The province’s education department is defending its choices of where it decided to put six new schools coming to the Halifax area.
The comments from Minister Brendan Maguire come just two days after Nova Scotia’s auditor general said in a new report, new locations were not based on any evidence.
Minister Brendan Maguire told reporters Thursday, their decisions came from population and future growth.
“We are constantly fine tuning this. It’s also the conditions of the schools…age of the schools…we have schools that are from the 1920’s. We have schools that are busting at the seams,” said Maguire.
He added that recommendations are one thing, but our population has “exploded” over the last few years, and something like that, he says, is not only hard to predict, but needs to be taken into account.
When asked why the AG couldn’t confirm that population was a factor in determining where a school should go, Maguire didn’t quite know.
“I can’t say why she did say what she …or didn’t say, but we do accept her recommendations. You know, we made it clear that we need to react to population growth,” said Maguire.
He added, the AG’s office is doing a “wonderful job”, and the department wants to make sure sites chosen are based on evidence and fact, working with their Centres to get as much information as possible.
