The (Un)deserving adult: Examining British Columbia’s adult basic education policy

Abstract

In 2015, the Government of British Columbia (BC), Canada, reversed a long-standing mandate to provide tuition-free Adult Basic Education (ABE) to all adults. Drawing upon internal government policy documents and inter- and intra-ministerial communications obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) tools, key policy documents, social media commentary, and documentation from protest events, the authors adopt an interpretive stance to re-tell this policy moment. Through their analysis, the authors observe struggles on behalf of government actors to adopt a coherent ‘policy story’ to legitimise the withdrawal of state resources for the education of marginalised citizens, falling back upon a Victorian era desert-based discourse. The study provides insights into the durability of deservingness discourses and the improvisational nature of neoliberal policy making.

Keywords:

• Adult basic education
• Canada
• policy studies
• deserving discourses
• neoliberalism
• freedom of information documents

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 ABE refers to courses for adults leading to secondary school graduation or courses constituting academic upgrading.

2 Note that all currency amounts are in Canadian dollars (CAD).

3 Freedom of Information requests, also known as FOIs, are routinely made to obtain copies of records held by government ministries that are not already available in the public domain. In British Columbia, Freedom of Information requests fall under FOIPPA (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act) legislation (Government of British Columbia 2019). The FOI request cited in this contribution resulted in 498 pages of inter-ministerial correspondence, speaking notes, press releases, and meeting minutes. Approximately, 30% of this material was redacted, citing FOIPPA sections 12 (Cabinet and local public body confidences) and 13 (Policy advice or recommendations) of FOIPPA. The analysis draws on the entirety of the available corpus.

4 According to budget letters: ‘Under extraordinary circumstances, institutions may seek an exception to the annual balanced budget requirement and request approval from the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Training to operate in a deficit position… Regardless of the circumstances, an institution should not assume that a request to operate in a periodic deficit will be approved.’ see https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/post-secondary-education/institution-resources-administration/budget-letters/18-19/viu.pdf