Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a number of comments as well. Some of them are going to be repetitive, but I think they bear repeating.
At the outset, I want to say that I’m dismayed about the lack of progress in the department on reducing our graduation rates. I feel that the department is doing a lot of really good things. We have a lot of projects on the go, but they don’t seem to be all that coordinated, and in my estimation, we’re not spending enough, we don’t put enough emphasis on basic education. Whether it be preschool, whether it be K to 12, even, I think, advanced education. I think that we are doing too many sort of special projects, some of which are certainly required, but I think if we are going to provide the education that most of us seem to feel that our kids deserve, we need to be concentrating more on making sure that the kids get the basic education
that is required, making sure that the standards and the levels of education in every school and every community are the same across the territory. I hear pretty much on a regular basis that kids in schools outside of the regional centres are not achieving a standard or a level of education that is the same as in the regional centres and in the capital. That’s a real concern for me. I don’t see any reason why we should not be requiring the same of kids in a community school that we require of kids in a school in Yellowknife or Hay River or Inuvik.
I think that those results are evident in the Alberta Achievement Test results and the stats that the department produced awhile ago on functional grade levels and so on. It indicates that students in community schools are not achieving quite as well as I think they should and they’re not achieving on an equal basis with students in other regional centres and here in the capital.
I think that maybe the department needs to rethink what it’s doing, needs to coordinate what it’s doing and put a focus on what I like to think of as the basics. You know, the three R’s, reading, writing and arithmetic.
It’s been mentioned already, but I wanted to just mention in terms of the recommendations from the Standing Committee on Government Operations, their review of the Official Languages Act and the fact that those recommendations have not yet been acted upon. I believe the Minister said that that’s coming forward and I’m glad to hear that, but I am somewhat dismayed that we haven’t seen a legislative proposal already. I would hope it’s coming in the very near future.
In terms of early childhood development, I will have questions certainly when we get to that section. The Minister’s heard me say before, I don’t think we are doing enough. Interestingly, I heard Mr. Bromley say that he objected to the statement that K to 12 is a cornerstone of building a strong and sustainable future. I have to agree with him. It’s part of it. Absolutely, a strong K to 12 system is required, but we have to change what we’re doing. We have to change our mindset and we have to start thinking about kids from the moment that they’re born. We talk about prenatal from a health perspective, but we have to talk about the education, so to speak, of our children from the moment they are born until pretty much from dust to dust, or birth to dust. We don’t start from dust; we start at birth.
I wanted to comment. I have concerns about Aurora College. The Adult Literacy Basic Education program is run pretty much by the college and with the NWT Literacy Council, but I don’t think that we are achieving what we should through the ALBE program. Certainly, the program review office of the government has done some evaluation of that program. There have been recommendations there that we are inefficient, that we are not really
achieving the best that we could, and I have yet to see any suggestion for changes in that program. I would certainly hope that in this Assembly there would be something from the department to revamp the ALBE program and make it more efficient and also make the people attending ALBE programs more successful. I don’t think we’re creating success in that program.
I am somewhat concerned to hear that income assistance requests are increasing, but we are not really increasing the money. That doesn’t quite jibe with me and I will have some questions when we get to that section. I’m trying to think. What else have I got here? I guess just in general – and it has been pointed out already – the department budget is increasing about 1 percent but forced growth, for instance, is about 1.5 percent, if my math is correct. It leads me to believe that somewhere within the department there are cuts to programs and services or something that are being made in order to account for the forced growth which isn’t being covered by the increase in the budget. I would like to get an explanation of that when we get further on.
I believe that’s all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you.