Thank you. Okay, I look forward to seeing that. I certainly think that that's a worthwhile initiative. I think we have to be able to accurately compare our jurisdictions, our districts, and also compare ourselves to other jurisdictions, and this is certainly a good start. So I'm glad to see that.

Let me ask again about another area of testing, and that's departmental exam results for the Northwest Territories. Is this something that how our students are doing on departmental exams -- whether it's Math 30, Biology 30, English 30 and 33, these kinds of departmentals -- something we publish on a yearly basis, so that residents in the Territories can see how we are doing on departmental exams and possibly compare us to other jurisdictions? I know the department collects this information. I have asked for it at my office for the last couple of years and the department has been able to provide very detailed information on how we are doing by community, by board, on these exams. I am wondering if this is something we consider public information and is something that we publicize. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We participate in student achievement, a national program, Mr. Chairman, that compares jurisdictions across the country. We do provide that information back to the school districts, but it's not broken out, if I understand correctly, by schools.

I guess it's my feeling, but my sense is even if we are providing this information, which we know we are collecting internally, to the school boards and to the school districts for their use, that is hardly any indication that the public would become aware of how we are doing. I think sometimes we may be improving; we may not. The results may not be what we would like to see, but I think it's important that we talk about them because if communities are going to take ownership of this problem, they have to sense that there is a problem. If we are falling behind other jurisdictions in the number of students who are graduating or in our performance on these departmental exam results, which is something we can easily compare to Alberta, this is something we have to start talking about. I think it's just dialogue that has to start at the community level because that's where ownership of problems, if there are problems, can be taken. I think it takes the entire community pulling together to make sure students are successful. It can't be left up to teachers, it can't be left up to individual families. The community leadership can play a large role in trying to encourage students to do better and improve their efforts on these exams. So what I am looking for is some indication from the Minister that the department believes it's important for communities to see these results and take ownership of problems, if there are problems. I think that the transparency that is required here, in my mind, mandates the department to take up these issues with the communities and to play a lead role in trying to have communities come to grips with the shortcomings, if there any, in our exam results. Thank you.

It is important that we go to consistency of testing, that we are able to compare ourselves with ourselves; in other words, different school districts within the territory and that is one of the attractions of the Alberta testing process, which is important. That will help us tremendously. There is no doubt that ownership is important. We do have sometimes a difficulty of ensuring - and there is an issue with this - the confidentiality in some ways of these small schools. The information is provided back to the districts to see how districts are performing. We need to work this out in conjunction with the district education boards and the chairs, the school boards, to discuss the issue of more ownership of results and what needs to be done about results if there are difficulties and to celebrate the achievements. There is certainly no doubt that some schools are performing extremely well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a few comments and a few questions in different areas of the Minister's portfolio. First of all, I want to say it's really interesting to listen to some of the larger centres jockeying and lobbying for some of the dollars out there for some infrastructure expenditures that they want to see in their ridings. I have a concern, as a representative from a small community, sometimes the approach has a different attitude when it comes to the small communities. I wanted to ask the Minister, when it comes to repairs or upgrades or expansions or new capital expenditures, is he using the standard system of corporate capital planning? Is it per capita? Could he give me a response on that?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the area of schools, we do have a small capital budget in which we allocate for repairs and upgrades for schools in small communities. I believe that's the area, if the Member is speaking about the capital program, that we are in. As well, we are introducing and we already have introduced a school improvement initiative whereby we have identified for each DEC, DEA, approximately $20,000 to work on a program to take one school and improve their particular literacy or numeracy or language usage or science. We have eight schools at the moment that are all small schools and we want to have them run these particular pilot programs. If they can improve their literacy, their reading capability and their numeracy and so forth, if that works, it's about a half a year program, so it will last until the spring. We want to take and analyze the successes of that, the failures of that and expand that to other small schools. It's very important for us to concentrate on the small schools outside of the big centres.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, he must have missed my question. My question is how he prioritizes which schools are going to get repairs or upgrades or any capital investment, not program dollars. My question was not at all about program dollars.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's done in conjunction with Public Works and Services. We identify schools that are looking to have improvements made. We meet with the respective staff and then we bring in Public Works and Services to do that. For example, we have Lutselk'e and we are working with the Hay River Reserve on their particular school. We did Lutselk'e this year with a substantial improvement, and then we are working on the Hay River Reserve school, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Minister for his answer. In the smaller communities, the non-tax-based communities, in those cases, the school is the only educational facility in the community. It has to be able to accommodate the elementary students, the grade extensions, a lot of time the college students, Aboriginal Head Start, any other educational learning program there is, the library, distance learning. A lot of times, you can look at these facilities and anybody that walked off the street would be able to see these facilities are full. They are overcrowded, they are beyond capacity for what they are designed for. But when it comes to analysis by this government, they say the school is underutilized. When I looked at the school on the reserve, I was quite concerned, and the Minister is aware because we looked at it together. There were students being taught in the hallways. The Aboriginal language instructor is walking around with a shopping cart that he carries his material from class to class with. There are six or seven staff people sharing one office. We still couldn't find any money for that. I am really shocked that we have facilities, communities that have multi facilities and some are sitting half empty. Yet, in certain communities where there is only one facility we can't find any dollars. That really concerns me. In this case, the community had to pay. The community, the band council, had to come up and pay for a facility. Is that the new trend of this government? Is that what we are going to expect communities to do from now on, digging in their core funding or whatever and start paying for facilities in their communities?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is a process that is used and it is part of the way to identify the needs in the communities. I can appreciate the Member's concern because sometimes the school is the only building in the community that is available for utilization for educational type programs. One type of program that is available, for example, is Aboriginal Head Start. That's a federal program that is funded federally. Sometimes these are combined with the school. We don't have any objection to that, Mr. Chair, but then it becomes a problem possibly down the road of saying we need to add onto the facility, but the federal government hasn't contributed capital-wise to the Aboriginal Head Start program. It's our view that they should participate in that. We are caught in a problem from time to time.

I don't disagree that we should look at utilization of our educational facilities for a variety of programs like adult education, like Aboriginal Head Start, like early childhood development. The primary purpose of the school is a K to 12 program and that is what it's funded for and that is what is designed. It was very much appreciated that the community itself contributed in the case of the Hay River Reserve, but sometimes we can't identify enough capital to do this. Is that desirable? No. We would prefer that we would be able to finance a lot of these projects ourselves. But then we get into the whole question of other programs being run in the schools other than the K to 12 programs. We are not against that, that's just what starts to happen and there is pressure upon us to ensure that additional facilities are built. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, I would remind the Minister to look where he is getting the money from for programs he is running. It is all federal money. When it comes to Aboriginal Head Start programs, is there any other facility housed in a government building in the NWT at this point?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ootes.

If the question, Mr. Chair, is do we have Aboriginal Head Start in other schools, the one I am familiar with is in Ndilo, but the federal government paid for that facility, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. McLeod.