Education Minister David Eggen says he wants to reduce school fees paid by parents for mandatory items like textbooks and instructional materials.

"We recognize the importance of reducing school fees in the province," Eggen said in a year-end interview with CBC. "They've become quite expensive."

New figures released by Alberta Education show parents paid $44.8 million for those items in the current fiscal year. Parents paid another $40 million for transportation and $20.8 million for lunch supervision, bringing the total for mandatory fees to $105.6 million.

Parents paid another $54.8 million for instructional fees like technology, field trips and optional course fees.

Earlier this year, Eggen asked all 61 Alberta school districts to provide him with fee information. He found fees vary widely from district to district.

"It was a bit of wild west out there for a number of years," Eggen said. "There was no clear direction in regards to extra fees

"So it's high time we pulled it in and accounted for them, and made sure we pull out some of the things that are necessary for a student to meet the needs of the curriculum and the program of studies."

Eggen said he wants school boards to start accounting for the fees and evaluate whether some of them are truly mandatory.

The NDP promised during the provincial election campaign to reduce fees overall by half, with a goal of ending lunch supervision fees. Alberta's finances are squeezed right now so Eggen instead plans to focus more on items children need to learn.

With the economy in doldrums, many families would welcome some financial help, he said.

"There's more people that have less money out there that could probably use some help with school fees, so we're assessing it carefully," he said.



