Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. My questions are in line with my Member's statement earlier. I just wanted to make a quick comment. The Member for Deh Cho already addressed one of those questions, also. I want to say mahsi cho.
Anyways, my question for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment is: what initiatives do the Minister and his department have in place to address low school attendance rates in the small communities? Mahsi cho.
Thank you, Member. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank my colleague for his earlier statement, as well as the other colleague from the Deh Cho. I appreciate these conversations coming to light. We need to talk about them if we want to make changes.
The Member is right. Small communities have lower graduation rates. They have lower attendance rates. One of the priorities of this Assembly is to increase student education outcomes to the rest of Canada. In some regional centres and in Yellowknife, the student outcomes are nearly the same as the rest of Canada, so it really is the small communities, in a lot of ways, that we are talking about.
There are things that are being done by the school boards. It is the school boards that have the mandate to deliver education. There are things like Healthy Food for Learning so that there is food in the schools, so that children, once they get there, they can actually eat, and they can learn. Some schools have programs where homes are called when students are missing. They go out looking for the children. Some schools offer incentives or prizes for attendance. However, there is more than that that needs to be done. I think we need buy-in from communities, we need buy-in from parents, and we need to start caring more about education as a society. That is one of the things that I really want to do, is get the word out there and get people involved in their own education.
There are a number of things that we are doing through the education renewal, as well. Like I mentioned before, there are a lot of these old small programs that we are trying to tailor, but more needs to be done. The Member is absolutely right; more needs to be done. If you look at graduation rates, they are declining across the board, and so we have to do more. I am committed to working with the Member and hearing from all of the Members, especially from small communities, about how we can do that.
I would like to thank the Minister for his response. I think it is important, too, that visibility for your department is important in my riding. There are four schools in my riding. The one in Ndilo and one in Detah, those are easy places to do a tour. That would be really good. I would like to see that, but, if I could get a commitment from the Minister to see if he could visit our schools in Lutselk'e and Deninu Kue, I think it is important. It helps boost morale for the teachers and the kids, and I think it is important that they see the head of our education department.
I am going to try to make it to as many schools as I can. I believe we have 49. I'm going to see what I can do this Assembly. Fort Resolution is right near Hay River, so that will be an easy one. My new deputy minister, who I am lucky to have, is a former principal. One of the first things she did is told me about what a big impression it makes on students when the Minister comes to their school and engages them, and it got me excited about it. I look forward to it. I look forward to getting to some of the places where I don't normally get to go, places like Lutselk'e. I can't make any commitments about timelines, but I am going to do my best to visit as many schools as I can.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
