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Aboriginal students doing better but still lag behind classmates

Howe Sound district ‘very much on the right track’ Aboriginal students are improving their performance in schools in the Howe Sound District.

Howe Sound district ‘very much on the right track’

Aboriginal students are improving their performance in schools in the Howe Sound District.

But, said the district’s director of instruction Alex Marshall, in general they still lag significantly behind their non-aboriginal counterparts, as was revealed in a recently released Fraser Institute report on Aboriginal Education in B.C.

"I think in the last few years we have seen an incredible change in the awareness of people at all levels of education and in aboriginal communities to redress the situation," said Marshall.

"But it is going to take time.

"The Fraser Institute has certainly identified a problem but it is one we are not unaware of.

"We are very aware of the realities. But what I think the Fraser Institute doesn’t do is look at the more comprehensive way of what is being done about the problem.

"We all know the evidence is there. The question is what are we doing about it, and that part is conspicuously missing from the report."

Marshall said a great deal is being done in the Howe Sound district with support workers in place in the schools and a focus on improving early literacy in aboriginal students.

While it is still early days yet, said Marshall, the district has seen a 15 per cent improvement in the number of aboriginal students who have taken and passed the provincial Grade 12 English exam.

From 1994 on, the passing rate was about 30 per cent. In 2001/2002 that percentage had increased to 45 per cent.

"In this district we are doing a lot to address the issue," said Marshall.

"There is progress with aboriginal students due to fact that we have put in supports, and we have targeted dollars for the First Nations’ programs in the district.

"And we have allocated that in conjunction with a committee of educators in the district and the aboriginal community."

This is the first report on aboriginal education done by the Fraser Institute, which has been producing its controversial annual report cards ranking schools since 1998.

This means there is nothing to compare the findings to. So some schools that may have scored very poorly in the report may also have improved over the years. Yet that fact would not be reflected in the report.

It was based on snapshot data of B.C.’s standardized test results for students in Grades 4, 7 and 10, provincial exam marks and graduation rates.

It ranked 38 elementary schools and 49 high schools (none in the Howe Sound District), and found that aboriginal children lag far behind in academic achievement compared to non-native students.

At least 40 per cent of aboriginal students failed the province-wide reading tests, double the rate of non-aboriginals, and the failure rate on numeracy rests was more than double that of non aboriginal students.

It also found:

• The likelihood that aboriginal kids will graduate from high school in five years is about one in five. However, according to the Education Ministry the number of aboriginal students who earn a high school diploma has been increasing steadily for the past decade. That’s because more than half of aboriginal students take longer than six years to graduate.

• Aboriginal students take, on average, less than one provincially examinable course while non-aboriginals take nearly three. The courses prepare students for post-secondary options.

• High school completion rates for all of B.C. students was 79 per cent in 2003 while the aboriginal completion rate was only 46 per cent. However that is 13 per cent better than it was in 1996-97.

There are about 490 aboriginal students in Howe Sound. The total student population is just under 5,000.

In B.C. there are 52,100 aboriginal students among a total of 660,100 students registered at the beginning of 2002-03.

Aboriginal students are the only ones to receive targeted funding from the provincial government. The school district gets $950 per aboriginal student to help fund programs for them.

Like all report cards there were A-schools and D-schools. And that means that there are ways to help aboriginal students to excel.

The top ranking secondary school was Sardis Secondary in Chilliwack. Ranked last was George M Dawson Secondary in Masset.

The top elementary school was Sk’aadgaa Naay in Skidegate and the worst was Aatse Davie in Fort Ware.

Marshall said Howe Sound district does plan to draw out aboriginal statistics on achievement in the future to get a better measure of how local schools are doing.

The associate director of education for Squamish did not want to comment.

But Anita Willier education coordinator of the N’Quatqua Band said tremendous steps have been taken in the last few years and its paying off.

"As a team we have developed many programs for our First Nations and we are starting to see results," she said.

"It does take time but we are seeing good outcomes. I have been so excited every year to work with Alex (Marshall) and other team members to help our children in the school."

Marshall said there is a consensus amongst educators and First Nations leaders that the school district is focusing in all the right places.

"I think we are very much on the right track," said Marshall.

"This is a problem that has been going on for a long, long time but we are being really serious about addressing the issue.

"What I think is good in our district is that we take the shared responsibility seriously and we work intensively with the aboriginal community and there is a high degree of trust in our district.

"All levels of the educational community and the aboriginal community are working together and understand the collective responsibility.

"We understand the problem and we are saying we can make a difference, and we will."