Tories chop grants to First Nations students

Effort to bridge education gap questioned

Critics are questioning the Progressive Conservatives’ commitment to addressing the province’s troubling education achievement gap after the government slashed $1.4 million in grants to school boards for Alberta’s aboriginal students.

Alberta Education provides funding to school boards based on the number of students identified as First Nations, Metis and Inuit. The 2015-16 budget, released Thursday, saw the government cut 3.1 per cent from that non-teacher compensation grant.

“These are our most vulnerable kids,” said Mark Ramsankar, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. “You talk about our northern areas where you’ve got very high FNMI students, when you cut that budget it’s just going to exacerbates the problem that we already see.

“When they say it’s a priority yet it’s one of the areas they cut, your words and actions don’t align,” Ramsankar said.

Premier Jim Prentice, who also serves as minister of aboriginal relations, has repeatedly said the gaps in education achievement between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students is “unacceptable.”

The province has struggled to improve high school graduation rates among its First Nations, Metis and Inuit student population.

Provincially, the overall threeyear high school completion rate has improved since 2009, from 71.5 per cent to 74.9 per cent. Similarly, dropout rates fell to 3.3 per cent.

But those figures are far worse among Alberta First Nations, Metis and Inuit students with only 43.6 per cent graduating high school in three years. T he dropout rate hovers around 7.8 per cent.

“The achievement gap is most substantial and distressing to my- self, to the premier, to the people in the First Nations community,” Education Minister Gordon Dirks said Friday. “It’s something that has to be addressed.”

Dirks said the province remains committed to a memorandum of understanding that includes the federal government and First Nations chiefs to address the problem through provincial initiatives.

Alberta Education’s 2015-16 business plan directs the ministry to eliminate that achievement gap, increase the numbers of First Nations, Metis and Inuit education professionals, and implement new provincial standards for education service agreements for First Nations students.

Provincial targets for high school completion by First Nations, Metis and Inuit students is set at 51 per cent for the 2015-16 school year, rising to 53 per cent by 2019-20.

Calgary’s public and school boards lose a combined $182,000 next year because of the 3.1 per cent cut to FNMI funding in next year’s budget.

“It doesn’t speak to assisting kids across this province,” said Alexandra Jurisic, president of the Calgary Catholic Teachers’ Association. “For our aboriginal First Nations, Metis and Inuit youth, who are the fastest-growing population in the province at six per cent, (the funding cut) doesn’t speak to addressing the socio-cultural changes they’re facing.”

Dirks said school boards can reallocate non-teacher compensation grants to areas they identify as a priority. However, many of those grants, including funding for ESL students, were cut 3.1 per cent as well.

Helen Clease, president of the Alberta School Boards Association, said the province needs to move away from providing grants to boards and instead focus on increasing per-student funding.

When they say it’s a priority yet it’s one of the areas they cut, your words and actions don’t align.