Students who are homeschooling with THEE have the choice to add teacher-taught courses to their Home Education learning plan (aka The Education Program Plan).  This choice enables the homeschooling parent(s) to decide to teach certain subjects to their child while essentially “outsourcing” the teaching of other subjects to another teacher. By so doing, the parent(s) are/is sharing the responsibilities of teaching his/her/their child within the child’s Home Education learning plan.  Although the parent(s) are/is choosing to share these teaching responsibilities, the parent(s) will at all times retain the ultimate authority of and responsibility for the child’s Home Education learning program.  The administrative name for this parental choice to share the teaching responsibilities within a Home Education learning plan is, “Shared Responsibility”.

A. Definitions of a Shared Responsibility learning program

1.  Informal: A Shared Responsibility learning program is one where the student is learning from mom and/or dad and learning from a teacher from a school.  Most often, the teacher is from an online learning program. The parent typically chooses to teach those subjects or topics which he/she feels most comfortable with while choosing to have a teacher from a school teach the other subjects.
2. Formal: Alberta Ed has the following definition from page 90 of the, Guide to Education, policy document:

B. Key Ingredients

Let’s break down this formal definition into its key ingredients. I’ve also added additional information to these key ingredients to provide the full picture to you as to how this will work.

• Administratively speaking, a Shared Responsibility program is a special type of Home Education program. Alberta Ed has placed the
  Shared Responsibility option within the Home Education programming. Home Ed students in a Shared Responsibility program will still receive Home Ed funding but NOT the full 100% of the funding.  See my comments below regarding the change to the Home Ed funding amount.
  .

• 100% of all Home Education requirements remain in place; THEE will be your go-to office for all things related to the home education program. You will still need to complete the (1) Notification Form and the (2) Education Program Plan for the Home Education side of Shared Responsibility. Please refer to our Registration webpage for more information for these Home Education requirements.

• 100% of all teacher-directed Online Learning program requirements remain in place. SILC Online and/or SILC-Chesterton Academy will be your go-to office for all things related to the teacher-taught courses. Please see our info-videos in the, “Virtual Open House“, webpage in Section 4.

• “Percentages” of the Sharing of Teaching Roles and Responsibilities
  In the formal definition, you read the sentence, which states the following: “The school authority must be responsible for at least a minimum of 20% to a maximum of 80% of the student’s program in grades 1 to 12.”   …  What does that mean?  What do these percentages mean?
  Before I begin my explanations, I need to say that our minimum required percentage will be 30% for reasons that I will explain later.

  Minimum Percentage
  To repeat, the minimum required percentage of teacher-taught courses for our Shared Responsibility program will be 30%.  OK, let’s talk about what 30% even means. I’ll use a high school program (grades 10-12) for my example.  Alberta Education regards a full-time high school course schedule as one that includes at least 35 course credits. So, this percentage that we are talking about comes from the context of a teacher-taught program.  For our example with a high school program, let’s say that our high school student, Johnny, wants to be a Shared Responsibility student because his parents decided that they want an online teacher to teach Math 10C and English 10-1 to Johnny but want to teach all of the other subjects or topics to Johnny themselves.  Let’s see if Johnny will qualify to be a Shared Responsibility student:

Math 10C is a 5 credit course
English 10-1 is a 5 credit course
5 credits + 5 credits = 10 Credits; Johnny’s teacher-taught program includes 10 course credits.
Full-time student status is 35 credits
We now take the number of credits from Johnny’s program (10) and divide that number by 35 to get a percentage, which is relative to the full-time course credit level, of Johnny’s program that is being provided by a teacher-taught program.

Let’s do the math: 10/35 = 0.285 or 29%.  We can now say that Johnny’s learning program is 29% teacher-taught.  At least that is how Alberta Ed will define this situation. For our program, Johnny will need to take at least one more course credit, such as a 1-credit CTS module, in order to get his percentage to be at or above the 30% minimum requirement.

At this point, some of you may be asking why we are requiring a higher minimum percentage, and the answer is squarely from a funding perspective. If Johnny decides to drop one of his courses, or if he fails the course (for any reason…perhaps he just quits, disappears, ghosts us, whatever the reason), then his percentage will drop below the 20% provincially required minimum.  Let’s say that Johnny decides to drop Math 10C. If that were to happen, then Johnny loses his student status as a Shared Responsibility student (Code 610) because his percentage of teacher-taught courses drops below the minimum 20% level.  In this scenario, Johnny will become a Home Ed student (Code 600) even though Johnny may still be actively enrolled and passing his EN10-1 course , and we at my school lose the funding for the teacher-taught side of Shared Responsibility.  Specific to this example, my school must still pay the Math 10C teacher and the EN10-1 teacher even though Johnny is now a Home Ed student (Code 600) who has zero funding for the teacher-taught courses.

The financial risk that any school, which is offering a Shared Responsibility program, assumes is significant, and this financial risk is the reason (at least in my opinion) that many schools choose to not offer the Shared Responsibility program.

Maximum Percentage
The maximum percentage of the teacher-taught portion of a Shared Responsibility program is 80%, which equates to 28 course credits in the context of a high school program. If a student is taking more than 28 course credits from a teacher-taught program, then that student needs to enroll into a teacher-taught program as a full-time student.

• Note #1: for determining percentages for a student who is in a grade level between 1 and 9, please contact the office of SILC by phone (1-780-449-6463) or by email (silc@eics.ab.ca).
• Note #2: Alberta Ed has determined a date after which time a student cannot add more teacher-taught courses to his/her Shared Responsibility program, and to learn of that date, please contact SILC by phone (1-780-449-6463) or by email (silc@eics.ab.ca).

C. Key Impact on Home Education Funding

Congratulations for continuing to read all the way down to this point! Thank you!

I mentioned in the first point in Section “B” that a Shared Responsibility student (Code 610) is a Home Education student as defined by Alberta Ed. Let’s continue using Johnny as our example for learning about how the Home Education funding, which he will receive, will differ from the Home Ed funding that a full-time Home Education student (Code 600) student will receive.

Because Alberta Ed defines a Shared Responsibility student as a Home Education student, a Shared Responsibility student will receive Home Education funding but not the full 100% amount.  The Home Ed funding that a Shared Responsibility student will receive will cover the percentage of the Education Program Plan that is parent-taught, or said another way, the Home Ed funding will not cover the percentage that is teacher-taught.

Let’s bring Johnny into our discussion.  Let’s say that Johnny’s Education Program Plan, as a Shared Responsibility student, is 30% teacher-taught and, thus, is 70% parent-taught (that is just how Alberta Ed has setup the funding model for Shared Responsibility). Johnny will receive 70% of the Home Education funding amount, which is $850.00 per full-time Home Ed student (Code 600) for this school year, because Alberta Ed will provide Home Ed funding to the parent for the percentage of the Education Program Plan that is parent-taught.  Johnny’s parents will receive 70% of $850.00, which is $595.00.

What about the 30% which is teacher-taught?  Alberta Ed provides funding to the school to pay for the teacher-taught courses.

This is a great place for me to address the two questions that I oftentimes hear from parents:
1. “Does a school get extra funding for Shared Responsibility students?”
2. “Why don’t I, as the parent, get extra funding?”

Problem #1 with Question #1: The first problem with the question is in the parent’s definition of the term, funding. When a Home Ed parent thinks of funding, he/she thinks (at least this is my assumption) in terms of funding that the parent receives via the Home Education Grant. The answer in this context is, “No”, my school (and no school in Alberta) does not receive any “extra” Home Education funding for a Shared Responsibility student.  The opposite is true as my above example demonstrated; schools receive less Home Ed funding for Shared Responsibility students.

Problem #2 with Question #1: Going back to the problem with the parent’s understanding of the term, funding, I must mention that, if we are talking about absolute and combined total funding provided to a school for a Shared Responsibility student, (this is a level of detail regarding the Funding Model that most parents are not interested in, nor are they thinking in these terms when they ask that question), then the answer is, “Yes”, Alberta Ed provides more absolute and combined total funding (not more parent funding!) for a Shared Responsibility student because Alberta Ed has to pay the school for the teacher-taught percentage of the Shared Responsibility program. The school that offers a Shared Responsibility program will receive two types of funding for a Shared Responsibility student:
1. Home Education funding, which is the source of the funding that a home educating parent will receive
2. Teacher/Course/CEU funding, which is the source of funding that a school will use to pay the teachers for teaching the teacher-taught courses.
If you were to add the combined total of the two different types of funding, then you’d get a dollar amount that is more than the $850.00 dollar amount that a full-time Home Education student will receive. So, in that context, yes, a Shared Responsibility (Code 610) student generates more funding than a Home Education (Code 600) student…but not more parent funding(!).

Problem #3 with Question #1: The second problem involves the term, extra, as in, “more than”.  I then must ask, “More than what? More than the $850.00 per student amount of Home Education funding?” The answer is, “No”, as my above information demonstrates.

Problem with Question #2: The plain answer is, “No extra funding exists, so, no, you, the parent, do not receive any extra funding.” The problem here is based on the reason for the question.  Why are parents thinking that “extra funding” exists and that this extra funding should go to parents?  The answer has a long and sordid past that involves very questionable business practices by several school authorities that offered more than the standard amount of Home Education funding (in some cases, almost double the amount) to the parents of a Shared Responsibility student. Parents were told that the source of this higher-than-standard-amount of Home Ed funding came from the “extra funding” for a Shared Responsibility student. There’s much more to this sad story, but I’ll end it here.

D.  Key Impacts on Your Home Education Program Plan and Student Evaluations

The last topic that I wanted to mention involves the required, Education Program Plan, and two Home Education student evaluations.

1. Education Program Plan (aka “Program Plan”)
   By regulation, your child’s, “Home Education Program Plan”, will not include any teacher-taught courses. Let’s bring Johnny back into our discussion.  If you are Johnny’s mom or dad, then the Program Plan that you will create for Johnny will not include Math 10C, EN10-1, and any other teacher-taught course.

2. Student Evaluations by Your Home Education Facilitator
   By regulation, your Home Education Facilitator will not include any of the teacher-taught courses in his/her two required student evaluations.

And that is how Shared Responsibility works!