Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 20/02) - Education, Culture, and Employment Minister Jake Ootes is at the halfway point of his mandate. Though the challenges have been many, Ootes says he still loves the job.

Yellowknifer: We've made some strides over the last few years as far as increasing literacy, passing and graduation rates in NWT schools, but with only 13 per cent of NWT residents 18 and older holding university degrees (1998 numbers), for example, do you think there is more your ministry could do better?

Ootes: We're finding a lot of people are in the education system, but are dropping out at some point, say Grade 9, Grade 10. What happens with a lot of these people is they come back into the system. In some cases, through adult education, or through (Aurora) college with access programs, and then they go on to nursing, or teaching, but they're never registered as graduates from the high school system. We have right now the opportunity before us with all the economic development taking place. A lot of these jobs are oriented towards trades occupations, apprenticeships and so forth.

Yellowknifer: Keeping that in mind, do you think an education model based on the Alberta curriculum is appropriate for the Northwest Territories?

Ootes: I think what we recognize is the need for people to move in different directions, rather than just the academic programming itself. We do have an aboriginal study component as part of the curriculum, but our findings are that the bottleneck mostly occurs at about Grade 10. They drop out, then come back in. We need to allow to students to go out into different streams. You need different streams of English, math, and sciences, so those who don't want to carry on to higher education can complete their high school, move into the job market, or move into apprenticeships, or trades or whatever.

Yellowknifer: How successful do you think the grade extension program has been?

Ootes: We've noticed an increase in enrolment when that started. So it did bring students back into the school. It's a little to early to say that the graduation rates are there. From the standard enrolments, it indicated that people were interested. The other part that's happened is Distant Education. That is making some inroads as well.

Yellowknifer: What if students from smaller communities wanted to make use of a physics lab, for example. Whether we have online learning or not, isn't it possible that some students in the NWT could be missing out on hands-on educational tools?

Ootes: You can't supply everything to everywhere. You can't provide a lab in every community. You can't provide a shop in every community. It (Distant Education) provides the student with the opportunity. If they want to stay in that community and attend school. they can do so and complete their Grade 12 there. If there's the means to do it, go to a larger centre, then it's their choice of course.
What we can't do is build huge high schools in every community. It's just impossible.

Yellowknifer: The NWT Teachers' Association says it has a good working relationship with you, but still feel you must pay closer attention to such issues as housing and pupil to teacher ratios. How do you plan to address these issues in the future?
Ootes: We're aware that this (housing) is problematic in a number of communities. I'm working with Roger Allen on seeing what we can do in order to provide new thrust to get housing programs going in some of these communities. My concern, naturally, is how can I solve my teacher retention problem, because it is a problem.

Yellowknifer: They also say wages, increasingly, are less competitive than they were before.

Ootes: We think our wages are still as competitive as before on a national basis. Not to discredit teachers. They are valued people to us, but we think we're not bad. The biggest issue to us is retention. We have an induction program we developed, and that was instituted last year. The issues revolving around housing and generally working with the community are important issues.

Yellowknifer: And what about lowering student-teacher ratios?

Ootes: We fund the (school) boards. The boards, in turn, allocate the money. In some cases classrooms are small and in other cases they're large, but the onus really we have to leave with the boards to administer.

Yellowknifer: The North is an expensive place to run any government department. What are the biggest challenges facing your ministry?

Ootes: What is still missing is some of the social areas. I would like to continue my concentration more on the disabled, seniors, and day care. That has my attention right now, and I hope to be able to do that with our next budget.