SAHTU
A select group of high school students from across the territory will get the chance to tell the government how they would improve NWT's education system to help close the gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal graduation rates.

At the first of a series of community meetings for Education, Culture and Employment's Aboriginal Achievement Program held late last month in Norman Wells, local leaders, educators and parents gathered with Education Minister Jackson Lafferty to talk about the many challenges facing Sahtu students in pursuit of a quality education.

"It was very productive," said Lafferty.

But they all agreed there was one important group missing.

"We were told, 'why don't you include the students?' So we're in the process of adding students to our list so they can partake in our discussions as well," Lafferty said.

A couple of students from each school, to be chosen by their teachers or peers, will be invited to upcoming meetings of the government working group known as the Aboriginal Student Achievement Program. It was first formed in May 2009 for the purpose of tracking and improving aboriginal graduation rates, but it hadn't previously sought community feedback on how to deal with the problem.

This year the department has budgeted $1.3 million toward promoting the achievements of aboriginal students, according to spokesperson Amy Doerksen. The funding pays for an Aboriginal Student Achievement co-ordinator position, after-school tutoring programs and the development of "culturally appropriate orientation" for new teachers, among other projects.

"We're reaching out to people because at the community level they all have solutions and we want to get some ideas from them on where we can improve in our programming, the policies that we have, even the curriculum that we have," Lafferty said. "I feel this is very important to us in the Northwest Territories and also to my department. I just want to show them that we're fully committed as a department to proceed further to resolve these issues."

NWT graduation rates have been improving for all students, regardless of race, in recent years. In 2009, 433 students graduated from high school in the territory, compared to only 285 in 2001, according to the NWT Bureau of Statistics. Last year, 222 of those grads were aboriginal while 211 were non-aboriginal.

But the education department, which has been tracking aboriginal graduation rates for more than a decade, has statistics that show aboriginal students in NWT are still lagging behind. In 2007-08, 45 per cent of aboriginal 18-year-olds in the NWT were high school grads, compared with 69 per cent

of their non-aboriginal peers.

Now, with community meetings scheduled in each region until next spring, Lafferty is prepared to hear more ideas for the NWT's educational priorities, many of which Sahtu leaders already zeroed in on during the last week of September. Staff from Sahtu schools continued to participate in literacy programming meetings last week. They focused on the need for more childcare services and early childhood education, student and family support - which Lafferty calls a "big-ticket item" - improved aboriginal language curriculum and literacy.

"A lot of the discussion was focused on (the idea that) we have to do this together. It has to come from the community and it has to come from home. Elders, especially, have pushed for that," Lafferty said. "That was a key theme that we've been hearing from the leadership - it really sparked a good discussion to have with the leadership. We've always been pushing for working together," he added.

"We cannot do it alone as a department, so that's part of the reason we're doing this."

The department hopes to wrap up its last meeting in Inuvik in April and then use the feedback it's received to issue a report sometime in the spring.

Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya, who attended part of those earlier meetings in Norman Wells, said he hopes community input will "shake the foundations

of the education department."

"I felt very encouraged and very enthusiastic about all the leaders being there and having an honest look at education in the Sahtu and the Northwest Territories," he said. "I'm hopeful that some of the things were said by people in the Sahtu that the minister will take to heart."

The department has been criticized in recent months because many students who graduate from small community schools, including those in the Sahtu, must take upgrading courses before they can move on to post-secondary school, partly due to schools' limited range of offered courses.

"We're a long ways to stepping up some of the standards in our schools in the Sahtu," Yakeleya said. "We'll have to wait and see if this is going to make a dent in the structure of our education system."

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