MLA “distressed” by education department

Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo told MLAs last week that he’s distressed to hear comments from department of education officials in the media, commenting upon Nunavut’s woeful performance in a recent national test of mathematics skills.

Peter Kilabuk, Nunavut’s minister of education, and Tom Rich, Nunavut’s deputy minister of education, have said in newspaper and radio interviews that they’re not surprised that Nunavut students did so badly in the national tests.

“Mr. Speaker, these comments seem to suggest that the poor results of Nunavut schools in a nation-wide math test were inevitable,” Tootoo said.

But Tootoo said when a Grade 6 class at Iqaluit’s Nakasuk School placed second in a nation-wide math competition, department officials were putting out a different line:

“At that time, the minister of education made the following comments in an official government of Nunavut news release. ‘This is a great achievement for those young scholars. They should feel very proud of themselves. They are an example of what our youth in schools are capable of in Nunavut,’” Tootoo said.

“Mr. Speaker, the minister of education of the day said the right thing: our children and our educators need to know that we expect and welcome success in the classroom.”

But Tootoo said the department is now sending the wrong message to youth.

“It’s tragic that we see that we seem to have reversed our expectations in just three short years. Mr. Speaker, I feel adamantly that the department of education should not be presenting failure as inevitable, but instead should be encouraging our students to be the best that they can be,” Tootoo said.