Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The issues that the Member raised in her opening comments are concerns shared by, I would suggest, all people in the Northwest Territories. I think we all want the same thing, the question is how do we achieve that given the financial realities that are facing us. I would just like to clarify a number of facts here before we proceed into answering the issue of administration.
The numbers that I have since division, for example, the suicide rate in the west is significantly closer, if not at the national average. It is still too high, but it is not as high as people are saying. We are also spending, on a cost per student, second only to the Yukon. The teaching staff, depending on how you look at the pay grid, is either the highest paid or the second highest paid, once again, compared to the Yukon. Very clearly, we have issues with literacy, we have issues with the dropout rate, we have issues with increasing graduation. As I indicated in a Minister's statement when we were last in session, that when I look back 30 years, I think we have made significant improvements to the educational system. We do have a long way to go, a lot of issues to address. Should the revenues ever make themselves available, we could very easily put to productive use whatever revenues that this Legislative Assembly sees fit to put into Education, Culture and Employment.
The other figure is the growth rate. Since we have divided, the projected growth is slightly over 1 percent and a lot less than we experienced as a joint territory to the extent that we anticipate that we are not going to be needing a lot of new schools, that we can make do with what we have.
The issue of administration costs that the Member referred to, I could not quite follow all of her numbers, but I know that about 6 percent of the school's budget, about some $90 million including capital is devoted to divisional and local board administration. At the departmental level, it is in the neighbourhood of, I believe, 4 percent roughly that is spent in the headquarters level. Thank you.