Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment what assessment, if any, has been done on the operations of the junior kindergarten program? Thank you.
Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The junior kindergarten program was piloted in some communities for a couple of years, and then this last year it was implemented across the Northwest Territories. There hasn't been a full assessment done on the total implementation, but we will be looking at it over the summer months, once the school year is finished, to find out what worked, what didn't work, and what we need to improve on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I mentioned a number of concerns in my Member's statement, so I'll go through each one of them, but does ECE through the Minister currently have a plan to address the medical screening, or lack thereof, for children who are coming into these programs?
I will have to look into that. My assumption was that all children who access either licensed childcare centres or junior kindergarten and school are recommended to have up-to-date immunizations, but I will look into that and get back to the Member on that.
I can tell the Minister that a recommendation and a requirement are different. Those are the concerns that have been brought forward to me. Further to that, with the teacher to children ratio, it seems 1:25 is putting a lot of stress on these classrooms and the learning environment that these children are supposed to be benefitting from. Is the Minister open to re-evaluating that while this review takes place in the summer?
As one of my colleagues said the other day, I will do better than that. In fact, they are funded at 1:12, so if they are doing 1:25, Mr. Speaker, we have a bit problem. I'm going to be looking into that right away, because they are funded at 1:12.
Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister. I very much appreciate that. If the results of this survey confirmed these concerns that have been brought forward today, is the Minister willing to go that extra distance and commit to at least exploring a possibility of adding more money into the program to address these shortfalls? Thank you.
The schools are actually funded for 1:12. They're not funded 1:25, they're funded 1:12. I will look into the other things. Like I say, we'll do a review at the end of the year. I'm not going to be quick to say we'll throw money at things if it's not needed. What I am working on currently, though, is looking at, because we have a curriculum for JK, junior kindergarten, but I'm looking at strengthening the curriculum for childcare centres, licensed childcare centres, as well. I believe in equality and I believe in equity, and so we need to make sure that the services for children are similar right across.
One thing I picked out from Member's statement today, though, Mr. Speaker, already is we're doing a bad job of communication. I've said that a few times, in our departments, that we need to work on our communication. If the MLAs are thinking that we're getting funded for 1:25, I can imagine what the general public thinks, so we need to do better on our communications. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
