EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
I think we have to publicize the fact that the parents have to take on that responsibility too because the students are in school from 9 – 5 with different subjects.
We have to take on this responsibility as parent to teach our children social skills.
It is not segregated, the children tend to follow their parents life style.
So we have to take that and we have to keep on elaborating that to our children.
Thank you Mr. Chairman..
Mr. Irqittuq do you want to make any other comments.
I agree with you and in some ways I don’t.
I believe what he is saying that we get to learn about life after the schools.
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Irqittuq your time is up.
You need unanimous consent to continue.
I would like to get unanimous consent to continue my comments.
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Irqittuq is looking for unanimous consent to continue his comments.
Chairperson (interpretation): Ok.
You may go ahead Mr. Iqaqrialu.
I can’t speak any English but at least I can say "OK".
What I was trying to say is that his response is a fact and it is entirely true.
Even after being in school we learn new things daily.
The reason I wanted to see that is because the students stay in school for a long period during the day.
For example, I have a grandchild and her mom, the mother of my grade 12 is still in school.
If she has to write in English, she can’t write properly and she still can’t speak proper English.
Usually we send our students to school at the age of 5. For fifteen years they go to school and they are still in school.
I feel that this has to be improved because I know that they are very articulate, I am talking about my home community.
There is a problem somewhere in the education system.
I am not saying that all the communities in Nunavut should have a good education system but I want to have a good education system in my home community.
I am glad that you stated the local education authorities will have more authority.
We have two languages in our home community, but one thing that I have always felt which you touched on earlier. You have stated that I should have taught my child on the land skills, I would like to get approval to get Inuit people hired as professionals to teach land skills, because many of the people who have vast knowledge are dying off.
I know that we can train them in the evening, my life style is a lot different from my children, because my children too would like to have their own life, they would like to be free and they would like to go to the gym because they stay in school all day and in the evening after school they would like to do their own thing.
As parents, especially if you are members of boards and agencies, in different communities we hold our meetings and during the summer the students are given summer jobs when we as parents should have been teaching them how to survive on the land.
I have seen all of these things and think that we have to rectify them.
That’s why I have mentioned what I stated to the Minister.
Mr. Minister would you like to respond.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): No.
But I just want to say that we have given the local education authority the authority to deal with what you have stated.
We usually have various reasons why the students don’t go to school, like Mr. Anawak had stated for housing.
Housing also has an impact on a student’s education due to overcrowding.
It has an impact on the students.
If the student can’t do his or her homework, if there are too many people in the house they don’t have time to do their homework because of other people in the house.
We have to deal with this as a whole, we have to deal with this as a whole because one little reason is not enough.
Mr. Irqittuq do you want to comment further.
Mr. Irqittuq (interpretation): Possibly after the other members make comments.
Just a few brief questions for the Minister and some comments.
We have heard a number of the member speak about their concern about the level of education. An example would be a student that is in grade 9, reading at a grade 3 level.
I know that may seem harsh and I am not saying that it is the norm, but I know for a fact that it does exist.
My question to the Minister, before we can deal with the problem we have to identify it and see what level it is at or how severe it is.
Is there any testing that takes place now that students in grade 3 to 9 that tests them for their reading level to see what level they are at.
It may say that they are in grade 8 but are they only reading at grade 4 or 3.
Is there such testing being done now across the board.
I would like to have Ian Rose answer that.
If I understand the question correctly the standardized testing across, so that all students in all grades in all communities receive the same test.
That is occurring only at the ages of 13 and 16 in some subject areas at this point.
That is partly the answer that I was looking for but the main focus of my question was, is there any testing being done now with students from grade 1 to 9. Because if it is only being done after you get to grade 10, 11, 12 it is probably too late.
In the example I gave it was a student in grade 9 that was only reading at grade 4 or 3.
Are you testing now any of these students to see what actual level they are at.
Not their grade level but their actual reading level.
There is no departmental program in testing on across the board, however there is a provision that is being practised that the students are tested in their own classrooms by their own teacher to determine their level.
But Mr. Chairman, actually I think with that question then we probably could get more information from the field, then give a more detailed response to the member if he wants.
That would be helpful, Mr. Chairman.
But I would ask the Minister if he would commit to survey the severity of the problem.
It is difficult to deal with unless you know how big it is.
What grades, what levels and what ages and so on you are dealing with.
So I would think that would be the first step in dealing with the overall problem here.
Another point that I want to bring up and I will ask the Minister for a commitment in that areas to commit to do that survey to analyze exactly what level the students are really at and I will just leave it to reading at this point in time.
The second point I want to talk about is social passing.
Basically just moving students on because maybe you are just tired of them being in the classroom or whatever.
Would you speak briefly to that and what your thoughts are and whether you think it should be changed and how you would address it.
Hon. James Arvaluk: These are good questions.
I am going to answer the second one first.
I don’t believe in social passing.
I am dead against that. Because what is the point of going to school if you are not going to be preparing yourself for the academic world or the working world when you grow up social passing will not do.
I would like to honour the request by the member on the survey.
Even on a simplified version but he will have to be a bit more patient, because I don’t have a full staff yet, I am just getting some in Arviat and I am only half staffed at headquarters and will have to wait a little bit because I am very, very short staffed right now.
Mr. Chairman I can certainly wait for that information, I just think that it is something that the Minister and his staff should be looking at.
It certainly doesn’t do anybody any good to leave school and say that I have grade 10 or 11 and only have a grade 2 or 3 reading level.
So I would think that is something that the Minister and his staff may want to take as a priority and speak with the various principals and teachers around Nunavut and see exactly what they feel.
I guess the other part of the problem is how do you correct it.
I guess that is why you are the Minister so we will leave that up to you.
Yes, we have a literacy consultant now, Alexis Utatnaq and some other staff who can take specific assignments in specific communities, and for specific persons.
In other areas for example, FAS situations that exist in our schools that we have to work with Health & Social Services in that area and co-ordinate with other departments depending on the program.
So the problem we have here is we have a population of students in our schools but they also have different problems of their own that touch on other departments responsibilities.
So it is fairly complicated.
However , I will take the members’ request very seriously and try to find ways and means to find out what reading levels there are and if there is social passing in existence in some communities, if that is the case, then I promise you that we will crack down on it.
Chairperson: Thank you . Mr. Arvaluk.
Mr. Arvaluk has stated quite a number of times that he would like support from the members of the Legislative Assembly.
When are you going to be asking for this support from the members.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): We are going to start working on the priorities, putting together preliminary plans and then going to phase 2 and like you said, you said that we are going to be doing legislation at the next sitting and very likely we will be tabling some proposed documents at that time.
I am sure the government will have a plan of what kind of legislation they would like to see and the preliminary plans will probably be given to the Standing Committees for consideration.
The department of Education will probably give them their goals to the Committees for review.
As I stated earlier we are still short on staff and we are not going to have thinks all set out and given to you.
We would like to work together with you on the educational issues and we will start our plans prior to the October sitting.
We will prioritize our issues and then if it looks like it is a workable thing we’ll probably be asking for your support some time in February during the budget session and we will want to work with you.
Chairperson (interpretation): : Any further comments Mr. Kattuk.
Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Chairman.
I was actually relieved to hear the Ministers’ statement on social passing.
Are you aware of how much social passing is going on in the Nunavut schools or is it just in certain regions.
Is it Nunavut wide?
Hon. James Arvaluk: Mr. Chairman, I don’t have a clue. I really don’t have a clue.
It has been mentioned to me by different individual people, it has been mentioned to me in my personal life before, but there is no survey or I don’t even know if we could get that information voluntarily unless, like Mr. O'Brien said can you do a preliminary or touch base survey to find out where we are.
I think that is the only time we will be able to say what competence level our students have and what level they are at. What grade level they are at.
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Arvaluk, please recognize the Chairperson.
I am not aware of how much it is in Nunavut, but I am aware of it in my own individual community.
It distresses me to follow statistics in the Keewatin where we have an 85% dropout rate.
So our kids have an 85% chance of not finishing school.
In regards to social passing, if we pass kids through the system and they don’t get a solid reading, writing and arithmetic level in grade 1, 2, 3 and 4, 5 and they are just pushed through for the numbers because you have so many coming in that we’re pushing them through the system, when they get up to the level where they have to start writing departmentals .
I am aware of the departmentals that are being written in Baker Lake that are the Alberta departmentals.
If they don’t have solid skills and problem solving abilities, when the get into grade 9, 10, 11, that’s where our dropout rates start.
By then they are into their late teens, 17,18,19 years old and they are at a frustrated age level where they can’t pass any of these courses, what I found in my community since we got grade 12, because we all pushed for it, because we wanted our kids to be close to us going to high school, so we could influence them and we didn’t want to send them off up to a foreign community.
Because we didn’t have enough influence on them, so the situation that we are running into is that we have schools in the Keewatin where kids are only going two to three days a week and two or three periods a week.
To me if you don’t develop skills for getting out of bed every morning, going to a school and studying hard, then I think that is going to contribute to the dropout rate.
I know that it is early in our mandate and I don’t want to put this pressure on the Minister but is there some way we can get around to maybe making the schools to a point where kids go from 9 to 4 on a regular basis, rather than this helter skelter two or three times a week or two or three times a day sort of thing.
I am sorry that I got a little bit excited.
We have to work with the parents.
Somehow we have to find a way to have the parents involved, have them take charge of their own children.
I think we also have to consider the practice of educating the parents, if I may use that word, that the children don’t get a second chance in education.
You cannot stop their age.
They are growing they’ve got a birthday every year, if they miss that out then by the time they are adults they don’t want to start from grade 1 again.
So I think that we have to recognize, using a method that the parent knows, for example, how to bring up a baby from infancy to a toddler to a five year old.
How do you guide them through that, the children are the same way they have to be guided in a way that they will be comfortable .
I think that what happens is that the parents bring up their children up to age 5 and then they start going to school and they wean them from the relationship and they really don’t know what level or how good they are in the school.
Are they the top of the class, are they the middle of the class, where are they. It doesn’t really matter to them. So the students feel not cared for by the parents in their daily struggle in school, the don’t get a pat on the back when they are doing well.
They are not awakened and fed in the morning, is that showing that they don’t care.
No, not necessarily it is just that they are sleepy.
I think that we are going to have to work with the parents as to what the end result is going to be if we don’t work together.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): I would like to take a brief break, at least fifteen minutes.
Chairperson (interpretation): Mr. Nutarak would like to take a break.
Do you agree , Okay we will take a break. No more than fifteen minutes.
>>Committee recessed from 4.13 to 4.33 pm
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you for returning.
I had Mr. O'Brien on the list as the next speaker.
The Department of Education budget.
Would you like to go back to them.
Okay page 9 – 4.
Directorate. Operations & maintenance total, 553 thousand.
Mr. Chairman, in here it talks about this areas being responsible for Human Resource development.
Is that just in regards to the department staff itself or does it deal with Human Resources for example in the schools, the college and that.
I just wanted to know before I asked a question here, whether there would be a more appropriate place.
Chairperson (interpretation): Just wait a moment while they are looking through their papers.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask my Deputy Minister to answer that please.
In answer to the specific question, all areas in the budget that relate to Human Resource planning, relate only to the department and not to the Boards.
Those responsibilities are at this time still vested with the Boards for the 1999-2000 year the same as they were in previous years.
The other area where Human Resource Planning show primarily is under corporate services, I’ll just try to get you a tab number there.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you for the clarification.
Total operations & maintenance 553 thousand.
Chairperson (interpretation): Capital.
Total Capital nothing.
Total Expenditures 553 thousand.
Chairperson (interpretation): It is agreed.
Policy and Planning operations & maintenance total expenditures 1 million 498 dollars.
Mr. Chairman in the policy and planning in the discussion that I heard earlier today is that this area would play a key role in developing the system for tomorrow.
Mr. Chairman I wonder if the Minister has any ideas in this area, even if they have any preliminary plans as to any types of potential changes to the current system that they may be looking at for the future.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): Ian Rose will be answering that.,
Mr. Rose: Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Over the next year what we are looking at is to take on studies in five areas.
One of them is the language instruction research, labour force market needs analysis, curriculum development plan, school funding review and a Nunavut Arctic College funding review.
Those are the five major areas that we are looking at in conducting some research and studies.
Mr. Chairman, I’ve got language of instruction, labour force review, curriculum planning and I missed the last one.
I wonder if I could just ask him to repeat that please.
Mr. Rose: The last two were a school funding review and an Nunavut Arctic College funding review and one other that I didn’t mention a long term capital planning review.
So there will be six.
Mr. Chairman there are some areas here that I see in these studies, when you look at the labour force review and the Nunavut Arctic College funding.
Are those the kinds of things that go hand in hand.
I am wondering if the department, Mr. Chairman, is taking a look at working with industry and looking at the needs into developing training programs at Arctic College to facilitate the need that we have or the needs that we will have in the future.
I am just wondering if they are going to incorporate those types of things into their labour force review.
Hon. James Arvaluk: Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have to look at what in the labour force market for work in Nunavut.
Not just in the mining industry but also the shrimp fisheries by  Qikiqtaaluk Corporation and there are potential jobs for people in Nunavut not necessarily tied to the government of Nunavut.
So we will include all of that.
Mr. Chairman I would like to ask the Minister in here it says language of instruction and curriculum planning.
Just to point out a fact that over the past two years here at the high school, they’ve posted an Inuktitut position and have got absolutely no response to those positions.
I am wondering if in light of this if the Minister could maybe provide a brief outline of the types of things that will be looked at in the language of instruction and curriculum
We appreciate that and that is why we need more training in the area of language specialists because there is a demand for those things and there will be more demands in those areas especially in high school.
We are making plans now as to how we can get more training programs for language specialists.
Mr. Chairman, maybe just to help speed up the process a little bit.
I am wondering if the Minister could commit, I don’t know when these studies are going to be looked at, but if the department could provide the members with a brief outline of what the studies are going to encompass.
So that if we are members of the Legislative Assembly would like to have any input or suggestions, to assist the department, we would then be given the opportunity to do so.
Could I just look for a commitment for that in the future.
And that would clear up any questions in this area.
Yes we can do that and we will co-operate with the member, and especially with the Standing Committee on Education and have their involvement with that.
Chairperson (interpretation): To the budget.
Total expenditures 1 million 498 thousand.
Chairperson (interpretation): There is no capital.
Chairperson (interpretation): Next page. 9-6.
Corporate Services operations & maintenance.
Total operations & maintenance 1 million 290.
Mr. Iqaqrialu (interpretation): I am sorry Mr. Chairman, this salaries and wages, 536 thousand amount.
Perhaps could you elaborate on this further.
Is it for all the employees wages plus benefits.
Hon. James Arvaluk: Financial services would have five in Iqaluit.
Human Resource development would have 2 in Iqaluit and Information Technology would have 2 in Iqaluit.
Mr. Iqaqrialu (interpretation): Under this salaries and wages, it is not including all of the employees or is it just some of the employees.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): It is including just some of the employees.
What about the rest of the salaries that are excluded in this.
Are these separately reported.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): Okay this is under policy and planning and these are separately budgeted for because all of the policy and planning, corporate services and adult education and schools all of those are separated.
Mr. Chairman, historically corporate services has been the department that looks after the other services within other divisions within the department.
Mr. Chairman with the dissolution of the Boards, my first question is, does the Minister and his staff feel, or will there be any changes to the structure in corporate services as a result of the dissolution of the Boards.
Hon. James Arvaluk: Yes, Mr. Chairman, inevitably this will be the job of the implementation co-ordinator to identify with the Divisional Boards what areas would be effected by that.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to just ask the Minister and his staff.
In light of the changes that will be happening will this be the areas that provides support and assistance to the DEA’s in the future are far as assisting them to develop more so that they are better able to take on the additional responsibilities that they will encounter as a result of the dissolution of the Boards.
The regional office personnel will still be there to help the DEA’s in whatever areas they need help.
What we are saying is that some of these positions in corporate services may not be required in the regional office.
The Premier already indicated earlier in the session that these would be, these employees would be encouraged to seek employment elsewhere as soon as the implementation process is begun, and recognizing that some of these positions may be redundant after the dissolution.
We will have to identify first which positions will be moved to other departments of the government.
But, for services that are required by the DEA’s there will still be, I am pretty sure that the implementation co-ordinator will recognize those as essential services to those DEA’s.
Mr. Chairman, the point I was trying to make was that there is going to be a mechanism to support the local DEA’s to administer and function with the additional responsibilities that they will be faced with.
Also Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the Minister if, we’ll use Iqaluit as an example, there are four schools here in Iqaluit now.
The DEA has or will have a huge responsibility to look after all four schools.
Will there be provisions for them to be able to, if they need to, hire staff to assist them in their day to day operations.
The Minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that all of these Boards right now are on an volunteer basis.
As more responsibility is going to be dumped on to them I don’t know if it is fair to force a group of volunteers to look after all of the additional responsibilities that they will be faced with.
Hon. James Arvaluk: Mr. Chairman, we will have these options put forward, because I for one, don’t want to pre-judge the implementation co-ordinators’ recommendations.
What recommendations he will make to that effect I don’t know.
But if he makes a recommendation, I certainly would like to work with the Iqaluit member, if this recommendation is acceptable for Iqaluit and if additional resources might be required to look after those boards, then these are open to discussion.
Chairperson (interpretation): Let’s go back to the agenda.
Main Estimates, total estimates operations & maintenance 1 million 290.
Chairperson (interpretation): Capital there is nothing under total capital.
Total expenditures 1 million 290 thousand.
Chairperson (interpretation): Adult education and post secondary services, next page.
Page 9 – 7.