Drop out rates high

The number of Aboriginal students completing high school is still lagging well behind the national average, according to a report released recently by the Caledon Institute of Public Policy.

According to figures contained in Aboriginal Peoples and Postsecondary Education in Canada, which were calculated based on information contained in the 2001 census, approximately 43 per cent of Aboriginal people between the ages of 20 and 24 have not graduated from high school. When just the figures for people living on reserve are considered, that number jumps to 58 per cent. For the Canadian population as a whole, the number of non-high school graduates in the same age range is 16 per cent.

While Michael Mendelson, the author of the report, set out to examine the success rates of Aboriginal people within the post-secondary education system, what he found was that the low number of Aboriginal graduates from post-secondary institutions were in great part a result of the low number of Aboriginal students graduating from high school.

"A surprising and important finding in this paper is that Aboriginal high school graduates have about the same probability as anyone else (75 per cent) of graduating with a PSE (post-secondary education) degree or diploma," Mendelson said. "The problem therefore is the rate of failure to complete high school."