Absenteeism, not tough exams, makes kids drop-out

Last week in the legislature, Ed Picco, the minister of education, said it’s not fair to put the blame for Nunavut’s high drop-out rates on the Alberta high school leaving exams, which every student in Nunavut must pass before successfully graduating.

Picco said the Alberta exams will be “Nunavutized” in the future, but not made more simple.

Picco was defending his department’s track record against questioning from Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo and Quttiktuq MLA Levi Barnabas.

“The success rate actually has been pretty good on the Alberta exams,” Picco said. “We endorse those exams. We want to keep that bar higher, and Mr. Speaker, we are seeing more and more of our students pass.”

Picco said the growing number of graduates is due to high schools offering Grade 12 in the communities. Yet for every 100 students entering kindergarten, only 25 graduate from Grade 12.

Regular school attendance seems to be the key reason people drop out, Picco said.

“Our students who attend on a regular basis, 80 or 90 per cent, graduate. And they write those Alberta exams…they’re passing them.”

Since 1999, there have been 960 Grade 12 graduates in Nunavut, and that 86 per cent of these graduates are Inuit.

But Tootoo pointed out that Picco’s figures still mean the majority of the non-beneficiaries who attend Nunavut schools are not graduating.

“That is the not-so-rosy side of our education system,” Tootoo said.