Thank you, Mr. Chair. Last year, we achieved about a 50 percent graduation rate for the first time ever in the Northwest Territories. In 2001-02, the graduation rate was 36 percent, just for comparison sake. The other interesting note with our graduation rate was that it was almost evenly split 50 percent aboriginal and 50 percent non-aboriginal. It was a 49/51 split, but it was very close to being evenly split. Our participation rates are very close to those that are found across Canada. The participation rate means the number of students participating in high school in that age group that should be in high school. Our participation rates in the Northwest Territories now are very close to the Canadian average. Ten years ago, we were only about 40 percent participation rate. So we have seen a fairly dramatic growth there.
In terms of literacy, there was an international assessment of literacy that was recently released just a couple of weeks ago. That was the first time that the Northwest Territories has participated in that survey. What it found was that the Northwest Territories compared on par with Canada for literacy rates, but it found a significant difference between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal performance. So we clearly have challenges still. In terms of the population, we know that those who are older now tend to have lower rates of literacy because they didn't have access to programs years ago. The years of schooling have gone up very significantly since 1990. A lot of what we are seeing is age related. People who are younger are tending to perform more like their peers across Canada, but we have a large segment of our population that didn't have that opportunity, for one reason or other, to access literacy training or education. So we have a lot of work still to do in adult literacy.