Recently, Sturgeon Lake Central School students and staff looked on as officials announced funding increases that would affect the local school along with 26 others across the province.
The funding is part of a provincial initiative called Following Their Voices, meant to “raise the educational achievement and participation of Saskatchewan’s First Nations, Metis and Inuit students.” The new funding, coming from the federal government, will be an investment of $3 million over three years. This money is an addition to the province’s $1.55 million commitment. The total program funding for the 2017-18 school year to be $2.56 million dollars.
Deputy Premier and Education Minister Don Morgan and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada’s (INAC) Saskatchewan Associate Regional Director General Bob Maguire announced the increased funding.
“We think Following Their Voices is one of the most important and best things we can do to promote First Nations graduation,” Morgan said. “We want to make sure First Nations students have every ability to prosper and participate fully in the growth of the province, and the way that’s going to happen is through education and training.”
Pat Bugler, Director of Education of the Treaty Six Education Council, said Following Their Voices was influenced by Canadian administrators visiting the Maori people of New Zealand. The Maori advised against directly replicating the model they share with New Zealander administrators.
“[Canadians]were told continually you can’t expect that [the Maori] model is going to work in [Canadian] context,” Bugler said. Canadians were advised to “go back home and listen to your students and listen to your community members and listen to your elders, and see what changes need to happen in education in order to realize success.”
Bugler said research was carried out to find the needs of urban, rura, and First Nations schools. A consistent problem was found to be a lack of student engagement. Bugler said students felt they lacked relationships with teachers and that teachers “didn’t have the best interests [of students] in mind.”
Following Their Voices was developed to focus on engaging students by creating an environment that respects and honours who they are, and creating relationships between students and teachers outside of curriculum matters.
To achieve results, Bugler said the funding is going toward hiring facilitators who will examine teachers’ practice and create goals with teachers to improve engagement, as well as provincial learning development opportunities.
Educators of settler backgrounds along with First Nations leaders are involved with Following Their Voices. The Following Their Voices leadership team consists of government and university officials, school division heads and two elders, while the program also seeks the help of aboriginal knowledge keepers.
The participating schools are spread out across the province. The new participating schools that are close to the Battlefords area include John Paul II Collegiate and Sakewew High School. Cando Community School is already participating.
Year one of the program has produced results. Data on the Following Their Voices website for participating schools shows that attendance among First Nations, Metis and Inuit students who attend 80 per cent of their classes has increased by 10 per cent from 46 per cent in 2014/15, to 56 per cent in 2015/16.
An “important success measure” for Following Their Voices is Grade 12 graduation results, although according to its website, the program hasn’t been active long enough to affect graduation rates in participating schools.
Increasing the provincial graduation rate for aboriginal students remains a challenge for school administrators. According to a provincial auditor’s report released earlier this June, the graduation rate for aboriginal students in the Living Sky School division is 32 per cent. Randy Fox, Interim Director of Education of the Living Sky School Division, said at the June 14 school board meeting that the 32 per cent rate “doesn’t tell the whole story.” He said one particular school is affecting the numbers, and the graduation rate among aboriginal students is more like 40 per cent.
Fox said there are “bright spots,” such as Spiritwood High School. He said the on-time graduation rate (within three years) for First Nations and Metis students is 64 per cent, which is one per cent away from the Ministry of Education’s goal by 2020. Fox added at Spiritwood High School, the extended graduation rate of five years is 92 per cent.
“Our extended graduation rates are quite a bit better,” Fox said. “Kids have some interruptions in their high school and they end up graduating five years instead of three. They still made it and we should be proud of them. It doesn’t look good on your three year rate but at least they’re getting through.”
Fox attributed the graduation rates at Spiritwood High School to an intensive reading training program for students who come into Grades 9 and 10.
Fox said he thinks Living Sky School Division will reach an aboriginal student graduation rate of 65 per cent by 2020.
“It sounds like a long ways to go, but if you get half a dozen more kids per year to graduate on time, you’re going to reach that,” Fox said.
“We’re trending upward, but we have ways to go.”
