I doubt that he would ever recommend that. Mr. Chairman, I will comment on some of the last comments he made.
I do want to say to the honourable Member that I, along with my staff, have already had discussions with Bob Simpson -- who the honourable Member knows quite well -- about the possibility of trying to organize a number of people, including Arctic College; the superintendent of Education, Culture and Employment; the culture and career side; the board of education; CEIC; the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation; the Gwich'in Regional Council; and other funding agents that are located in Inuvik, including the town. We need to get a sense
of where we are going with education and training, generally. We have to get a plan organized in the communities.
We have indicated that we are, as we are in other regions, prepared to work with the regions to ensure that there is a plan of action. I can say that we are working on that.
On the matter of the teacher education program, the whole issue of access is really dependent on the plans. I can advise the honourable Member that the Yellowknife teacher education program, through its planning, organized an access year. In other words, they set up one year to ensure that all those students who would take their first year of teacher education, were prepared educationally and formally to meet the challenges of the program. So they planned that through the boards. It is a matter of the work that is done with the boards. It is all part of the planning process.
The issue of the children moving on from grade to grade to grade, there is no policy in existence. I have been trying to advise the Members that there is no policy in education. We don't have one. The decisions are normally made with the teacher, the parent and the student. Decisions are also made in conjunction with the board. We don't have a policy that says you must move those students on. The fact is we have a curriculum. They are supposed to meet the challenges of that curriculum. As such, they should be marked accordingly. There is no direction that we give that says they must move. That is a certain choice of the student, parent and teacher.
On quality education, I want to say the quality of education is dependent upon a number of factors: one, delivery; two, parent support; and three, student readiness. In other words, it is dependent on the capacity of the student to meet the challenges of the program. Without a doubt, we all understand that there are some learning situations that do not allow students to meet the challenges of the program. A number of people have raised the issue here.
There are all kinds of factors. I can advise the honourable Member that the student/school achievement indicators have shown us a number of weaknesses in our system. The result of that has given us an opportunity now to redefine the work that we have to do to ensure that we improve the quality of education. Even in the Northwest Territories we have differences of quality of education that is being delivered. Whether you are in Yellowknife, Hay River versus Lutsel K'e or Fort McPherson, or Inuvik versus Fort McPherson. It varies. The problem with that is it may not necessarily be the programs that are available. It may be pure delivery. It could be the student.
We understand the concerns that have been raised and we are trying to deal with the issue of putting in place things like educational quality indicators, which are system-wide monitoring and planning processes. We have to determine whether there is success in the system. We need to ensure that we assess the standards of education. The school achievement indicators, through exam writing, is something that allowed us to address that.
I can say there is an attempt on our part to be more involved in the issue of testing. We are also going to get into a new strategy on numeracy and literacy. We are going to deal with a number of options that are being proposed to us. We are looking at math camps for grade nine students who enter academic math 10 courses. We are trying to work with the western consortium of Ministers on a common math curriculum and standards. There is a sponsored session on tests for 1997 and a science assessment. This past year, we had six NWT teachers who were involved in the marking of the reading and writing exams to give us a sense of where we should be going. We are also going to be developing and preparing a guide for grade seven to nine teachers on teaching, writing and reading in the north.
So we have begun the process. Obviously, there will still be questions, but I think that you can see we are making attempts to rectify some of the problems. We may never get to a point where we rectify all of them, but I can say we are on our way. We are making attempts to respond to the concerns of Members of this Assembly, parents, students and teachers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.