Alfred Moses

Just day-to-day operations. We always meet with our organizations that we do fund. This is just day-to-day operations and meetings. Once the announcement came out, we had to go out and talk to superintendents to get input on this new budget announcement that was addressed earlier on in this sitting. They are just day-to-day operations that we always have, meetings with superintendents.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The college was provided a budget reduction target, and those discussions happened back in September. In cooperation and consultation with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, the college identified a number of proposed reductions to look at meeting this target, and that was known to me in November 2016 and was confirmed in December, and then they became part of the main estimates. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we have all heard here, this government is committed to fully funding junior kindergarten. The reductions that the Member is asking is a decision on the school boards themselves, and that is something that they are going to have to go back and look at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I mentioned, staff at the department have been meeting with the superintendents to make sure that it is a smooth transition as we roll out junior kindergarten moving forward. All those are being discussed right now, as I mentioned earlier.

The Social Work Diploma program, like many other Aurora College programs, is recognized by southern institutions and post-secondary institutions as well through transfer agreements and through individual course equivalency processes. With the strategic plan that we're going to be looking at having developed this year, hopefully we will see other programming fit, reflective of the Skills 4 Success action plan that we have and strategy that we have, as well as the Labour Market Information Report that we tabled in the House last year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, we do have a good partnership with College nordique as well as Dechinta. We have made some improvements. We have increased funding for Dechinta. We also went to multi-year contribution agreements, where before it was a year-to-year basis. They know and are given the knowledge that they are going to have funding for the next three years, and then we will continue to have those discussions with them, with any kind of improvements, programs, curriculum that we have, and we will continue to have those partnerships with College nordique as well as Dechinta. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The NWT JK curriculum for four- and five-year-old children is play-based and supports children's cognitive, social, emotional, creative, and physical development, as well as cultural. As I mentioned, the EDI results that we've been seeing with the programs that already run in the Northwest Territories, we're seeing a big improvement in the communities that are offering junior kindergarten that are entering into the kindergarten system.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned earlier, we are going to have the new strategic plan for the Aurora College. That's going to redefine how Aurora College runs its programs to provide the program services that our Northerners want to get into, and also for the indemand jobs.

As I mentioned, this program in particular had low admission and low graduation rates. As I mentioned, again, the Aurora College, they have the autonomy to make the decisions that they want to do in terms of developing their whole strategic planning, and we support the decisions that the Aurora College makes. Thank you...

As I mentioned, the Aurora College does have that autonomy to make the decisions they need. We did give them direction with the mandate on the priorities that our government came up with at the beginning of the 18th Legislative Assembly. We looked at that labour market information demand. We are going through a strategy right now, and that strategy should be available in June. We are working with the board of governors, we are working with the president to make those changes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just recently in the news yesterday and the information I was given the students, as well as instructors for the Social Work Program, historically we’ve had low admission as well as low graduation rates within that program, although I will say that there have been some successes for the people that did graduate. Aurora College does have the autonomy to make these decisions in where they're looking at moving forward with the programs that they provide. We support those decisions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.