Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions will be for the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. I’d like to continue on with students, but I guess I’m a little annoyed with his statements today in the House about the junior kindergarten being funded by the pupil-teacher ratio. I guess my first question is where this 16 to 1 pupil-teacher ratio came from, because that’s not what I’m hearing in the community. The community wants more teachers, more assistants. Where does this number come from?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This ratio 16 to 1 has always been there. It’s part of our legislation. We’ve been working with that with the school boards throughout the years. At the same time, we’ve been providing an additional $11 million so it can be based at 13 to 1 on the average throughout the Northwest Territories. It is through the legislation that was passed through this House, so that’s what we continuously work with throughout the years.
It’s not that I don’t support junior kindergarten, it’s the fact that how many times can this government use pupil-teacher ratios as an excuse to download more things to the DEAs.
When will there be additional funds added to the DEAs so that they can implement these programs that they keep downloading to them?
As I stated in this House earlier, through our engagement with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, early childhood development, the discussions that we’ve had, engagement with the general public, and education renewal and innovation, we’ve been hearing from the general public, the parents, the grandparents, the educators that we have to think innovatively within our department. We have to think strategically how we can deliver the most effective programming in the community schools. That’s one area that we felt the PTRs, which under legislation are 16 to 1, so we figured we can access that through the work with the education authorities. This is an area that we are currently accessing to provide the quality junior kindergarten programming into our school system. It will benefit those 10 communities that do not have licenced child care programming. Those are just some of the areas that we’ve been told by parents to pursue it, and we are pursuing it.
Again, I am not against junior kindergarten. I am just wondering that this money and the fact that we have these hardworking teachers and people in our public education system that are trying to do the work but they keep getting downloaded that more and more things have to be done with less money, but they’re strung out already.
When are we actually going to increase the budgets and figure out the formulas to these DEAs?
Through the education renewal innovation we are going to look at the overall formula funding for our educational partners as well. We’ve been discussing this at the early stages back in 2007 until today, how we fund the school boards, how we fund the school programming, and based on the needs of the communities. This is an area that we’ve been told that we need to seriously look at formula funding to our school system. Currently it’s based on enrolment, and now we’ve been told why couldn’t it be based on base plus and go from there. Those are some of the areas we are contemplating with our education partners. Once we develop an action plan over the summer on education renewal, those are some of the highlights that will be addressed through the business planning process.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Yes, I guess, Mr. Speaker, it’s hard to get some of the questions answered, I guess. I just don’t understand how pupil-teacher ratios can keep being the excuse for more programs being added to these schools and district educations without any additional money. I’m just wondering when the department will actually get some more money into that area.
We have to deal with the overall GNWT funding that’s been allocated to the school boards. With that, obviously, there is a surplus of over $8 million. Somehow we need to think outside the box and strategically how to best invest into our educational system. It is GNWT funding overall, and as we go through the business planning process, this means that as we go through, we’ve identified several areas of interest investment such as we did with the wage top-up. Over $511 million that we’re going to move forward with the new money once the budget’s approved here. Every year we go through this, and I, as the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, will continue to push what’s best for the children of the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
