Thank you, Mr. Chair. Moving on here, I just wanted to commend the department for
looking into the junior kindergarten. That’s really needed in the communities. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen an increase in the demand to increase our grade levels, and I think that this is one way to start tackling that issue. I know it is a real challenge in the smaller communities to keep our grade levels up because of the shortage of teachers compared to students. A lot of times we have one teacher for two or three grades and that is very challenging, I have heard from a lot of the teachers in larger centres or even in the South. I had the opportunity to actually go to school down there when I was in junior high and high school, so I know it is a huge difference when you compare our education here in the Territories. I will use myself as an example. You know up to Grade 7 I had a 90 percent average, pretty good marks, until I went to Edmonton. It’s very different. The amount of homework you get in the South compared to here in the North is overwhelming when you don’t expect that, but it is a good experience. You also have a lot of other subjects down there, like automotives, as I mentioned earlier, and art, drama, all these different types of extra credits you can get. You know, that’s something we have to aim towards here in the North. I know it will take time, but I think we could get there.
One thing that the grade levels don’t show is how many of our students here in the North experience. That is one thing that I noticed, going to school in the South, our students here experience a lot more in their young lives than students do in the South, whether it’s hunting, camping, trapping, that is a way of life and teaches them how to survive, and you can’t put a grade level on that. I think, as they move on in their years, that will help out a lot. I think we are on the right track here.
One thing that I hoped to see and I would like to ask the question to the Minister, I see languages on here and I noticed in some of the presentations we have received, we are supposed to have an Inuvialuktun instructor in Aklavik and I just wanted to know where the department was with that. Thank you.