Nunavut’s Education Department heads out on a vision quest
Government hires consultant to design 10-year blueprint for school system
An elder in Kimmirut reads to school children during a literacy event held last fall. (GN handout photo)
Saying they’ve been caught off guard by rapid change, the Government of Nunavut has hired DPRA Canada Inc., the Canadian subsidiary of a U.S.-based consulting firm, to design a 10-year blueprint for its Department of Education, procurement documents state.
“Fast emerging challenges remain a real barrier to the Government of Nunavut (GN) Turaaqtavut mandate and the Sivummuaqpalliajjutivut priority area for education,” says a GN request for proposal.
Turaaqtavut is the name of the mandate document that Nunavut MLAs adopted in February 2018. Sivummuaqpalliajjutivut is the section of Turaaqtavut that says MLAs want better training and education for children, youth and adult learners.
The GN asks the consultant to cover early learning and childcare, the kindergarten to Grade 12 system and adult learning—but not post-secondary education.
In the first phase of the project, the consultant is supposed to interview 28 Education Department staff members and seven other people who work for the GN and “external partners.”
In the second phase, they’re supposed to interview at least 22 education staff, plus seven other people.
The territorial government issued the RFP on March 15, with a closing date three weeks later, on April 5.
DPRA Canada Inc.—the only bidder—was awarded the job on May 2.
The RFP says work was to start as soon as possible, with visioning meetings between the consultant and senior management staff scheduled for Arviat between May 6 and May 10. The project is to be completed by Oct. 31, 2019.
The GN did not state the dollar value of the contract, and an addendum to the RFP said the GN would not release a budget for “the scope of work.”
The jargon-laden terms of reference for the RFP claim that in education, the GN feels it’s been wrong-footed by a variety of recent developments.
“Rapid changes in the internal and external environment are increasing the impacts of unintended consequences on current actions/initiatives for education in Nunavut,” the RFP said.
And that’s due to “fast emerging challenges,” the document said.
Those “challenges” include a list of well-publicized problems:
• The risk of language and dialect loss
• Poor student attendance
• The need for sustainable collaboration with “partners-stakeholders-elders”
• Infrastructure problems
• Teacher shortages and human resource problems
In the face of all that, the GN says the Education Department now needs a guidebook, so it’s not constantly reacting to the unexpected.
“The Department of Education has been largely reactive without a deliberate strategic road map to compete in a highly competitive international environment in order to achieve student success in Nunavut,” the RFP says.
So the RFP requires that the consultant put together statistics on graduation rates, school attendance rates, rates of Inuktut-language loss or retention, numbers of Inuit and non-Inuit educators, and other data.
In search of a vision
Next, the GN wants the consultant to come up with a “visioning report,” which will take a look at what the department’s vision looks like now and create a new vision that will lead to 2030.
As part of that, they want the consultant to come up with “three alternate future scenarios,” so the department can react to whatever the future brings.
“The aim of these alternate futures is to illustrate the potential challenges that may materialize in the future and to recognize that any future strategic actions will have to be robust enough to accommodate or take on such changes,” the RFP states.
In the RFP, the GN does not specifically refer to one of its biggest headaches: the dwindling numbers of people qualified to teach school in the Inuit language.
In March of 2017, the GN hired a company to review the Nunavut Teacher Education Program, which operates within Nunavut Arctic College, and Paul Quassa, then the education minister, said the review would be made public by June of that year.
But no GN review of NTEP has ever been made public.
I found this interesting: “the GN wants the consultant to come up with a “visioning report,” which will… create a new vision that will lead to 2030.” I might be wrong about how this looks, but it seems odd to outsource “vision” making doesn’t it?
Is this not the job of the senior leaders in the department; they have multiple reports, visioning statements that already exist; that have the stats in house; the challenge is in implementing the plans and strategies that already exist….one of the biggest problems has been ‘consult, consult, consult’; how about ‘let’s get to work and implement the already good ideas that we have…..
The GN seems to have two responses to everything.
1. Buy something, it doesn’t matter what you get for the money.
2. Hire a consultant.
When was the last time a GN report was written by GN staff?
It’s almost like senior management doesn’t trust their own staff.
Yes, this is the job of the Minister and senior management in Education. They’re just not competent enough to do it. But don’t blame them, it’s the same in numerous other departments. Family Services did the same thing a few years back, think they may have even hired DPRA.
I see that approximately 60 people are about to set the blueprint to follow in education.Besides being a very small sample, I would estimate that approximately 75% of those people are likely non Inuit. How does this work with decolonization?
This is an interesting question, but I think the term ‘decolonization’ deserves to be fleshed out a bit so we can consider the implications of your point. Can you shed some light on this for us?
What… they government is going to study again , how to create a vision for the next 10 years, what a bunch of baloney, here is a vision for you free of charge
We want to educate your children, with trained teachers, please send them to school everyday.
We will give them everything they need, food, support, advice, and everything else, please just send them to school everyday.
Please give the school your contact information every time it changes, become a partner with your school, but most of all send your children to school every day.
The irony too is that they will interview the people within who have misled the department for 10-20 years including the previous head so what is going to change? huh? Nothing. It sure isn’t the new department head who is leading this. The problems with the education act process was they sought information within the department and the few they deemed knowledgeable from outside. It looks like we will have the same old same old. Ms. Minister of Rankin from a few elections ago stalled everything and look where we are now. It never recovered. The regional senior staff continue to trip over themselves too.
GO figure. An American firm to decide how we save a language – spoken and written, collaborate with parents and Elders….
Hope it’s all Alaskan Inuit who will come over and help us.
Ok… this may sound like a silly question.. or maybe too high of an expectation, but… isn’t that what the leaders of the department of education are paid for? And paid the big bucks I might add… to have vision????? Isn’t that the definition of a leader??? To have vision and lead the team in the right direction?? Like, seriously!? Isn’t that the top dogs’ job!???? Like what are they being paid for? Aren’t they experts in their field?
Can we hire some competent people already.. with fresh ideas and VISION!
The Legislature is scheduled to have a Leadership Forum tomorrow to pick a new Speaker.
Maybe they will also decide to replace the current Cabinet Ministers with consultants from DPRA Canada. You know, the people who are considered capable of analyzing the data the GN already has and coming up with a practical vision for getting us where we want to got to.
The Nunavut Act permits the MLAs to pick anyone. Other than the Premier, the members of Executive Council do not have to be MLAs.
Clearly the GN thinks DPRA consultants are more capable of leading Nunavut than the GN is.
Who knows, they might even be right.
How about the Depart of Ed does exit interviews for all graduates (High school and NAC), ask them what worked well in the system that keep them going, what did they wish were available to them while they were in school, and where do they hope to go in the future. this would give a good idea of what works but also what could be done better. THEN ALSO ask those that drop out and dont finish, why they dropped out, what they liked while they were still attending and what could have helped keep them in school.
Also talk to parents of the kids that both graduate and dont, as well as the teachers. then you will know where we need to make adjustments.
what we dont need is another southern that knows nothing about how things are done up here telling us to do things that just wont work.
“what we dont (sic) need is another southern that knows nothing about how things are done up here”…
This is so true, northerners are masters of education and so good at doing things right, we definitely don’t need no ‘outsiders’ telling us anything!
When are we going to start handing out university degrees at the end of grade 12 and masters degrees if you finish your first year of NS.. Second year? PhD for sure!
The solution: Made in Nunavut man!
So this report will replace the public consultations? Lots of questions here. Experts from the south isn’t really a big seller these days don’t you think? Just sounds like ‘big rates’ = big invoices?
Programs relevant to preparing to Post-Secondary in Schools should be lessons taught in classes such as;
– English *
– Grammar (how to read and write) *
– Mathematics (know math) *
– Physics
– Chemistry
– Bio-logy
– Social Studies/ Northern Studies *
– Computer *
– Inuktitut
– Industrial Tech or Small Engine Repair Shop
– Physical Education *
Note: Important *
These are general or advance basics where students should have the opportunity to learn and be taught in SCHOOL NOT Programs that are NOT relevant to students learning. Students are given curriculum programs that are NOT relevant to Students EDUCATION. This develops to social economic burden stranded in an island! or known as illusion or sociopathy environment in an toxic atmosphere! In the end who gets the credit!?! Just a thought. Suggestions???
Wha? I just do not get it. Are they or are they not trying to amend the existing Education Act right now? It seems the tail is wagging the dog here.
The Education Act provides the statutory basis for the delivery of Education in our territory. This law would and should address most if not all of the “challenges” listed in this story. All these “fast emerging” challenges that have plagued our schools for so long.
I see the consultants are meant to compile education statistics as well. Lo and behold; Section 39 of the Ed Act requires attendance reports, Section 74 requires the Minister have a Nunavut wide system of assessments, Part 9 of the Act is all about student records, Section 126 requires the Minister to submit annual reports that include language information, and DEAs are required in several places also to compile information and report.
Well it seems quite a few people in the Department of Education have not been doing their homework and just outsourced the work to the USA. How lovely we as taxpayers get to pay for it twice.
And to top it all off, if they finish amending the Education Act, and the Vision that has been created by the consultants does not align with the new law, I suppose then they will have to pay for other consultants to come in and revamp the Vision. A new law might just be too “fast emerging”.
This contract is a study of mismanagement and duplication.
I would submit that the “fast emerging challenges” here can most accurately be understood as a crisis of incompetence within the GN. As if we didn’t already know, it seems somewhere in the department someone has at least come face to face with this reality.
Here’s all the reading list anyone needs to design a school system that works without spending more than a lousy couple of hundred bucks.
Jonathan Starr, It takes a school: The extraordinary story of an American school in the world’s #1 failed state.
Called The Science and Technology School, this residential school takes in boys and girls aged 12, teaches them English, and provides education sufficiently intensive for graduates to get into American universities.
Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World To First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000
Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage, America’s fragile partnership with Saudi Arabia.
The story of development for illiterate tribal and nomadic Bedouin is not its foremost priority; this remarkable book shows what CAN be done! And in ONE generation!
Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress
Wendy Kopp, A Chance to Make History
Founder of Teach for America—Essential reading!
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Leonard Sax: Boys Adrift: The five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving men.
Rudolf Flesch, Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do about It
Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts: How an inner-city teacher–winner of the American Teacher Award–inspires his students and challenges us to rethink the way we educate our children