Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for those two numbers alone, in 1968, 17.9 to 1 to 1997-1998, 30 years difference, there is a .3 difference.

To me, that just goes to show the arguments that we hear a lot. The pupil-teacher ratio has gone through the roof and that is why we need more funding, to lower the pupil-teacher ratio.

In 30 years, we have not seen it, but when we look at it, I can recall the days when I went through school and quite a number of things have changed. However, there was not the general areas. We had separation.

I know when I went to junior high and high school, there was, for example, in grade nine, you would have A, B, C and D level classes. That has changed because they say that is not a good thing to do. So you mix the classes and try to bring everyone along.

Maybe the one thing that we have seen as a fairly significant area is the area of special needs as impacting the ability for teachers to get the information and to teach the children in the classrooms. Judging from this information, there has not been a big difference in 30 years in the actual pupil-teacher ratio, but our graduation and "stay 9s", as they say.

For example, in the Beaufort Delta region, it has been a number of years now that there has been some testing going on to see what our children are achieving.

It has been quite a concern, as they have discussed with parents and had public meetings on that with parents, stating the actual results that are being shown. It is rather disappointing to see where our children are achieving compared to the national average in Canada.

Now there are a number of factors that would play with that, or that would end up being there, but it is still a concern and it is more, not to say that our children... the basic point being, are not achieving the national mark, but it is more of where is their system.

I have made comments in the 13th Assembly in committees. I made them in this Assembly when we go through budgets about the programming and having the proper programming is the way that I look at it.

I refer to social pass. There are arguments on both sides of the table. If you hold somebody back, you do more harm. I use the argument, if you are a young man or a young woman in grade nine, you go to challenge the test or write the test when it is mandatory in grade 10, and find out that you do not have anywhere near a grade 10 reading or math level, the real world kicks in in the school yards. We cannot soften that up. So that is a concern I have. Where are we going with this and are there changes being looked at?

Is there something in between the two that we can try to adapt and put into place? We talk about literacy and we talk about job training, but if our young men and women in grade 10, or year 10, cannot comprehend at that level, how can we then put them into job training?

That just shows that our programs, from start to finish, we have to make them connect and link up as we heard. It is great to say good things and we are doing stuff, however, it would really be nice to have some solid examples of where we are actually going to make the movement to improve on this system.

I can recall, and I think in Inuvik, when we had the Canadian Forces station operating in the community, they demanded a higher level for education, especially since they were in a remote section of Canada, as they saw it. Parents are starting to do that again. They are starting to say, "We want to see some results."

Numbers can be used in different ways. I think it is unfortunate that, you know, sometimes we can have parents using them to say that teachers are not doing it, while teachers can go say that parents should be doing more.

It is back and forth. However, we need to find some ground that we can actually see students achieving, not to measure parents and not to measure teachers, to have our children ready and able to take on the jobs that are out there once they graduate. So is there any activity in this area to see some changes or some modification of the systems we have in place today? Thank you.