Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when we spend money on education, the goal is to ensure children and adults are better educated, more self-reliant, and ready to take advantage of employment opportunities. We need good information to evaluate the result of our actions. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment is increasing the amount of blue chip information available on its programs and services. This information is used for assessing program results, making programming decisions and to account to the public for activities. Given our limited resources, we need to measure the true value to northerners of the services we provide or support.
Later today, Mr. Speaker, I will be tabling Towards Excellence: A Report on Education in the NWT. This handy little document provides a profile of education from kindergarten to grade 12. The report covers a broad range of topics from school achievement indicators to educator information, from high school statistics to enrollment numbers. Information recently requested by Members of this House, such as the increase in student completion rates, can be found in the report.
While this is the second report of its kind, it is the first that provides information from a western NWT perspective. Work is currently underway on gathering the numbers of 1998-99. The department plans to update this information every two years. Mr. Speaker, reliable information is critical to good decision making and to public accountability for dollars spent. Towards Excellence provides the Department of Education, Culture and Employment with baseline information that we will use in our strategic and business planning. Over the next few years, we will revise and refine our information needs to develop a set of indicators which will effectively capture the results of efforts by the department, DECs, DEAs, schools and culture and heritage communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
--Applause