Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Serving the Hub of the North since 1960
Volume 56 • Issue 6
FREE
Aboriginal graduation gap growing BY IAN GRAHAM
Manitoba s Proxy Cohort High School Graduation Rate Non-Aboriginal and Self-Declared Aboriginal Students, 2010-2014
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
NOT EVERYONE A FAN OF WOLF CAPITAL CONCEPT NEWS - PAGE 2
RCMP UPDATES CHAMBER NEWS - PAGE 3
WILD WIN LAST TWO HOME GAMES SPORTS - PAGE 7
CROSSWALK DECISION UPHELD PAGE 8
Aboriginal students in Manitoba graduate from high school at a much lower rate than non-aboriginal students and – despite public commitments from the province to address this disparity – the gap has widened since 201, according to a report from the auditor general released in January. Province-wide, only 55 per cent of aboriginal students are graduating from high school compared to 96 per cent of non-aboriginal students, according to the report, Improving Educational Outcomes for Kindergarten to Grade 12 Aboriginal Students. That gap widened from 2010, when the difference between the two was 34.8 per cent. “This is especially concerning because Manitoba has a relatively large Aboriginal population, which is significantly younger and growing much more rapidly than its non-Aboriginal population,” said the report. “It is further concerning because the Department [of Education and Advanced Learning]’s data indicates that the gap is widening.” The Thompson Citizen requested data on the local graduation rates of aboriginal students versus non-aboriginal students or the student population as a whole from the School District of Mystery Lake (SDML) but did not receive any hard numbers. However, the community report for 2014-15 indicated that the graduation rate for the district as a whole was 54.6 per cent last school year, down slightly from 201314, when it was 55.9 per cent and comparable to the 2012-13 rate of 54.1 per cent. In the five years previous to that, the rate
The gap between graduation rates for aboriginal and nonaboriginal students in Manitoba grew from 34.8 per cent in 2010 to 41.7 per cent in 2014, said a report by the auditor general. was below 50 per cent, with the lowest point coming in 2009-10, when the graduation rate was 39.3 per cent. Graduation rates in Manitoba have been calculated using the proxycohort method since 2002, which measures the number of students who graduate in a given year against the number of Grade 9 students who were registered in the same school or division four years earlier. SDML outperforms the province as a whole when it comes to the number of aboriginal teachers it employs. For Manitoba as a whole, the percentage of teachers in provincial schools who self-declared as aboriginal increased from six per cent in 2009 to nine per cent in 2013. In Thompson, there
are about 45 aboriginal teachers in a total staff of 256, says superintendent of educational services and programming Lorie Henderson, which approaches 18 per cent. As in the rest of the province, the percentage of aboriginal teachers trails the percentage of aboriginal students, which is about 50 per cent in Thompson. Henderson points out that SDML is making efforts to improve how the educational system works for aboriginal students, noting how much things have changed since she went to school. Henderson, who is aboriginal herself, still has a copy of her Grade 5 social studies textbook, which, in the section dealing with Indians, as they were commonly called, has photos of
First Nations people accompanied by questions such as, “Do you think the father has a job?” or “Do they look lazy?” “I think we’ve come a long way from that,” Henderson says, recalling how reading such material made her feel as the only aboriginal student in her class and how educators now are seeking to acknowledge previous biases in the school system. “The corrective history is something that’s really important for us.” Among the programs and initiatives to support a more inclusive educational environment in place in the SDML include cultural proficiency training for students and staff, which has been in place since 2010, as well as the Cree language education program at Wapanohk Community School, the Thompson Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee, landbased education programs that teach traditional skills like hunting and fishing, the Youth Aboriginal Council, Aboriginal Awareness Week in May, and high school courses like aboriginal education for students in Grades 9 to 11, Cree for Grade 9 to 12 students, a Grade 12 course in aboriginal law and a Grade 11 traditional knowledge course. Equally important, says Henderson, is integrating aboriginal themes and teachings throughout the academic courses, something that is done with elementary students studying Cree. “We do embed the language into the curriculum,” she says, while also combining concepts from math, for example, with traditional teachings by having students calculate how many furs would be needed to create a particular piece of clothing. The auditor gener-
RAM 1500 20% OFF!
0% for 84 months! don’t pay until April!
al noted that the integration of aboriginal perspectives in the province had been most successful in the area of social studies but less so in other subjects. The auditor general’s report also noted that the provincial government targets specified funding towards aboriginal students in addition to the approximately $1 billion spent on education as a whole. This comes in the form of Aboriginal Academic Achievement (AAA) and Building Student Success with Aboriginal Parents (BSSAP) grants, of which SDML received $267,000 combined in 2014-15. Total provincial funding through these two grants in 2015-16 equalled about $290 per self-identified aboriginal student, as compared to per-pupil funding of $1,195 per aboriginal student in B.C. and $1,142 in Alberta. The auditor general noted that in order to accurately track the graduation rate and other academic indicators of aboriginal students, school districts need to know how many there are and that three of the four districts surveyed in compiling the report, which did not include SDML, thought that there was considerable under-reporting. This can be rectified by offering students and parents the opportunity to self-identify annually, rather than just at the time of kindergarten or initial registration and when changing schools, as in many districts. Henderson says SDML allows parents to identify their children as aboriginal at any time they wish, but that parents are sometimes suspicious about why they want this information, something she says is probably a legacy of the residential school system.
www.twinmotors.ca THOMPSON 40 Station Road, Thompson, MB 1-800-268-2312 • 204-677-2312 FLIN FLON 110 PTH 10A, Flin Flon MB 1-888-778-3686 • 204-687-3686 THE PAS Highway #10 South & 17th St. The Pas, MB • 1-888-623-6401 DAUPHIN 1212 Main St., South Dauphin Dauphin, MB • 1-888-270-6804