That is true. Universities may not require Social Studies 30, but they may not require a lot of things. For instance, Math 30 is not required at all to graduate, but if you intend to go to business school, I would suggest you better have Math 30.
If our system is entirely based on the Alberta system, and it seems to be, almost -- we do have some variation in curriculum at some of the lower grades, but when we are talking graduations, it seems almost entirely based on the Alberta system, yet we have this one discrepancy. It does not make sense to me that we would not require our students to take Social Studies 30.
The Minister has laid out the department's explanation for this and I do not imagine I am going to change it and change their minds here in this discussion today, but I still do have concerns about our graduation rates and whether or not we are accurately measuring the ability of our young people to move out into the world and get gainful employment, or move on to post-secondary school, because universities are really not looking at whether or not you have a diploma. They are looking at your transcript. They want to see that you have passed and done well in some of these grade 12 level subjects, specifically the 30 level subjects, Mr. Chairman.
I think we need to do as much as we can to encourage our students to take the highest level of courses that they can possibly complete and not encourage students to sort of float by and attain a graduation paper and rely on that as a measure of success.
I have one other area that I would like to ask the Minister about and it is about the testing programs that I guess you can say have been piloted by a couple of districts, at least Hay River and Yellowknife Education District No. 1, with regard to Alberta testing at the grade 3, 6, and 9 levels. Our results have not been great. I think the department and the districts have admitted that and said that we want to now work to identify why they have not been as good as we had hoped, and then seek to address those problems and concerns, because clearly we want students who are competitive. We want to make sure our students are getting the highest level of education possible.
We tend to focus on the education system. We tend to ask ourselves whether or not teachers have enough professional development and whether or not we have enough days in the school year. Maybe our kids need more days in the school year. We focus on a lot of these things, but I do not think we focus enough on the outside of school factors that influence how students do in school.
I think family is critical. I think an understanding that at certain grade levels, homework is very important. I think that is something we may not have focused enough on. I do not think we have focused enough on bringing the family unit into discussions about their child's performance.
At this point, the marks are bearing out that at grade 3, we are not quite there with Alberta, but as we go on, grades 6 and 9, we test our students and the gap widens. This is a concern because it suggests to people that the more time you spend in our system, the worse off you are. I do not think that is an accurate assessment. I think there are some other issues here that come into play.
For instance, at grade 3, children are basically measured on their ability and not on their work ethic, not on the amount of homework that they do because it is not really required. However, by the time you get to grade 9, Mr. Chairman, if you are not in the habit of doing homework and you do not have a supportive family environment, I would suggest that you are dead in the water and are going to have a very hard time and really struggle to get good marks going through to grade 12.
Another problem in talking to several teachers that I had not thought about but was raised with me was attendance. Apparently, and I am sure we measure this because I know all schools do, our attendance, in some schools more than others, but overall I think is atrocious. There are real concerns about the amount of school that students miss. In fact, when we had our grades 3,6, and 9 testing last year at some schools, I understand there were a lot of students who were not even present to take the test. I am not even sure we got an accurate measure. This is something that I was not aware of but oftentimes, we have students who are coming in as much as an hour, an hour-and-a-half late consistently for school.
I know in talking to some teachers that in order to try to deal with this problem, they have decided they just will not have language arts first period in the morning, because too many students are late for school. They bump it back later in the day to make sure students are there when something as important as language arts is being taught.
I guess necessity is the mother of invention and I am glad that we have teachers who are willing to do these kinds of things, but I think it speaks to a larger problem. I think we really need to sit down and work with our communities, not just the children, but our communities, our parents, and come up with a game plan for helping children improve their performance in school. I think this will improve their satisfaction.
I imagine it is really frustrating the further you get behind, the less motivation there will be to attend class. If every day is a frustration and every day you realize that you are a few months or years behind your peers, if it was me, I would probably stop going to school. I think that is what happens to a lot of these children.
We need to address some of these other issues. We tend to focus on our education system and ask what is wrong with our schools, what is wrong with our curriculum, what is wrong with our teachers, but I think we need to look a little deeper than that, Mr. Chairman.
I hope this Minister will take up this cause, because although it possibly falls outside the specific mandate of Education, Culture and Employment, it is something that he needs to collaborate on with his colleagues in Cabinet and seek to come up with a strategy to take on this very serious problem. If we do not do it, we are going to get further and further behind. We know the problems that arise out of having children who just are really not successful in school, because they have so few options later in life. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.