told will happen, then adult basic education is crucial for moving Northerners into jobs that will improve their family circumstances while keeping more of the benefits of economic activity in the North.

This year’s increase in the adult basic education budget is to be applauded. Investments in future years to build the best adult basic education system in Canada are to be encouraged.

We will all benefit from such future-oriented thinking.

Jim Silver is professor emeritus at the University of Winnipeg and a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba. His book, The Transformative Power of Adult Education, will be released at McNally Robinson Books on April 23.