National roundtable focuses on Aboriginal education

Page 3

For one day in February, Concordia University played host to an impressive gathering of Aboriginal leaders and educators, federal, provincial and territorial government representatives and policy advisors who all 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 Moving Forward-National Roundtable on Aboriginal Education K-12 and was organized by the Society for Advancement of Excellence in Education (SAEE), a B.C. 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, Raham said.

"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-from the federal and provincial governments through to the classroom level-and gathering more complete data on Aboriginal education and making better use of that data to gauge progress and plan ways to make things better.

Other recommendations included increasing the use of Aboriginal content and Aboriginal approaches to teaching, recruiting more Aboriginal teachers and providing them better supports, creating regional centres of excellence to provide research and development support aimed at improving Aboriginal education, working to improve public awareness of Aboriginal issues and providing 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 efficient and effective manner and it has been making a real difference," she said.

"The Canadian Concil 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. "It's not just a First Nation or Metis specific issue, it's an Aboriginal issue."

Brazeau is hopeful that the work started by the SAEE with this roundtable will continue.

"I think this is the beginning of something really significant that's goig to happen," he said.