Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to make a few general comments on education. I too, feel the same way as my colleague here, Mr. Todd, in regards to the education in the north, and also welcome the Minister's comment that there is going to be a review. I just want to say that the review should include everybody in the community that is concerned. Not only the education councils and the board members, I think everybody that has children and everybody who is interested in education should have an opportunity to participate in the review because there is major concern.

I have got some specific concerns about education. The grade extension that has happened in my constituency, in the community of Fort Simpson is welcome, and it has been what we have wanted to do for many years. As a result of that great extension, for your information, I have been told that in the high school, there are 95 students total. I think 17 of them are in grade 12. So, you know, it is 17 students that originally would have gone away from the community. These students are not all from Simpson, they come from the surrounding smaller communities.

What happens out of Simpson is that, formerly, in the past, students from the smaller communities, for example like Wrigley, would go to school in Simpson, and then when they were ready to go to high school they would move on to Yellowknife. So, they would do a double move before they had even finished their grade 12. As a result, a lot of students drop out in the meantime. It is one of the reasons, I feel, that this has happened. With the grade extension in Simpson, it provides, at least for the smaller communities, just one move away from the community, so it is an improvement on what has happened in the past.

I just want to also say that the school in Fort Simpson, there are more students enrolled this year than anticipated because they have got a higher number of grade 11s also enrolled from the surrounding communities. So, the funding that was allocated to them is not sufficient enough, and they have run into growing pains, growing problems. I certainly hope the Department would help them out and help them in paying for the education of the students there.

The other thing I want to mention, specifically in Fort Simpson, is quality of education. For years, I have been concerned about the quality of education that is provided to the students in the communities. The quality seems to be higher in Yellowknife than in the smaller communities. I do not know for what reason, the only reason I could think of is that the smaller communities are, again, ignored for the bigger centres.

It still exists today. Those kinds of concerns should not be left until a review is done because the reviews take a long time. Some concerns are very immediate in the smaller communities, and those should be addressed. I am talking about some of the people that fall through the cracks in the education system. There is quite a high number of dropouts from the smaller communities and some people are grown and have families now, they want to return to school, but they do not have the grade eight or whatever is required for adult education programs.

They do not have numbers in the smaller communities to warrant an adult educator in some of these communities. I was wondering if the Department of Education could become innovative, and look at different ways of approaching these problems by, let us say, having a roving adult educator using the modern technology of computer, or fax type of education. We are in this day of age where this could be accomplished, and that is another reason why I have been pursuing more telephone lines into Nahanni Butte, Trout Lake, and Jean Marie, because they do not have the technology to provide this type of distance education.

That is a twofold kind of approach why I have been pursuing more communication lines going into the smaller communities. The people who fall through the cracks there, I am really concerned about them. I think that if some sort of a plan would be developed to take care of them for, let us say it might take just a few years to scoop them up and upgrade enough so they could go into the regular system. Again, if the department could be innovative and look at different ways of trying to deal with these specific problems, I would really appreciate that.

A final specific problem that I have is that, it is kind of personal too in a way, in Simpson even though it is kind of a regional high school the grade eight and nine have been combined. There are students who have grade eight and grade nine are in the same room, and they take some courses that are the same, and some that are not the same. I went through the system and I know that grade nine and grade 10 are totally different. I am concerned that these students might not have the quality of education that they are entitled to by combining the grades.

They say that they do not have enough numbers, but I know that the total number is about 25, and if it has to do with policy, policies could be changed. If it is a designated regional high school at least each grade should have a teacher, irregardless of the numbers. There are all kinds of supporting arguments about why there should be two grades rather than a combination. Education is improving in my constituency ever since I have become aware of the communities. Back in 1972, I toured the communities in my region, in different capacities in my work, in community development, and I know that most of these communities have come a long way.

They still have to go quite a long way, yet. The present form of education is not adequate enough. Even though it has improved, I think there is a lot more room for improvement. We have very good teachers, very good staff in some areas, but still I think there is something wrong with the outcome. There are a lot of students going into the school system into kindergarten and grade one but very few graduating at the end. I am very concerned about that, and I think that is a priority for the department to look at how we could have more students graduating at the end with quality education. That, I think, should be the goal. That is all I have to say for now. Mahsi.