Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I listened with interest to his statement yesterday about the impact of funding reallocation for junior kindergarten on the pupil-teacher ratio. I’d like to follow up with a few questions to the Minister.
There is some good stuff in here. There’s some bad stuff in the statement, but the statement suggests to me that it’s okay to financially penalize bigger schools to protect the funding of schools with less than 120 students. I understand that, but I also want to say that I don’t necessarily agree with the Minister on that, but I do want to say that I very much appreciate the recognition on the part of the Minister and the department that Yellowknife education authorities will suffer significantly with the proposed funding reductions.
I’d like to know from the Minister, in terms of his commitment to make sure that Yellowknife education authorities don’t go over 16 to 1, I’d like to ask the Minister, first off, when will that commitment kick in? Will it be in the first year of reduced funding, the second year or the third year when junior kindergarten is introduced?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we’re rolling out the junior kindergarten, it’s for the whole Northwest Territories and the 33 communities that we service. There is phase one, phase two, phase three year approach, and obviously, Yellowknife will get the third year implementation of the junior kindergarten, so we’re making sure, and I made a commitment in the House yesterday, anything above and beyond the 16 to 1 level, that PTR level, my department will be subsidizing them. We’re going to be monitoring that, and it’s not only in Yellowknife, it’s all the educational authorities that could be on the verge of 16 to 1 in the later years. Those are areas that we’re going to be closely monitoring.
This is a great initiative from our department. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback and we need to move forward. That’s what we’ve been told by parents, and we are moving forward on this.
Thanks to the Minister. I do want to move forward, as well, but I don’t want to move forward at the expense of some education authorities. I appreciate that the department is monitoring, but I did ask the Minister when this commitment will start. If an education authority goes over the 16 to 1 PTR in the very first year that their funding is reduced, is that when the commitment kicks in?
The other part of this is I would like to know from the Minister if this commitment is ongoing, so once we get beyond the implementation of junior kindergarten and something changes so an education authority goes over the 16 to 1 PTR, is this commitment also going to kick in in the future?
This is an area that we have made a commitment to, that on average, none of the school boards will be over 16 to 1, on the average territorial. At the same time, those individual education authorities, as the Member indicated, year one, year two, year three, some will be just slightly over and those will be mitigated through the subsidy that I have highlighted.
The Member is also asking if it’s going to be on a continuous basis. When we roll out the junior kindergarten and start implementing that, then the funding will be based on their enrolment as well. The larger the student population, then they’ll be receiving additional funding, more funding from our department. At the territorial level, the 16 to 1 will be under, but we will continue to subsidize those individual school boards that may be over 16 to 1.
Thanks to the Minister for the clarification. I take from that that, yes, this is going to be ongoing. I still didn’t really hear when this commitment is going to start, but I think it’s going to start when the 16 to 1 is exceeded.
The Minister, in his statement, referred to pupil-teacher ratio for authorities, and in authorities that have a number of schools, pupil-teacher ratio can vary from school to school, so I’d like to ask the Minister, when they were deciding on this commitment to fund people beyond 16 to 1 ratio, did they consider evaluating pupil-teacher ratio by school? Did they determine the impact on each school not necessarily on the authority alone?
To my understanding, the information that we have received within my department working with the school boards on compiling all the information, we work closely with the school boards so we can access their information, as well, so they can share the information with us, so we can compare. If it’s based on per school or per educational authority, those are areas that the education authorities need to work with us. The information that we have we’ve compiled based on the projected enrolment. Phase one, phase two, year three approach is all projected on the student enrolment over a three-year period, so based on that the pupil-teacher ratio has been formula funded.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t really hear an answer to my question, so I’d like to ask the Minister if he, with all this information that’s been compiled between the department and the education authorities, would he commit to providing to me and to other Members a school-by-school indication of pupil-teacher ratio as it stands now in each school in the territory?
I will commit to the Members that the information that we’ve compiled to date on the pupil-teacher ratio across the Northwest Territories will be shared with the Members.
