Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment as my Member's statement on the GNWT's education renewal document and the state of education in the small communities. Can the Minister advice if the education renewal document was presented to the education councils or divisional education boards in the Northwest Territories? Mahsi.
Thank you, Member. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can inform the Member, my colleague, that the education renewal and innovation framework was shared widely with all the education bodies back in 2013 when it was first released. The Member referenced a three-year action plan in his statement. I am not sure if that was. It is my assumption it was, but I can't say for sure. I can find out.
However, this leads me to something else that I have been discovering since I took this portfolio. The communication between the department and the education bodies, the boards themselves and the regional councils, needs to be improved. I have spoken at length with the department about this, and I have reached out to all the education chairs around the territory. I haven't been able to get a hold of one, but I have spoken with all the other ones to bridge that gap and ensure that we have better communication. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Will the Minister commit to delivering on the education renewal plan and have the department staff go into all the small communities to discuss the state of education with grass-roots people?
There are two parts to the question: will the Minster commit to delivering on the ERI, and will the departmental staff go into all the small communities? The original ERI framework had a lot of big goals in there. I actually respect that document quite a bit because it says, "This is what we are going to try. We might not try them all. We are going to try them, and we will see if they work." They threw ideas out there.
It is a great document, and a lot of good things have come out of that. We have northern distance learning. There are elders in school. There are all sorts of these things that have happened. I think what we are realizing now is maybe we need to pare that down and focus on the things that we found are working.
Education is a tough department, and I know some of the Ministers have had a rough go at it over the past little while, whether it is junior kindergarten or whatever it may be. We are actually in a good place right now because the department has learned from a lot of the issues that have come out in the last few years and has done really well with gathering data and really focusing themselves. Going forward, we are going to be delivering more focused programming that hopefully will deliver results.
In terms of going to every community, I will be travelling to a lot of the communities. Like I said, I am reaching out to current and former board members and talking to as many people as I can because I want to hear from the people on the ground how education is actually being delivered in the communities.
Mahsi to the Minister for his answers. Most if not all the small communities are quite possibly facing more teacher layoffs in the near future. My community of Fort Providence has lost four teacher positions this past June. This is creating increasing workloads for the existing teachers as they are teaching more than one grade and quite possibly increasing the stress levels for the teachers. Shouldn't a situation like this raise red flags in the education system, and what is the GNWT Department of ECE going to do about these situations in the small, outlying communities?
ECE provides funding to all the education bodies in the Northwest Territories based on the School Funding Framework, and that, essentially, is based on the number of students who are enrolled. Then once the regional education body receives that funding, it allocates it to individual schools. It is the principals of those schools who determine how that funding is best used. When there are declining enrollments, that means there is less money. That means there are fewer teachers.
This is something that was discussed at length in the last Assembly, and I know that there were comments made that we need to look at this and we need to determine if this is really the best way to fund schools. I understand the Member's concerns. I am alive to them. That is why I am happy to be in this position, because these are the exact kind of things that I want to deal with this term.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
