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A planning document outlining policy ideas United Conservative Party members may discuss shows the party and its leader want to weaken Alberta’s public education system, Education Minister David Eggen said Thursday.

“The devolution of public school boards is a clear nod to American-style privatization of education. Everyone should be concerned about this,” Eggen, an NDP cabinet minister, said in an interview.

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A draft policy framework circulated to UCP members last week includes 10 policy discussion ideas about K-12 education, including”devolve decision-making to individual schools, rather than school boards, offering public and separate schools the governance and curriculum flexibility currently enjoyed by charter schools.”

All Alberta schools are required to teach the provincial curriculum.

Equal funding per student

The document also proposes government shell out the same amount of funding per student, regardless of where a child attends school — public, separate, charter, independent schools or home education.