Roundtable focuses on Aboriginal education

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Concordia University played host to an impressive gathering of Aboriginal leaders and educators, federal, provincial and territorial government representatives and policy advisors on one day in February. They came together to try to answer one question. What can be done to improve the success rates for Aboriginal students in Canada?

The event was called Moving Forward-National Roundtable on Aboriginal Education K-12, and was organized by the Society for Advancement of Excellence in Education (SAEE), a British Columbia-based non-profit education research agency and a relatively new player on the Aboriginal education front.

"Our mandate is to look at some of the most critical issues in improving education performance, and especially in at-risk groups, and to try to commission research that will be helpful in an applied sense, not just theory," explained SAEE executive director Helen Raham.

This is the second time SAEE has taken on a project related specifically to Aboriginal education. The first was Sharing Our Successes, a research study done in 2003-2004 that looked at 10 schools in Western Canada and the success they've had in meeting the needs of their Aboriginal students.

Some of the problems identified during the research study were the ones put on the table for discussion during the roundtable on Feb. 22.

The huge demand for the Sharing the Success report-with more than 1,800 orders for the document received at last count-it became clear that more success stories in Aboriginal schooling are needed.

"And instead of continuing to say the problems are too great to deal with or for the different groups to continue to talk past each other, we thought that it was time to get everybody together in the same room and to try to be productive about finding solutions that are working."

At the end of the day, the participants put forward six recommendations, including increasing supports for Aboriginal education at all levels by improving communication and sharing resources between everyone involved in education provision. Another recommendation included gathering more complete data on Aboriginal education and making better use of that data to gauge progress and plan ways to better Aboriginal student outcomes.

Other recommendations included increasing the use of Aboriginal content and Aboriginal approaches to teaching. It was also suggested that recruiting more Aboriginal teachers and providing them better supports would help Aboriginal students, as would the creation of regional centres of excellence to provide research and development support aimed at improving Aboriginal education. The roundtable also recommended that work be done to improve public awareness of Aboriginal issues and to provide Aboriginal students with information about career choices available to them.

The roundtable brought together a diverse group of participants, but at the end of the process there was a positive mood in the room, and a lot of consensus.

"I think that based on the wide perspectives, diverse experience and knowledge of the people there, that we were able to come up with a repertoire of do-able and actionable positive strategies that that group went away saying that there is something here for everybody to work on," Raham said.

"There was a very positive tone to the discussions and a determination that we shouldn't be any longer continuing to drag our feet. That we need to get going on this."

Some progress has already been made since the roundtable, Raham said.

"We know that, for example, the Council of Ministers of Education used our report for the basis of their meeting on March 8 and actually issued a press release stating that they were going to undertake a number of these actions, and probably the most significant one being beginning to collect and monitor the data on performance and get some common indicators. That's a huge one because, up until now, only B.C. has been doing that in an eficient and effective manner and it has been making a real difference," she said.

"The Canadian Council on Learning, which is a brand new institute, has established one of its five nodes as Aboriginal research and the director there has said that this is going to be a major focus and that the roundtable recommendations will certainly help guide the research they want to undertake and to contribute solutions. And (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) said that they were going to take this paper into their cabinet meeting with Aboriginal leaders in the next few weeks ... they requested that it be something they could use."

While things look promising, the SAEE will be monitoring the area of Aboriginal education over the next few years to see what progress is made on implementing these recommendations over the longer term and will report on those findings, Raham said. Work is also underway to create an ongoing network between roundtable participants via e-mail to keep the dialogue going.

Patrick Brazeau, national vice-chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP), was one of the participants in the SAEE roundtable. He said that, from CAP's perspective, the roundtable was a success because it formally recognized that attempts to improve Aboriginal education must look beyond the situation on reserve, giving consideration to the education needs of all Aboriginal people.

"I mean, we personally have no problem with a First Nations-specific approach to Aboriginal education, but at the same time there's also the reality that most Aboriginal people in the country live off reserve, and there's a significant portion of non-status Aboriginal people who don't have equal and equitable access to education funding, for example, or even appropriate, culturally appropriate education that meets their needs as well," he said.

This is the approach CAP is encouraging all levels of government to take, Brazeau said. "Basically sending the message out there to the levels of overnment that all K-12 programming should be status and residency-blind. If we're going to tackle the issue and try to get more students to continue on with their education, you can't just target one portion of the Aboriginal population."