Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I wasn’t going to ask questions on education today, but in listening to my colleagues ask the questions and the answers that haven’t been forthcoming, I feel that I need to ask some questions.
Mr. Bouchard just asked whether or not the government would pull organizations together, and that was my last question but I am going to go with it first. We need to get the organizations together that are currently providing programming for four-year-olds and ask them how we can accommodate Junior Kindergarten and their programs together without the one destroying the other.
I would like to ask the Minister of Education, will he commit to meet with all organizations that are currently providing early childhood development to four-year-olds in the NWT, with a view to finding a solution that works for both ECE and the NGOs. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad the Member asked that question, because we met this morning on that particular topic. We were talking about the communication dialogue with the 23 communities and having some sort of forum or symposium for the whole Northwest Territories. It’s a matter of bringing all the organizations to Yellowknife. I guess you would have to have it here, from the regional perspective. It would take some time to arrange that.
But as the Premier alluded to, we are open to these types of forums, to listen to the general public. It is already on our website as well. I like to hear from the general public as well. We are trying to be as open and transparent as we possibly can, to reach out to those individuals at the community level. Mahsi.
Thanks to the Minister. I have been listening to some of the words, and the Minister, earlier, said that he wants to hear the perspective of the people that are involved. My question to that is: Is he actually listening to what the people are saying to him?
He mentioned the teachers’ conference on social interaction, and this is an opportunity for him to hear from the people that are in the program. That is not an evaluation. What we need is an evaluation. I think he also mentioned the survey of schools that are currently doing Junior Kindergarten. A survey is not an evaluation. We need to have an evaluation of the program. Every community, every school that is currently delivering that program needs to be looked at, the pros, the cons, the good, the bad and the ugly.
So I would like to know from the Minister, what evaluation is he speaking of? When he talks about evaluation, exactly what does he mean besides some kind of a forum? Thank you.
I’m open and I want to hear from the general public’s perspective. Whether it be a symposium, a forum, the survey that I have just committed to, I want to share with the 23 communities, the regional centres, even from the Yellowknife perspective. If JK is coming to them, I want to hear them, the parents. I want to hear the parents. Right now I am just hearing it from the school boards, but I want to hear from the parents’ perspective, because what we are hearing now is 23 communities with Junior Kindergarten is working fine for those communities that are delivering it, but at the same time I want to reach out to those individuals. So when we talk about the evaluation of our Junior Kindergarten program, we’re only into three months of delivering Junior Kindergarten into our communities, so we need to re-evaluate what we have learned since the delivery of the Junior Kindergarten. Those are just some of the discussions that I am currently having with my department.
Anytime something new is implemented there are always growing pains at the beginning, and we are obviously experiencing growing pains, but what I hear the Minister saying is, yup, nothing’s wrong, but where anything is wrong we’re going to wait a year before we do something about it, and I think that’s very much the wrong attitude.
I’d like to know from the Minister, if he can tell me, does he have any intention or will there be any consideration for making changes to phases two and three of the rollout of Junior Kindergarten? Is that an option that he will consider and that we may possibly see in the future?
It was the Finance Minister, our Premier and I who have stated that we are going to re-evaluate our situation. We still have time until the next delivery of JK into our regional centres and also to Yellowknife the following year. This is a situation where we are seriously looking at and also to share some perspectives from the 23 communities, the regional centres and from Yellowknife’s perspective. We’re doing what we can to reach out. Whether it be the taskforce that we established, the toll-free number, the website, we’re doing what we can to reach out to the communities.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister I would say that reaching out and hearing and surveying is not an intention to make changes. I did not hear one word from the Minister that tells me that he has any intention of making any change to the programming.
I’d like to know from the Minister, he needs to tell me, he needs to tell us on this side of the House, what does he need to understand that changes to the Junior Kindergarten program will make it better? What can we put in front of the Minister to convince him that there needs to be some change going forward?
Those are just some of the surveys and also the inventory that we’re going to be collecting from communities, and based on that, obviously, the decision needs to happen, or if there are going to be changes, obviously, I would have to bring it back to my Cabinet colleagues and say there is an outcry in this area. That is the input that I’m seeking from the general public, because we’re responsible for the whole Northwest Territories, not just 23 communities but for regional centres and also for Yellowknife in order to deliver a successful Junior Kindergarten.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
