Aboriginal grad rates climb in B.C. but still lag

VANCOUVER— British Columbia’s government is celebrating record-high graduation rates for aboriginal students, but indigenous high school completion levels, provincially and for the rest of Canada, still fall significantly short of the national average.

The number of aboriginal students finishing secondary school in the province has increased steadily to 63 per cent from about 54 per cent over the past six years, as indicated by data from B.C.’s Education Ministry.

But that is still more than 20 percentage points shy of the 84 per cent average for the general population in B.C.

“Seeing any kind of increase in those numbers is of course very welcome,” said Linc Kesler, a professor at the University of British Columbia and director of the school’s First Nations House of Learning.

Kesler predicted the upward trend will continue with further efforts to bridge the funding gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students and by increasing the amount of aboriginal content being taught in school.

“The curriculum piece is really critical,” he said.

“Overcoming the silence and exclusion of aboriginal people in the way, for instance, Canadian history is taught . . . is really important and I think has a really significant impact.”

A shifting culture is also having an impact on improved graduation rates, said Kesler, with more encouragement for aboriginal students to carry on to university or college.

“There was once a time when . . . there wasn’t such an interest in seeing them graduate or proceed to post-secondary,” he said. “People were being tracked out of academic courses with a fair degree of regularity.”

B.C.’s education minister, Mike Bernier, was unavailable for comment, but said in a statement that he’s encouraged to see so many aboriginal students graduating at the same time.

“There is still work to do so every aboriginal student has the skills they need to succeed in a changing world,” said an additional statement from the ministry.