Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dene Kede is a curriculum framework which allows an aboriginal language teacher to teach almost any subject in an aboriginal language. The teacher would still have to develop program materials for each individual class and for each part of instruction. It is an enabling tool. The first requirement is a teacher who can speak an aboriginal language in order to bring it to life.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Culture-based schooling is a philosophy of the department and one that we encourage all divisional education councils to follow. Using Dene Kede is not necessarily required in order to have a culture-based philosophy in schooling and making sure that is being followed. It is possible to relate almost any subject to a culture and would be expected in all of the divisional education councils.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If the Member is referring to the Professional Development Conference that was run by the two Yellowknife School Divisions, I am not aware of what their program was at their conference.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have invited a whole range of people. The local education councils have been invited. People across the north, but no, we have no way of making it compulsory for teachers in the Yellowknife system.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This conference we are sponsoring on April 1st and 2nd is one step down the path to making sure everyone is aware of the importance of culture-based education.

Another thing which has to happen in Yellowknife is parents of aboriginal children have to get involved in local control of community schools. Whether that is through parent advisory committees or through running for election for the two education authorities in town, I think that is also an essential step in order to heighten sensitivity and awareness.

The challenge in Yellowknife is still going to be to find qualified teachers who are also qualified aboriginal language speakers when it comes to using the Dene Kede curriculum. I know I have seen a number of articles about local schools taking field trips to try and learn about aboriginal culture, bringing elders into the classrooms. I think that there are a number of initiatives that the schools take part in to heighten students' awareness of the aboriginal culture and I think that, in general, from the teachers I have met and talked to, that there is a very good awareness among the teaching staff in Yellowknife that culture-based education is absolutely essential for children to learn. It is not something that every teacher is aware of, but the department will continue to perform a role in increasing the awareness. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In terms of collecting statistics and monitoring effectiveness of the schools, now that there is no longer matriculation in general, we just have one sort of graduation, do you have any idea or can you track who goes on to university? Do you just lump all the grade 12 graduates into one big pot regardless of whether they are going on through the university stream as opposed to maybe not? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, historically, we never tracked whether students graduated with a general or an academic diploma. This has not been something that we could track in the past. The trend is to continue to track just graduation statistics. We get a fair indication of success rates by looking at the applications for students financial assistance. We can take from our applications how many people are going on because what they do is they tell us how many years of schooling they have had in the north in order to qualify for remission. We do get some of that information. I think we are going to be working at improving our computer systems so that we can better track students. Hopefully, track them close to graduation so that we get a better idea of who is dropping out and see if we can work on approaches to counter that as people get toward the senior level in the system. We are going to be improving our computer tracking method so that we can find out more about post secondary students.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I understand this correctly, the department does see a benefit to being able to track students to be able to, even for quality control, differentiate what kinds of graduates are coming out of the high school to have a sense of what is working and what is not working or do we have 90 percent that are just getting the old style general and cannot go anywhere. Do we have an idea or would it be a benefit to know how many can go on to higher education and become doctors and lawyers? How do we track that? Is there a benefit to doing that and not just, sort of the considerably less accurate way of after the fact, looking at who applies for student financial assistance?