Debates of February 21, 2008 (day 12)
Question 145-16(2) Focus on Early Learning Opportunities
Mr. Speaker, during the earliest years of brain development, the potential for learning can be most fully established. I'd like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment: how does our current allocation of resources reflect the huge opportunity we have to be effective by focussing strongly on the very young?
Mahsi. Mr. Speaker, our government does realize that learning starts at a young age.
Our department — and also the Government of the Northwest Territories — does consider funding various levels, such as early childhood programs, early childhood contributions and policies, and children’s initiatives. These are just some of the areas I’m highlighting. It is in the works. We've been funding for a number of years. There are also federal funding initiatives.
Those are the areas we will continue to fund, because we as a government feel it is important to start at an early age.
I’ll just highlight some of the federal initiatives that have been undertaken and will continue: Early Childhood Development, early learning and child trust fund, child care space initiatives — we support the NWT Literacy Council, as well — and also program enhancement grants, language programs. So we do have various federal initiatives and also the G.N.W.T., with our ECE department. We do deliver various programs to promote that. Mahsi.
I know a big focus and a big interest of this government — and of myself, personally — is cultural and language diversity. Languages, of course, hold the cultures and hold different ways of knowing. We know now that language development takes place especially early in life. That’s when we get hard-wired for it, and we have the ability thereafter to speak it. But we need to have a lot of exposure early in life.
What programs do we have that actually get our most proficient language speakers together with our very young? Are we supporting our elders and those who can speak these languages most proficiently? Are we supporting them getting together with very young children, even if they’re just speaking in their presence, not necessarily teaching them? Apparently that will do the job. What programs do we have to support that?
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Member’s question in this specific area. It has always been my interest when I was a Regular MLA. We do continue to offer support in these areas. We support training programs through Aurora College and with our respective partnership from the Southern Institute, as well, deliver the ALTA program — aboriginal instructor’ program — and also the CTIP program, TIP program.
Mr. Speaker, we also work with the communities. The elders are the most valuable tool in our communities as well. So we utilize their services in the communities, because they’re the ones who give us wisdom and knowledge to pass on to our younger generation. We use them in our schools, in our communities, during activities, functions, with respect to education activities. We will continue to provide those services at the schools and at the community level. That’s the areas we focus on. Mahsi.
I appreciate the comments of the Minister. Most of the programs he mentioned, perhaps almost all, were focused on children in school. Really, what we’re learning is that so much of this potential takes place before children are school-aged. So I’m particularly interested in getting elders together with the very young.
In my time in communities, I see a lot of elders looking for something to do, in a way, especially when they are unable to be as physically active as they may have been before. This seems like a huge opportunity.
What programs are we pursuing, or will the Minister commit to, that will get those proficient language speakers and culture holders together with the very young?
Mr. Speaker, we do provide programs such as Head Start, a pre-school aboriginal language and cultural perspective, and also we’re promoting more aboriginal languages at school, whether it be K-12 or continuing on. We do have aboriginal instructors in classrooms as well. We do also utilize elders, as I indicated earlier, and we had an aboriginal instructors’ forum last month, I do believe, to try to get their input into how we can produce even more children to speak their language.
So we are getting input from the groups and also from the community leaders and also from the elders on how we can improve our programs and also the support we deliver in our communities. We will continue to seek out all the information, input and advice that we possibly can to improve our programs. With that, we are doing what we can under the department. Mahsi.
Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
The other point that I know is of concern is that our early childhood workers often don’t meet the educational standards, particularly the federal standards they are coming out with. The Aurora College programs are currently not producing qualified child care workers. I would like to hear what the Minister is doing on this and any reinvestment-type opportunities he sees with respect to any of these questions I have asked.
Mr. Speaker, we do provide funding to our childhood development certification program at Aurora College. We will continue to do that. We are producing results. We are producing certified teachers, I guess we can call them. We’ll focus on that as well, and where we can improve our program, we are certainly open to that. Certainly we will take those into consideration, and we will continue to support in these areas. Mahsi.