history: pro-D

The history of professional development

Prior to 1972, there were no “PD Days”. Teacher training for fully licensed teachers was usually delivered by the Ministry or School Boards or Principals.

These training days were known as “in-service” and usually took place with release time.

Teachers, wanting more control over their own profession, including PD, created the Professional Development Division of the BCTF.

In 1972, additional days were added to the school calendar to allow teachers to have professional time during the school year.

There was no increase in pay and no loss of instructional days for students. In other words, teachers agreed to include new days in the school year for the purpose of doing their own professional development, at no cost to the system.

In 1988, with the first round of local bargaining between locals and boards, teachers wanted their rights to control professional development enshrined in the collective agreement and bargained PD language.

The GVTA and SD61 bargained language first in 1988, and then again in 1990. 

PD was not bargained in the 1992 round but additional professional autonomy language solidified our rights.

Later, a letter of agreement about the PD fund gave control of the fund to the GVTA, instead of joint control. The PD fund is now wholly administered by the GVTA.

During the 1990’s, the Ministry would usually fund in-service days when new Ministry initiatives were introduced. 

But by the early 2000’s, the Ministry had stopped funding Ministry directed initiatives.

This led school boards and school Principals to increasingly try to wrest control of PD days for mandatory training initiatives, such as new curriculum, new grading programs, etc.

At the same time, the replacement of the accreditation system with Accountability Contracts led Principals to try to use PD days to pursue School Goals that aligned with these plans. 

Matters came to a head in 2005, when a teacher at Spectrum Community School was told they were “expected” to attend a school based PD activity which the teacher didn’t believe was best for them.

This teacher was disciplined and docked a day’s pay, even though they were in their classroom doing authentic, self-directed PD.

In response to this discipline, GVTA members decided to develop an action plan to reassert their rights over Professional Development. The plan included:

• Grieve the discipline

• Initiate a group grievance over PD autonomy

• Petition the School Board

• Present to the School Board

• Write letter to the School Board

• Pass PD and Staff Committee motions

• Discuss at school based GVTA meetings

• SURT training on PD Autonomy

• A special edition of the Advocate

What finally moved the District to come to the table to discuss the issue seriously was when we asked teachers to commit to attend a GVTA planned PD activity for September 2006. As more and more teachers signed on to this, the District was forced to acknowledge the wide teacher support for PD autonomy and to meet with the union to negotiate.

The results of that negotiation were the PD Letter of Agreement and the discipline against the teacher was withdrawn.

The PD Letter of Agreement was renewed in 2007 after further dispute, and then was in force until 2017, creating de facto practice agreement about the autonomy rights teachers have.

Under Superintendent Piet Langstraat, the District refused to acknowledge the letter because it did not have BCTF and BCPSEA signatures.

A grievance led to an extension of a similar agreement for a further year, until the end of the 2013-2019 collective agreement, but the letter was not renewed in the 2019 collective agreement when negotiations broke off due to COVID.