Decentralization would probably work, but what type of decentralization is required? Hopefully not more power locally instead of the government level.

Empowering teachers? Teachers are a big part of the current problem. A serious US study recommended that the teaching staff be composed of about 50% of people with teaching degrees and 50% of people who knew subject matter and were passionate about it. I have worked in the school system a while back and I found most teachers to be very uneducated almost to the point of being illiterates, and also to have very poor mastery of teaching science. We need more non-teachers in the classroom be it as knowledge and passion providers or observers.

On the francophone side, the teachers have been calling the shots for many years. Our now retired assistant deputy minister was really good at convincing the Minister of Education to listen to the teachers. The final result was not very good.

The NB schools focus too much on form, discipline and processes and are not result oriented. They also try to cover things that would be much better covered by other mechanisms.

Our kids are getting educated by many sources. Schools are but one of them. My kids learned very little in school. They learned a lot more after school hours from books, TV, Internet, friends, just doing things. And they would have learned a lot more if they didn't have to spend so much time in school and doing school homework.

As long as NB schools think that they are the main provider of education, or should be, things won't improve much.