By Aaron Schulze

NESD Graduation

NESD on-time graduation rates decrease overall, drastically for FMNI student

Nov 28, 2019 | 3:37 PM

On-time graduation rates in the North East School Division (NESD) declined during the 2018-19 academic year, with a drastic decrease for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit/Inuk (FMNI) students.

According to the NESD’s annual report unveiled during the Nov. 26 board meeting, FMNI on-time graduation rates fell from 68 per cent in 2017-18 to 54 per cent in 2018-19, which is still 11 per cent higher than the provincial average. Non-FNMI students saw a one per cent decrease from 91 to 90, leading to five per cent decrease overall from 89 to 84.

The one-year decline in graduation rates isn’t a concern for the NESD Board of Education or its Director of Education Don Rempel.

“If the overall trend is down, of course [we’re concerned]”, Rempel said. “With small groups of students – whether it’s at a school, classroom, or school division – you’re going to see variances and moderating factors up and down. If you talk to a principal in any of those buildings, they would know the story behind the numbers as to what’s going on in any student’s academic program or life situation.

“It’s important to have goals and then to have strategies in place to obtain those goals but you can’t overact if your results go down a little bit, or you won’t have goals anymore. You’ll be making short term judgements without any long-term strategy.”

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Rempel said one of his goals for the NESD is to have FNMI students’ graduation rates be equal to the overall provincial level. He mentioned they’ve been close before, such as the 68 per cent NESD FMNI graduation rate only nine points shy of the provincial overall rate of 77 per cent.

“The problem with small numbers is we can really pat ourselves on the back a year where we get 74 per cent, and the next year we’ll have 64 per cent, and we’ve had both,” he said. “It’s a little bit ‘stay the course,’ what are we doing that seems to work well, and to not overact to do things that might harm students’ success.”

The NESD did have an 84 per cent extended graduation rate (within five years of beginning Grade 10) for FNMI students in 2018-19, over 20 points higher than the provincial FNMI average of 61.

Some of the NESD’s strategies for increasing FNMI back to its 65 per cent goal or higher in 2019-20 include partnering with Kinistin Saulteaux First Nation – have grad mentorship and coaches put in place for their students – and identify classes FNMI students will need for post-secondary or work opportunities.

The NESD Board of Education will meet with and take questions from municipal and school community council representatives regarding the annual report in March.

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aaron.schulze@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @SchulzePANow