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First Nations School Funds a 'Great Move,' but Success Remains to Be Seen

Gov't must give on-reserve schools a say in how money is spent, says UNBC prof.

Katie Hyslop 23 Mar 2016TheTyee.ca

Katie Hyslop is The Tyee’s education and youth reporter.

The $4.6-billion investment over five years allotted in the new federal budget for on-reserve First Nations education "is a great move," said Ross Hoffman, chair of the First Nations Studies department at the University of Northern British Columbia.

But it's not yet clear whether the investment will improve the dismal 38 per cent high school graduation rate for First Nations student in reserve schools. The national graduation rate for non-indigenous students is 87 per cent.

The investment is commendable, but what's key is how the government consults and collaborates with First Nations over how the money is spent, Howard said.

"If our new government holds true to what they say about working with Aboriginal peoples, especially when they're talking about... transforming the on-reserve system, if it's true consultation, then I think it's a real step forward," he said.

For 20 years now, there has been a two per cent annual cap on First Nations' federal education funding. But yesterday's budget brought that to a close, and by 2021 the funding will be 22 per cent higher than it would have been under the cap.

Without a breakdown of how much money on-reserve schools will receive per full-time student, Hoffman couldn't say whether the new investment would put on-reserve education funding on par with that of Canada's public schools.

In the past, public schools have received an average $3,000 more per student than on-reserve schools.

But the funding breakdowns provided for special needs education ($577.5 million); language and culture ($250 million); and infrastructure (almost $1 billion) over the next five years, "are certainly going to add to what small community schools are able to offer," said Hoffman, who prior to working at UNBC spent eight years working at two on-reserve schools in B.C.

Over half of the Liberal government's promised education funding -- $2.6 billion -- will be invested in primary and secondary on-reserve education by 2021 in efforts to boost the national graduation rate for on-reserve students.

Another $130 million will be invested in early childhood education for on-reserve First Nations and Inuit children over the next two years, while $15 million will be invested in a pilot Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy to train people to work in jobs their communities need, such as childcare and water treatment.

Post-secondary funding in question

There was no mention of new funding in the budget for the Post-Secondary Student Support Program, which covers First Nation and Inuit post-secondary bursaries.

The program has also been capped at two per cent annual increases, which the Canadian Federation of Students noted the Liberals promised to remove by investing $50 million into the program.

"The lack of funding for Indigenous students prevents thousands from enrolling" in post-secondary, said Shayli Robinson, Aboriginal Students' Representative of the Canadian Federation of Students-BC, in a press release from the national students' union.

But Chief Bobby Cameron, the Assembly of First Nations' regional chief for Saskatchewan, said the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy pilot is the first step to removing that two per cent cap. As with the rest of the budget, the devil will be in the details.

"Now that we have the funding commitment in place, what exactly does that entail and how much is going to go to post-secondary? What's it going to look like in terms of a Kindergarten to Grade 12 student going to school on reserve? How much per year are they going to get?" Cameron said.

"These are the questions and this is the kind of work that we'll be continuing in the next little while. Because now we're preparing for the 2016 school year in September."

'They know what they need'

The total $4.6-billion education investment -- part of an overall $8.4-billion investment in First Nations and Inuit education, social and physical infrastructure, and the impending missing and murdered women's inquiry -- is significantly larger than what last year's budget pledged for on-reserve education.

The former Conservative government had promised in Budget 2014 to invest $1.25 billion into First Nations education over five years, tied to the passage of the First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act.

But that funding was downgraded to $241 million over five years in 2015 after government failed to gain First Nations' support for the legislation.

The act came with too many strings attached, said UNBC's Hoffman, including imbuing the federal government with the power to remove First Nations school boards and implement third-party management of schools if grades weren't high enough, and no promise for sustainable, long-term funding.

However the money is handed out, whether to provincial school board-like bodies such as B.C.'s First Nations Education Steering Committee, to the Assembly of First Nations, or directly to aboriginal bands themselves, said Hoffman, it's important the feds don't micromanage how every dollar is spent.

"Communities have been running their own on-reserve schools for decades now," he said. "They know what they need."

That's not to say he doesn't agree with some federal oversight, Hoffman added, but that the government "need not to be patriarchal."  [Tyee]

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