Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, since I was elected to serve in this House just four short months ago, many important issues have been raised; issues such as the need to maximize northern and local benefits in construction projects, the escalating costs of health and social services, and the possible creation of Nunavut. One issue that has not
been raised, but which troubles me greatly, is the state of education and the system in the Northwest Territories.
I have been looking at the statistics on enrolment, attendance and graduation rates provided in the Department of Education's annual report and frankly, I find them frightening. I will quote some of the statistics that particularly frighten me. In 1980-81, 213 students graduated from grade 12 in the Northwest Territories. Ten years later this number had dropped to 162. In the intervening years we have surpassed our 1980-81 graduation totals only once. In my own region, with a population of 5500 people, there were only five high school graduates in 1989-90.
The Department of Education has told us that the education system is improving because we are seeing a steady rise in school enrolment each year. Enrolment is an important measure of the performance of our education system, but of what use is it to us if we are merely producing more drop-outs instead of graduates? It has always been my belief that our education system should focus on producing graduates who can go on to further training in vocational and practical programs, yet the number of students graduating from our system with general diplomas is decreasing while the number of graduates with advanced diplomas is increasing only slightly. It seems to me that something has gone wrong.
Mr. Speaker, the performance of our education system has an impact on most other issues we deal with in this House. I have spoken about the need to implement policies like "buy North" and "tender North" that maximize the benefits to Northerners, local workers and companies; however, we are simply paying lip service to these policies if we cannot train our people to take advantage of them.
For years I have listened to people tell us about the social problems in our society. We have heard in this House frequently...