Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this point in time in the North, we make it very clear to encourage our youth to go on to post-secondary education. My question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Our Student Financial Assistance Program is a very good one here in the Northwest Territories. I wanted to ask, the subsidy that the government provides to students has not increased for some years. I know this has been under review since the 16th Assembly. I would ask the Minister what is SFA likely increasing by. How much? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We like to brag about our SFA program comparable to other jurisdictions. We have one of the best Student Financial Assistance programs, and as the Member alluded to, we are in the process of finalizing the recommendations that were brought to our attention.
I did meet with the standing committee to review those and we will be coming forward with those recommendations and making some changes to reflect on what we’ve heard from the students, from the teachers, from the parents and all of those individuals from the general public. So in order to make those changes, we need to come back to the standing committee and we will be doing that in the near future. Mahsi.
Thank you. I want to ask the department again in terms of trying to encourage our students to go on to college and university. What is the department doing to encourage more students to take on a challenge? Mahsi.
Mahsi. We do have various organizations that are working with us, whether it be the Mine Training Society, whether it be career development officers at the community level that do promote and encourage students, especially those individuals that are in Grade 10, Grade 11, Grade 12 that attend post-secondary as part of their tour orientation. So we do encourage those students to pursue post-secondary, and we work closely with the career officers and identify those individuals, what their interests are and work with them.
Our SFA is there for them, highlighting which area of interest and work with those individuals through their principals, through their teachers as well. So we’re doing what we can as a department working with our outreach workers in the community. So we’ll continue to pursue that. Mahsi.
I’d like to thank the Minister. For this fall, just recently there were some realities that came out in terms of facts because attendance was cited as a concern. What plans does the department have to address those concerns on attendance rates for this fall? Mahsi.
Mahsi. The attendance, we currently deal with that through high school and through the Student Achievement Initiative that we pursued. We do have a plan in place. We’re rolling out the implementation plans. That’s one of the areas of interest is attendance, deal with the attendance. But when it comes to post-secondary, the students are more mature and they need to be independent. So we can’t really monitor the post-secondary students per se, but we’re doing what we can with the schools, the high schools to continue monitoring. The results of absenteeism have become a challenge. So we work with the education authorities to deal with those matters. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
