Nunavut government defends its decision to not release damning NTEP review
“The consultant’s report is not the final report that was intended to be tabled—it is only one component”
Nunavut Arctic College’s Iqaluit campus. The Government of Nunavut says that a review of the Nunavut Teacher Education Program was never supposed to be released to the public until an accompanying action plan was also prepared. (File photo)
The Government of Nunavut is disputing the allegation that its education staff lied about the state of a damning review of the territory’s teacher education program.
The Nunavut Teachers Association made that accusation earlier this week, after the previously unreleased report was leaked to the media.
The association says it had been told by the Department of Education that the report was not yet complete. The report itself says it was completed in October 2017.
In response, Department of Education staff say that the report won’t be finalized until it’s accompanied by a separate action plan.
Officials say they’re working to finish the action plan by this autumn, when both reports will be tabled in the legislature.
The controversy centres on a 77-page report on the Nunavut Teacher Education Program, prepared by a firm called Directions Evidence and Policy Research Group.
The review looked at faculty, administration, education students and graduates of NTEP—a Nunavut Arctic College program that’s accredited through the University of Regina.
The review concluded that NTEP does not adequately prepare teachers for the classroom and ultimately “is not capable of producing a bilingual, Inuit teacher workforce.”
The report’s findings come as the government is under heavy pressure to deliver Inuktut-language education throughout the territory’s elementary and secondary schools.
In a June 20 email to Nunatsiaq News, a department spokesperson said that included in the scope of the NTEP review was the work of the education department alongside Nunavut Arctic College to analyze the report’s recommendations and then develop an action plan.
That process became extended when the college decided to switch its partnership to Memorial University, the department said.
“In the interests of releasing the consultant’s report, the Department of Education and Nunavut Arctic College plan to have the report tabled in the fall, with the action plan to follow once completed,” the department said in a June 20 email.
“In short, the consultant’s report is not the final report that was intended to be tabled—it is only one component of what was intended to be the final report.”
At that point, the department said it will be in a position to comment on the report’s recommendations and how it plans to address them.
In the meantime, the GN said the report was only shared with Memorial University and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
John Fanjoy, president of the Nunavut Teachers Association, said he doesn’t accept the department’s latest explanation.
“The Department of Education’s response that the shelved NTEP report was only a component of a larger report is disingenuous at best, and continues the department’s bureaucratic leadership’s pattern of dishonesty,” he told Nunatsiaq News.
The department has explained the delay in the report’s release, in part, as being due to a merging of the NTEP review with the college’s partnership with Memorial University. But “when the decision was made to hide the NTEP report in October of 2017 from stakeholders and the public,” said Fanjoy, this partnership was not “even on the horizon.”
“That opportunity did not present itself until much later,” he said.
Although the NTA wants to be an “active player” in reforming NTEP, the department’s withholding of the report has left them unable to contribute, Fanjoy said.
“We want to see our students becoming our teachers. We want to contribute to that but we haven’t been given that opportunity by the department.”
Fanjoy said he is also concerned about the department’s use of outside sources to conduct reviews, such as the consultants hired to conduct the October 2017 report.
“The concept of hiring private companies and private corporations just to affirm your values and to say that you’ve consulted with others, to me that doesn’t make sense. The public in Nunavut, their tax dollars are paying for this, and they should ask questions.”
“What reports from other private contractors have they received in the last two or three years that they have not shared with the public?”
When asked about NTA’s allegations that the department lied about the report, a department spokesperson repeated its assertion that the GN intended to release the report.
Fanjoy said he has not been contacted by the department since the NTA’s statement condemning the government’s decision to not release the report sooner.
Shut up.
I tried for six months unsuccessfully to get a copy starting in September of 2017 and ending in February of 2018 .
The report was deliberately shelved with the intent never to be made public.
Don’t insult our intelligence with feeble groping for excuses.
Bert,
ISV says that only a mother can criticize or correct a child. Neither you nor any outside consultant may do so.
Everything in the fantasy world of Nunavut is perfect. Always has been, always will be.
85% of GN employees will be Inuit – any day now.
The unemployed Inuktitut speakers with degrees and work experience in medicine, nursing, teaching, engineering, business, political science, communications, social work, procurement, finance, information technology and public administration will be hired to fill the GN’s thousand vacant positions. It will happen the day after all the taxi drivers in Iqaluit are Inuit.
In ten years of reading Nunatsiaq, I think this is my favourite comment.
I think they are giving out free driver’s licenses without proof of citizenship, training and ID in New York City. Can I be a taxi a driver in Iqaluit without a professional driver’s license?
I would certainly hope not.
Decades ago I worked as a taxi driver for a short stint as a student in Ontario, and there was like a 40 hour training course at that time. I would like to think that Nunavut has something somewhat similar. I would think that for public safety purposes they must, but I really don’t know.
It is interesting that John Fanjoy has the audacity to claim moral high ground considering how the NTA is run. Get your house in order first before casting aspersions; here are some issues you might want to attend to.
1. Consider doing barbeques for ALL NTA members, not just Iqaluit.
2. Ensure that you have third-party running elections or votes- explains why the union looks like an East Coast Country Club. Are you comfortable not having an Inuit person work for the NTA?
3. There are also women of all backgrounds within the membership; consider that next time you send people to workshops.
4. Don’t change by-laws without membership vote; explains why you now have extended your term and limiting the presidential contest to your friends.
5. NTA is not an NBA or NHL team, stop buying GOLD rings, it is a waste of our money; might come in handy If we must go on strike when we reject YOUR no-good deals!
6. Travel to communities and meet with membership rather than spend our money taking holidays down-south! You are teachers, get involved in schools!
7. Membership should request a financial audit!
I am not a happy member!
Oh snap!!
There are no more rings been purchased since Terry Young was President.
The NTA is audited every year. The audit is reviewed at annual meeting. This is the same for changing bylaws, that’s voted on by regional executives at annual meeting. The budget is voted on every year for how funds will be spent.
The Barbecue in Iqaluit is done by the regional executive, not the NTA President. If you want one, ask your regional executive.
Any member can propose a resolution to change bylaws each year. If you want to change how elections are run, or who is sent to meetings, make a proposal to be voted on at the AGM.
You should probably do your homework before you start making allegations.
Can someone shed light on the rings that have been mentioned? What were the rings for? Were they expensive? Who received Rings? Who approved them?
It would be good if the Inuit Teacher graduates would move to other communities to teach other then their own community. It’s hard to teach your own relatives and in smaller communities. Some teachers would learn maturity being in a different community. How can a DEA discuss fully about a teacher’s behavior when they are all related to them. The Inuit techers even try to get their own husbands or close relatives to be on Board.
Ms. Tupak,
What is wrong with getting the skills to teach your own children, as well as your nieces and your nephews and eventually your grandchildren?
Is that not the traditional Inuit way?
Your focus seems to be making the job of the DEA easier, by providing identical teachers and isolating them from the community.
Why should a teacher want to leave their home community? Why should they abandon all their community support? Why should they become a stranger in another community?
School in Nunavut should not be the institutional process it is in the south. That process is designed to produce winners and losers , but mostly losers. School in Nunavut should be about helping each child to develop the potential they have.
@ Teacher – I hope you’re actively involved in Nunavut’s education system. The problem here is that Nunavut isn’t producing people with the education necessary to effectively perform the duties of senior positions in the public and private sector. If school should not be the historically developed and internationally calibrated “institutional process it is in the south” that produces doctors, nurses, accountants and engineers….then it should be about developing a kid’s potential? I hate to wake you up from your slumber, but the system is already developing potential in children…and that level of potential is laughable in aggregate.
Most of those who go through the “institutional process it [education] is in the south” do not become doctors, nurses, accountants and engineers in the south. Only a very small percentage of southern students become doctors, nurses, accountants and engineers. Most end up working in retail.
I agree with you that currently the level of development that comes from schooling in Nunavut, in most cases, is way too low.
But the answer is not “more of the same”.
To the Teacher with the bitter attitude. Knocking the “south” is just a pastime for people in the north. To me it reveals a number of possible things 1 – A nagging insecurity / jealousy at lifestyle differences, or, 2 – If coming from a transplanted southerner, a way of declaring fidelity to their newly (hopefully, wannabe) northern ‘tribe’ (in the sense of an accepted resident, not member of a race). Either way it’s pathetic, especially in a case like this when the contrast is not so flattering after all. So, you don’t want a southern system, what do you want? The bad news is what you currently have is even worse than what you knock. But keep telling people what they want to hear. What a great teacher you must be.