Thank you, Mr. Dent. Welcome, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Devitt, to our proceedings. We left off yesterday, committee, on page 8-17, activity summary, education and culture, operations expenditure summary, $170.160 million. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under the early childhood development, I'm not sure if I'm asking this question in the right place or not, but I have a couple of questions on the support for day care and how it's administered. I wonder if the Minister could update us on what the level of subsidy is for parents who qualify to have their children in day care. I'd like to ask the Minister about that because childcare seems to be a real challenge for parents that want to work, who may be on a relatively low income. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do provide a subsidy to low income families in order for them to be able to access childcare and because it's related to income, it's something that is tough to say what the subsidy would be in each situation. We could get that information to the Member, though.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the level of support is related to the individual's income. Could the Minister provide us with a range of what that support might look like? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In general, and the reason that I would say that it varies so much is that the subsidy would only be available, typically, for students and for people who are on income support. That's why things vary there, because for income support we assess a family's need and then provide a top-up in order to cover what is needed.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So there is no support for, say, like a single working mother, not on income support but in a fairly low income bracket, say working for an hourly wage for a private company, which, you know, could be a scenario in any given community. There is no support for that individual whatsoever? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The amounts that are available are always assessed by income, so I can't say that somebody who is working might not qualify for some support. In fact, somebody who has income of $2,400 a month could still qualify, but they may be receiving a top-up through income support. Much of our support through the Income Support Program does go to support the people who are engaged in work.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you. Well, I don't sit on the Social Programs committee and probably if I did I'd be more familiar with this program and how it works. So maybe I'll just leave it at that and just say, though, that there seems to be people who could be working who are challenged by the high costs of day care or childcare who then would view that as a barrier to working, and I've seen quite a few instances of it in my community. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would agree that we'd all like to see the subsidies increased more, and we actually have some money in this budget to do that. We will be expanding the availability of the program in the next program year. I would be happy to provide the Member with some examples so that she can understand how the subsidy works right now. I think once you see that, it makes it easier to understand. As we are able to expand the program, we'll bring more families into the area where they can access the support that's needed.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Next on the list I have Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Questions under education operations and development of schools, I'm assuming that's part of the funding that ECE provides to our schools based on the formulas that we use. Over the years, over the last six or seven years, the PTR ratio has been going down quite substantially and there has been extra money put forward into the schools as well as in support services, inclusive schooling and such. However, I know that there is certain programming that schools do provide that are not funded. I can't remember all the details on that. I think I made a statement a while back but...Library services, for example, are not included,

music teachers, or any of the extra programs that some of the schools provide are not funded. They have to find the money from within. I'm just wondering if there's any plan from the department to review what is included and not in PTR and also just review in a larger perspective about are we doing better in our schools? Are we reducing the pupil/teacher ratio on the class at ground level? Is there any mechanism to do that?

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We report pupil/teacher ratio in the Northwest Territories the same way that it is reported by all other jurisdictions in Canada and that allows comparability between jurisdictions so that everybody can say we're comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. That said, Ms. Lee is right; we don't tell a school that they have to put somebody in the library. We don't tell the school that they have to have a vice-principal. The schools determine what their needs are in consultation with the DEAs in their communities, because we think it's something that parents and those who are elected to a DEA should have significant control over.

We provide the funding, but there's a considerable amount of flexibility. The boards could choose to either have specialist teachers or not choose to have specialists and reduce class size. While we say that there's, right now, an average of about 15.5 students per teacher in the Northwest Territories, again, Ms. Lee is quite right; that doesn't translate into 15.5 kids in every classroom because many classes, or in many cases, the school boards have determined there's a better way to allocate people. At this point, we don't require the boards to report to us on how large or how small their classes are. That tends to vary by the size of the community. A community like Kakisa where you've got perhaps seven or eight students in the whole school with a teacher and a classroom assistant, you've got a fairly low PTR. However, a larger high school in one of the major centres like Inuvik, Hay River or Yellowknife, may choose to concentrate students in a larger class some of the times.

It's difficult to say, in order to come up with what is actually happening on the ground. The best way to do that is through the DEAs and what parents have decided is the right way to see the school, or class size.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. I do appreciate the independence and flexibility built into the funding regime, because we do appreciate that the DEAs are elected and it's another layer of government and leaders. My point is, though, we spend a lot of government money in a lot of areas and we often do try to find indicators or result reports or something to show some sort of progress or whatever. I do appreciate that we get, I don't know, I guess they are graduation rates we look at, we look at achievement tests, but I have not heard of any testing or result reporting system that would indicate whether...and I'm not really hearing that from the parents either, I'm only familiar with mostly the Yellowknife situation, although when we do go to communities we do try to visit schools and talk to educators and such. In our schools in Yellowknife we have given a considerable amount of money in six or seven years. I know that in 1999, during the 14th Assembly election, the high PTR, pupil/teacher ratio, was a huge issue and the lack of funding for support services was also a big issue. Over the seven years we have, I think, increased our funding by 20 to 30 percent, at least. I just want to be able to tell that given the demand and the needs that were there that this extra money is showing some results. I'm sure they are, I just don't know where. If that system is not in place, would the Minister undertake to see, I don't know, maybe we need to do a survey or something because in our schools we continue to see crowded schools, we continue to see a lot of teachers, students and parents raising a lot of money to subsidize or to enhance the programming that's available. I think it's always good for the government, at all levels, to work together to see if we are spending the money in the best way possible and that we are aware of the goals that we are trying to achieve and that we set up some kind of mechanism to see that that is happening.

In areas like health, we try to look at health indicators and all sorts of issues and I do understand that it might be more difficult in education areas, but I think it would be helpful for us because if we, even for future use, you know, if we are to continue to reduce pupil/teacher ratio...I guess, I mean a basic assumption could be made that lower pupil/teacher ratio is always better than a higher one, but I think there is room for us to see, okay, what extra money do we have or what money are we operating with and are we using it as best as possible. I'd like to ask the Minister if he would work within the department to see if we could come up with some kind of result system. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Lee mentioned a couple of the ways in which we assess the progress within the system, one being graduation rates and the Alberta achievement tests that we use for grades 3, 6 and 9. We are also requiring teachers now to report the functional grade level of students to the department, so that allows us to track, year over year, our progresses as students move through the grade level at which they are performing. This spring, we will be conducting another -- I think it's actually started -- student needs assessment and we will be tabulating the results from that survey this spring, with the results being available by this August. That information has, in the past, been used to help us justify the increase in funding for student support and for helping to drive the decrease in the pupil/teacher ratio. I'm confident that through these measures that we're taking, that we will see fairly good reporting on what is happening in the classroom and what people in the classroom tell us needs to happen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.