Social promotion a hot topic for Nunavut DEA reps

Representatives of Nunavut’s District Education Authorities meet in Iqaluit Oct. 15 for the coalition’s annual general meeting. Schools across the territory continue to deal with problems associated with social promotion, a number of DEA representatives said. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

A breakdown in communication at all levels of Nunavut’s education system is perpetuating problems associated with the social promotion of students from one grade to the next and leading to student dropouts, a room full of district education authority members heard in Iqaluit Oct. 14.

Social promotion or “social passing,” which the territory’s education department says it does not officially support, is the practice of pushing students from one grade to the next even if they can’t fulfill the requirements set out in the grade’s curriculum.

“DEAs have been saying for years that social passing has to stop,” said Nikki Eegeesiak, executive director of the Coalition of Nunavut’s DEAs, at the coalition’s annual general meeting at Iqaluit’s Frobisher Inn.

“There’s a big gap in communication at every level,” Eegeesiak told Nunatsiaq News, “from parents, kids, teachers, government—the whole school system.”

For example, if kids are skipping school, Eegeesiak explained, teachers won’t always tell parents, and parents won’t know.

Attendance rates often drop and dropout rates often increase after students get to Grade 10, Eegeesiak said, when students begin writing departmental exams and earning credits towards their high school diploma.

Sometimes, parents don’t know how ill-prepared their children are when they go into Grade 10.

Eegeesiak’s office introduced new terminology recently to reflect this breakdown in communication, changing the term from “dropouts” to “pushouts.”

All too often, blame is pushed around within the education system to explain problems, Eegeesiak said.

“Sometimes it wasn’t the kid’s fault, it wasn’t the teacher’s fault, or parent’s or school’s fault, but it was the whole system’s fault,” she said. “Everybody’s got to be more accountable.”

The gap in communication must be addressed to avoid push-outs, Eegeesiak said.

Social promotion, a controversial practice in Nunavut schools dating back to before the territory’s creation in 1999, can leave students with diminished self-confidence, some say, because they fall further and further behind their classmates.

Kathy Okpik, Nunavut’s deputy minister of education, submitted a letter to Nunatsiaq News in 2012, explaining that the education department does not support social promotion but instead supports something the GN calls “continuous progress.”

“Continuous progress requires that a school team — teachers, parents, principals, school community counsellors and student support teachers — work together to make decisions about the placement of each student,” Okpik wrote.

But in 2013, then-premier, and education minister Eva Aariak defended her department’s policy of keeping students with their age group.

Holding students back should not be a regular procedure, Aariak said.

And Iqaluit lawyer Anne Crawford, who has been hired as a consultant to help prepare the DEA’s submission to the Education Act review currently under way, wrote in Nunatsiaq News last fall that a directive signed by Aariak in Sept. 2013 makes it “very, very difficult to ‘fail’ a student.”

Some DEA representatives at the coalition’s recent Iqaluit meeting don’t see much positive impact from passing students when they’re not ready.

“We get fewer teachers, dropout rates are high, graduation rates are low,” Mavis Elias Adjun, a parent and DEA representative from Kugluktuk, told Nunatsiaq News Oct. 15. “There are still negative effects of social passing.”

Vicki Aitaok, chair of the Cambridge Bay DEA told Nunatsiaq News, that, as a parent, she actually held her own son back in Grade 2 because she didn’t feel he was ready for Grade 3.

“In fact, I have two children I have held back as a parent,” said Aitaok, an instructor at Nunavut Arctic College in Cambridge Bay.

“As a parent I have that authority to decide if my child should pass or not. And parents have always had that. I don’t believe parents really know about that.”

Aitaok would like to see parents become more involved, rather than wait for administrative directives.

“Parents are not being as active as they need to be, and they’re expecting teachers and the government to make decisions for them, rather than making decisions for themselves and their own children,” she said.

Aitaok recently posted Cambridge Bay school attendance rates on that community’s Facebook page hoping to motivate parents into making sure their children go to school.

“We wanted to show, too, that there are lots of kids going to school — lots and lots of kids,” she said.

Aitaok said she doesn’t yet see the pieces falling into place from the education department’s efforts to get rid of social promotion, but she is hopeful for the future.

“The directive only started this school year, so we’re not expecting [social promotion] to continue,” Aitaok said.

“Whatever happened in the past, happened in the past. We’re just going to try to move forward with the children, and encourage parents to get more involved.”