Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It goes without saying that our current NWT education system is in dire need of an overhaul. The recent Auditor General of Canada clearly pointed out numerous opportunities of reform, and we know that the department has been busy evaluating the delivery of northern education.

To be clear, we are not saying the department is doing a lousy job, nor am I saying the school districts aren’t pulling their weight, nor am I inferring that we have a poor quality of educators out there. What I’m saying is that we have a problem – a big problem – and it’s going to take more than a department to fix this ship.

I’m sure the department is sparing no dime in gathering the best experts, discussion papers, research and feasibility studies on what changes it will need to institute. Then we are more than certain we will have a series of forums, follow-up discussions and reports at some juncture. The point is that this is the wheel of government. This is what the general public sees as we tackle obstacles or improve services. But I have a question. If you field test the kids as to what they want and have these kids had the ability to grade their teachers.

Business and government survey their employees all the time and make policy changes based on a skill data. So why would our students be any different?

The premise of grading teachers is nothing new and is being done all over the United States. Kids stare at their teachers for hundreds of hours a year, which gives them an unbiased reliability and measuring teacher performance. Some of the

results from this exercise produced more reliable means testing than student test score growth and was deemed an important measure of testing effective teaching.

Most research documents and education reformers worldwide are obsessed with teaching quality and are referring to this instrument as a perfect gauge to complement education effectiveness.

With this in mind, I will be asking the Minister of Education later today about if education reform is on the horizon and if he and his department are looking at such models as a means of achieving the full potential of our students. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.