SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - NWT educators are planning a widespread public advertising campaign to promote school attendance across the territory in hopes of combating low aboriginal graduation rates.

Raising attendance levels is a main priority for the Aboriginal Student Achievement program, said chairperson Roy Erasmus, who is also assistant deputy minister for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. On average, aboriginal NWT students miss at least one day of school per week, adding up to two full years of classes missed by the time they get to Grade 10.

"You could have the best system in the world, but if the kids aren't in school, they're most likely not going to learn that much," Erasmus said.

The program, which is directed by a committee, is a partnership of representatives from the GNWT, Dene Nation, corporate businesses, the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, the NWT Metis Nation, the Native Women's Association, the NWT Teachers' Association and school superintendents. The committee has met three times since it formed in May, with its next meeting scheduled for Dec. 1 in Yellowknife.

"We all realize that the school system is not working as well as it should and since we're all looking for ways to improve the efficiency ... it's better to work together," he said. "Even though we're saying it's aboriginal student achievement, whatever we do will affect - should affect - all the students."

In addition to the ad campaign, which is expected to be complete sometime next year and will include posters and possibly door-to-door advocates, Erasmus said the committee is also planning to track attendance through "pilot projects" at schools in each region and putting more effort into co-ordinating activities run through all of the territory's school boards.

"It's kind of a mish-mash. People are doing different things in different places," Erasmus said. "So we thought that if we could all agree on what should be done across the Northwest Territories, then we can focus better and make better utilization of our money."

Other hot topics the committee has discussed include K-12 literacy levels, the potential for Northern teacher orientation programs and increasing Internet bandwidth so as to offer improved distance education services in the future.

In 2008-2009, there were 117 students enrolled in distance education courses through Aurora College, 24 of them studying at post-secondary schools under University of the Arctic's umbrella. So far this fall, 13 students have signed up for upgrading courses.

Jason Panter, Aurora College's manager of distributed learning, information systems and technology, works with students enrolled in distance learning. In his two years working there, Panter said these programs are becoming more popular.

"As bandwidth grows, we're able to do more and more," he said. "As (distance learning is) promoted more and as word of mouth gets out about it and as we promote it more, then we're having more students sign up every year," he said. "This year we're really picking up."

Panter said students, whether they're recent grads or are looking to start a new career, are attracted to distance programs mainly because they don't have to move away from home and can take a wide range of classes that aren't available in their communities through the college's partnerships with other post-secondary institutions.

"We can cover anything from upgrading courses all the way up to university degrees," he said.

Low bandwidth is one of biggest challenges to delivering quality distance education to some communities, Panter said, because it slows web browsing speeds and makes it difficult to access extra content such as instructional videos or audio recordings.

Paulatuk's Angik school is so far the only school in NWT to offer a virtual school program, through Sunchild E-Learning, that allows students to take interactive classes via satellite connection and communicate with teachers via microphone or text message.

Students' independent work ethics, Panter said, are another issue.

"The other biggest issue is that a student's got to be ready to work on their own," Panter said. "They don't necessarily have an instructor there over their shoulder and you know, they have to pick up the phone or e-mail them to contact them," he said, adding support workers in community learning centres have helped students a lot.

Nona German, a trained social worker, works with the Northern Student Education Initiative to support NWT and Nunavut students who move to Edmonton for post-secondary school. At any given time, she said, there are about 200 students from the territories in Edmonton. German doesn't see them all, but works on an individual level, doing things like talking to landlords about student housing and reminding the student when it's time to go to class.

"Some of the kids, they come down here and they don't know how to do homework. They don't know how to study, they just don't know how to do those things because they've never learned. And they've never truly understood career planning," German said.

"Quite frankly, I would be willing to bet that a lot of students would have a hard time with independent learning and the motivation to do it on your own. That is really hard to do. How do you motivate them to do it?"

It goes back to the issues of school attendance and community support, German said.

"It's horrendous for teachers to try and teach curriculum with that kind of attendance. And until that really gets fixed, from a community level, from a parent level, from a student commitment level, it's a long, long road to recovery for any school system."