The Initiative

This initiative follows up on discussions which took place at the Provincial Managers' Meeting hosted by the College Sector Committee in June 2002. At that time LBS program policies and procedures were discussed.

In its January 30 message posted on Info-LBS regarding the Continuous Improvement Performance Management System Initiative, the Ministry requested that all LBS agencies have policies and procedures in place for learner involvement starting this year. This includes a learner attendance policy and a process to determine (a) a learner-initiated exit (b) an agency initiated exit and (c) a leave of absence.

The goal of this initiative was to identify areas of consistency across current LBS college policies and procedures and develop samples that reflect that consistency. The samples are intended to provide programs with ideas for further developing or revising their own policies and procedures. It is not the intention of this initiative that colleges adopt identical policies.

There are potential benefits for adopting policies and procedures that are more consistent. One is that it demonstrates co-operation among college LBS programs in the province. Another is that it would increase transparency for different stakeholders. For students who move between colleges, it would ensure a smoother transition. For LBS college managers, it would provide common ground for discussing program issues and statistical information. For practitioners, it would mean that effective strategies for improving student attendance and behaviour could be shared and more easily implemented in all colleges.

The Process

A questionnaire seeking agreement on 22 statements about policies and procedures was distributed to colleges. Sixteen questionnaires were returned and the results were tallied. See Appendix A for 'visual snapshot' of the raw data. The raw data was consolidated to show more clearly the degree of support and lack of support for specific policy statements. Please see Appendix B (Introduction) for an explanation of how the data was consolidated. Policy statements were generally considered unsupported where 25% or more of the respondents indicated disagreement. All comments made by individual respondents were recorded. The comments provided critical direction for developing the sample policies and procedures.