Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to address some further questions to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. The Minister knows that we have eight communities in the NWT who have Aboriginal Head Start programs.
I’d like to ask the Minister why he does not recognize how valuable these eight preschools are, why does he not recognize how successful they are, how much better prepared Aboriginal Head Start students are than non-Aboriginal Head Start kids when they get to kindergarten? Why does he not accept the value of the Aboriginal Head Start programs, work in concert with them, and offer the best possible programming for our four-year-olds?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We do recognize the Aboriginal Head Start program.
I am very glad that the Minister knows those programs exist, and I hope he knows how valuable they are. I’d like to ask the Minister whether he knows how many four-year-olds live in each community where junior kindergarten will start in September of 2014.
Does the department know how many spaces will be needed in those 29 communities where junior kindergarten will be started? Has there been any analysis of the number of four-years-olds that exist in each community, and have they considered using the Aboriginal Head Start programs to offer junior kindergarten instead of starting a brand new program in those eight communities? Thank you.
We did compile all that information. As I stated, junior kindergarten is not a fresh topic of discussion here. It has been discussed for a number of years now as part of the process we’ve been going through. Compiling all the information for 2014, 2015-16, 2016-17, I can gather the information for the Member. I don’t have it in front of me today, but I can gather the detailed information for the Member.
Thanks to the Minister. I look forward to seeing that information. If the department has information on four-year-olds, I’d like to say to the Minister, there must be communities who have minimal number of four-year-olds. I look at information that I have which tells me that in 2012, we had, for instance, 12 zero to four-year-old children in Tsiigehtchic, 12 zero to four-year-olds in Wekweeti. Surely, if there was an Aboriginal Head Start program in a community that had 20 zero to four-year-olds, that’s not very many kids at the age of four.
So, to the Minister, if he has all this information, why are they continuing to put junior kindergarten in every one of our 29 communities when it’s not necessary in eight of them? Thank you.
With the evaluation assessment of junior kindergarten not only in our jurisdictions but other jurisdictions as well, we have been compiling all the information from the communities, 33 communities. It is necessary to have junior kindergarten, especially in those communities that don’t have licenced early childhood programming. The Member is referring to communities that may not have licenced child care programming. So this is of value to them. This is a benefit to them to have optional programming. Then there’s the Head Start program in the eight various communities we work with as well. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will try to make it short, but I want to say to the Minister, I am not saying don’t implement junior kindergarten. To my colleagues, I am not saying that junior kindergarten should not go to small communities. I am saying we have communities where we have a program that is viable, that is successful and why are we forcing another junior kindergarten into those communities where we already have Aboriginal Head Start where it is active and viable and would be happy to take on more four-year-olds? Thank you.
Again, we’re not forcing them. It’s an optional program for parents in the Northwest Territories in the 33 communities we are going to be servicing. This has been in discussion, the Early Childhood Development Framework, in an engagement with the parents, the educators and they want this to be an option so they can choose, the parents can choose. So we’ve done that. We’ve listened to them. We will be rolling out the program, but it’s an optional program, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
