Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member has covered a broad area here, which I will try and address. I think in general, what the Member is saying is that he would like us to take a look at some of the inherent problems that are there, which I readily would acknowledge that we do have some problems there.
I do have to be somewhat defensive here, though, on some areas, because while there are pockets of problems, there is also a tremendous amount of success out there. I do not think we should just generalize too much and say the whole system is not working. I think there are successes out there, very good successes.
I understand what the Member is saying in general terms with this. We should continue to improve, continue to work on the areas that are very evidently problematic.
Let me perhaps start, and I will try to be very quick with this, just so that we do not get bogged down with too many explanations. What we decided was that we need to tackle this whole problem on an early basis, hence we developed the Early Childhood Development Program, Mr. Chairman. A plan that starts to look at children ages one to five. As we know, we have a plan in place for that and extensive money that we are putting in it.
The next is the Literacy Strategy, which also contributes to this whole area of improving the whole ability of perhaps older people, but older people who will develop an ability to be able to contribute to their children, because parental support is a problem for us. We need to work on that. We need to ensure that it is there.
The Member made reference to homework. In the Beaufort-Delta, there is a homework policy. The DEC, and we are partners, we must remember that, this is a community driven system that we have, a regionally driven system that we look to partners with to help us out. In the Beaufort-Delta, the homework policy was introduced. I think it is a good move. We are following that to see what kind of success is happening, if it has success.
Family support, as I mentioned, is an important element. It is a part of an issue that was raised during the student needs assessment. We need to continue to work on that and we are working on that to follow through. Mr. Nitah asked me about that earlier in the session.
We have a program called Effective Behaviour Support, which was introduced about a year ago. We are moving forward with that because those are the kinds of programs that need to address the whole area of attendance and so forth.
Mr. Chairman, I will cut off there because I know Members have a lot of questions. I will ask Dr. Foley to address the question Mr. Bell had earlier.