Aboriginal education still in crisis
Aserious, sustained investment to improve the state of First Nations education on reserves would be money wisely spent, not just for the sake of individual young Canadians raised up to their full potential, but for Canada as a whole.
The aboriginal education gap, reaffirmed in bleak national survey figures released this week, continues to be a serious economic drag on the country and it cries out for an innovative action plan.
The arguments against another self-defeating taxpayer handout for our aboriginal communities do not hold water. Aboriginal youth are Canada’s fastest-growing demographic group at the same time that this nation is being challenged with a looming labour shortage.
Only an optimist can draw much comfort from the aboriginal education data in Statistics Canada’s new National Household Survey. The findings do suggest that indigenous women in their 30s and 40s are returning to post-secondary studies — a greater percentage are more educated than both aboriginal men in that age group and older aboriginal women. That trend should contribute to the sort of role modelling that will be required to break future generations out of a self-destructive cycle of educational neglect that dates back to the dark legacy of the residential schools. The statistics overall, however, are brutal in their clarity. The gap persists — aboriginal Canadians still lag well behind non-aboriginal Canadians in educational attainment, with the largest gap still at the university level. Nearly 30 per cent of aboriginal Canadians 25 to 64 have no certificate, diploma or degree whatsoever, compared to just 12 per cent of non-aboriginal people in the same age group. One-fifth of aboriginal people declared a high-school diploma or equivalent as their highest level of education. And fewer than one in 10 aboriginal Canadians holds a university degree, compared to more than onequarter of non-aboriginals.
With its focus on the 25-to-64 age group, the National Household Survey, which replaced the mandatory long-form census, tells us very little about the educational state of the young Canadians who represent nearly half of this country’s aboriginal population. But the Idle No More movement has shown that young indigenous people, in particular, are finding their voices, they’re demanding change and they’re determined to be heard.
A 2009 study from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards said closing the aboriginal education gap could be worth $401 billion between 2001-2025 for the country. And it found that governments’ fiscal positions could improve by $116 billion as a result of reduced services and increased tax revenue.
The Harper government insists it has heard the message and is attempting to heed the long-standing call for a better education system on reserves, which fall under federal jurisdiction. This is going to have to mean more than a few new schools, scattered here and there.
The most recent federal budget included a new $241-million program that ties income assistance for young aboriginal people on reserves to skills training. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt says education is his top priority and has pledged to have a First Nations Education Act in place by September 2014.
Government priorities have been expressed in the past without a significant improvement, lip service without the funding to back it up. This isn’t an aboriginal issue, it’s a Canadian issue, and this is one problem, a shameful one for the nation, that will not fix itself.