Nunavut schools hand out prizes to boost attendance

Attendance is up at Nuiyak school in Sanikiluaq, due to the prizes handed out for good attendance. (FILE PHOTO)

Can prizes like solar-powered backpacks solve Nunavut’s problems with poor school attendance?

School attendance is up in Sanikiluaq, Hudson Bay MLA Alan Rumbolt said in a May 8 member’s statement in the Nunavut legislative assembly.

And the improved attendance in his community of 700 is all due to the prizes now handed out for overall attendance rates of 50 per cent or higher, Rumbolt suggested.

The prizes include running shoes for students with attendance rates greater than 50 per cent.

At Patsaali school, the top five attenders and the five most improved attenders received solar backpacks with USB chargers, the school’s website said. The top five winners were all expected to achieve 100 per cent attendance.

Students with attendance greater than 80 per cent received free school years books.

“The biggest prize of all is to have a good education to help [the youth] attain success in the future,” Rumbolt said May 8.

Sanikiluaq’s Najuqsivik Daycare Society donated over 200 pairs of running shoes, with 96 going to Patsaali school and 126 pairs going to Nuiyak school, Rumbolt said earlier, during his May 7 member’s statement in the legislature.

“This is a very positive incentive for our youth to go to school,” he said.

Low attendance is the biggest worry for Nunavut’s education department, the deputy education minister, Kathy Okpik, has said.

“This 70.1 [per cent attendance rate in schools], is quite alarming to me,” Okpik told Nunatsiaq News last November in response to the release of the department of education’s release of its 2009/10 annual report.

That report showed overall attendance from kindergarten to Grade 12 for Nunavut students has dropped almost four percentage points since 2001 to about 70 per cent.

“If every student attends 70.1 per cent of the time from K to 12, that means they’ve lost out on three years of education,” Okpik said.

This needs to change — and plans are being put in place to help increase those attendance rates, Okpik said.

Under Nunavut’s Education Act, District Education Authorities are required to establish attendance policies for their communities.

“We’re actively working with DEAs and school administration to develop stay in school initiatives and to identify and share our best practices,” Okpik said.

During the last legislative sitting in March, Okpik said the department plans to introduce a new system this fall to track attendance.

In Sanikiluaq, the Najuqsivik Society also donated two automated external defibrillators to the community’s two schools.

This past February staff and students were trained on how to use the life-saving devices.

“The Najuqsivik Society is a wonderful example of how a community group can make a difference in the well-being of the community,” Rumbolt said in the legislature.