Nunavut gov wants more power for education minister, less power for DEAs

Kathy Okpik, Nunavut’s deputy minister of education, answers questions from MLAs May 12. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

To address the shortcomings of the Nunavut Education Act, Nunavut’s education department wants more power for its minister and less power for local education authorities.

That’s according to the department’s deputy minister, Kathy Opik, who appeared before the legislative assembly’s special committee on education to answer questions.

Those questions focused on the Government of Nunavut’s written recommendations to the special committee, which MLAs created June 9, 2014 to review the Education Act.

“We are suggesting that the minister have greater roles and responsibilities, especially where it concerns bilingual education, inclusive education and human resources,” Okpik said in her opening statement.

The current roles and responsibilities of the local education authorities — the District Education Authorities and the Commission Scolaire Francophone du Nunavut — lead to inconsistent standards across the territory, Okpik said.

“A system with such variability is extremely difficult to administer and even more difficult to evaluate,” she said.

Education Minister Paul Quassa announced last June that the Education Act would go under the microscope — the act itself calls for a review of its “provisions and operation” every five years.

Quassa’s announcement came about seven months after the Auditor General of Canada, Michael Ferguson, released a critical report in November 2013 that found the GN will not meet the bilingual education goals set out in the 2008 Education Act.

Ferguson said the department’s goals were “overly ambitious” and cannot be achieved by the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

He said that’s because of poor attendance, a shortage of qualified bilingual teachers, a shortage of curriculum material and the failure of the GN’s social promotion system, which it calls “continuous progress.”

Most questions put to Okpik by MLAs May 13 were about those same challenges.

“It is very well known that we have struggled to implement our bilingual education goals. There’s no way we’re going to achieve our goal of fully-bilingual grads by 2019 with the current system,” Okpik said in the legislature.

Currently, local education authorities can choose one of three models to implement the department’s bilingual goals, Okpik said.

The models vary by the percentage of instruction in Inuktitut versus instruction in English or French — according to the community’s needs, she said.

For now, Nunavut teachers decide themselves which subjects to teach in which languages, and the department does not have any way of testing the proficiency of graduates in any language but English, Okpik said.

Instead, MLAs should “consider moving towards one single model which entails greater balance between the languages of instruction,” Okpik said.

Iqaluit-Niaqunnguu MLA Pat Angnakak asked Okpik what lessons Nunavut might learn from Nunavik, where Angnakak said a strong language component in the education system has resulted in trilingual graduates.

Okpik replied that the main difference is a single language policy throughout the school board, where subjects are taught in specific languages.

Nunavut’s bilingual efforts are drawing on Nunavik’s example, she added, but that region suffers from many of the same challenges as Nunavut, including language erosion and high dropout rates.

And finding qualified Inuktitut-proficient educators is another continuing struggle in Nunavut, Okpik said.

Quassa did not attend the legislative hearings May 13, but his alternate, Family Services Minister Jeannie Ugyuk, filled in for him.

She asked Okpik if the breakfast programs at many Nunavut schools, which Ugyuk said she fully supports, should be entrenched in a revised Education Act.

“Breakfast programs will always garner a lot of emotion across Nunavut… but whether they should be entrenched in the Education Act, we’d need more discussions about that,” Okpik replied.

The hearings continue until May 14, when other organizations that submitted written comments are expected to answer questions from MLAs.

Following the hearings, the special committee will report its findings to the legislature in the fall of 2015.