Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is to the department of education. Is the department looking at eliminating the practice of socially promoting our students of the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Mackenzie Delta. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, while the department doesn't practice social passing as a policy so to speak, it does endorse peer group placement for students in the Northwest Territories. This is researchedbased education practice, and it's used in many jurisdictions across Canada and worldwide. What I want to add here, though, is that peer group placements do not prevent parents, students, teachers, and also even the education system as a whole, from holding appropriate expectations for students to continue growing in our territory. And I think it's really important that amendments that were made to the Education Act ensure that parents are notified when students are working below grade level and are placed on a modified education plan. So it's really important that parents know what's happening with students and have the ability to step in if they want to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The industrial arts and home economic courses were very popular in high school. It gave the students something positive to look forward to. Can the department look at bringing these courses back into the school curriculum to start the process of building the selfesteem of our students? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the Northwest Territories we currently have so schools have access to arts and trades programming through career and technology study courses. As we transition to a BC curriculum, these will then be known as applied design and skilled technology courses. So just a name change there. And these, within the BC curriculum, are known as experiential handson programming, learning through design and creation, and really is able to pull on skills and concepts from traditional and Indigenous practices as well. But what it comes down to is the capacity of the schools and the interest of students as well to be able to offer this type of programming. But I want to say I'm very happy that we're having this conversation on the floor of the House today. Thank you.
Thank you to the Minister for that answer. Mr. Speaker, with the past success of these trade programs being in the school of the 1980s give the students the opportunity to get involved in a certain trade when they weren't academically ready to go to postsecondary institutions. So will the department commit to exploring these similar options to eliminate the social promoting of our students? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in regards to the peer group placement, I want to start there. And what is really crucial about that and what determines if, you know, a student well, what it calls on is that a student stays with their age group because studies have shown that has a huge benefit to students. And what's really important there is when students stay with their grade level, that when they go up to the next grade that they are given an education plan that outlines the student needs and how those will be met in the next grade level to ensure that we are still meeting students where they're at and providing them with the supports they need. So what I want to say there is that is a crucial, crucial part of this being effective. But when I said before that I'm really happy we're having this conversation on the floor of the House, I absolutely agree with the Member that we need to get more students and more Northerners interested in different vocational training and what opportunities might be out there for them and how they can take advantage of those. And so while it depends on what the capacity of a school is, there are also other programs in communities that exist and what I really want to highlight here for the Member and all Members is the SNAP program. And if we go back to 2016, the SNAP program had no students across the territory in it. Today, there are 37 students in the territory in the SNAP program. And I would love to be able to work with every Member here to over the course of this term see SNAP students in all of our communities. So I look forward to maintaining that relationship with our colleagues. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary.
Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.
