Nunavut still lagging in educational attainment: StatCan

New data from Statistics Canada shows Nunavut still way behind the rest of Canada with respect to educational attainment. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Nunavut still has a long way to go to bring its educational attainment close to national levels or even to those in the Northwest Territories.

This is revealed by a recent set of Statistics Canada tables that compare the levels of education achieved in Nunavut and by Inuit nationally and in the territory, between the ages of 25 and 64.

More than seven in 10 Nunavummiut in that age group had less than a high school level of education in 2016, the tables show.

That’s a much greater percentage than in Canada as a whole, where only one in 10 individuals has no certificate, diploma or degree.

About 15 per cent of people in Nunavut aged 25 to 64 hold a high school diploma as their highest level of attainment, compared to 24 per cent in Canada as a whole, and 19 per cent of people in Nunavut have a college or non-university diploma or certificate, with more women, at 23 per cent, than men, at 16 per cent, having such a qualification.

The same holds for Nunavummiut at the university level where the highest proportion of graduates, 17 per cent, are women, compared with 12 per cent for men. But it’s the opposite situation in the trades, where men with trades certificates comprise 15 per cent of those aged 25 to 64, compared with four per cent for women.

For those who give “Inuit” as a single identity, the gap remains wide with respect to university education. Only four in every 100 Nunavummiut aged 25 to 64 with an Inuit single identity had a university degree in 2016 compared with 31 out of 100 for Canada as a whole.