Nova Scotia does not have an evidence-based process to make decisions about new schools, says Auditor General Kim Adair.

Adair says the province needs a formal process so that any new schools will go to the areas that need them the most, according to a report from her office, released Tuesday.

“Decisions of this magnitude should be supported by evidence that very clearly demonstrates which school capital projects are the highest priority and those should be approved first,” writes Adair in a news release.

Planning process did not anticipate population boom

She says the root of the problem is the school capital planning process. The Education Department created its first one in 2019, which outlined school planning for the next several years.

But in 2019, no one anticipated the coming boom in population, so the capital planning process only covered replacement schools and major renovations.

Since 2015, student enrolment has gone up 13 per cent across the province. In Halifax, the increase was even larger at 24 per cent. That’s a jump from 48,000 students in 2015-16 to 59,500 students in 2024-25.

Some decisions made without formal process

To keep up with the population growth, the province announced they would build new schools, and in the last four years, they have spent $162 million on modular and portable classrooms to fit about 6,000 unexpected students, Adair says.

Although it’s clear the population is growing, Adair says the province does not have a formal, evidence-based process to make decisions about new schools.

However, she says the province did have enrolment projections, which they used to make decisions, and the projections “appear to be reasonable, based on appropriate information, and are up to date.”

But, for example, in June of 2023, the province announced they would build four new schools to accommodate the population growth.

At the time, the department did not reveal where the schools would go, but Adair says her team could not “follow how the department” came to the decision to announce the schools at all.

She says six of the new schools coming to the Halifax Regional Centre for Education were approved in an order that differed from what the education centre wanted.

“With more than $1 billion in new growth and replacement schools announced in the past year, it’s important the Department support its recommendations for new growth school requests with a clear evidenced-based process,” writes Adair in the news release.

More to come…