Alfred Moses

As I mentioned, the program historically has had low admission as well as low graduation rates. The mandate that we provided as a government is focused on Aurora College's focus and looking at our mandate when they develop their strategic plan.

I've got to remind the Member that we do have a great student financial assistance program, that we continue to support our students who want to go and get an education in other institutions, and we'll continue to provide that support. We've made great enhancements to that support. Any student who is concerned about this program, we will work with them...

Early on in my position in the role of Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, we had given our board of governors a mandated letter on how we roll out programs within the Aurora College system, and we met with the board chair and the president to make sure that it's reflective of our strategic plan moving forward and the mandate that we, as 19 Members, have mandated our priorities in this government, and that that was the direction going forward.

With the strategic plan, we did make reference to our labour market information report as well as our Skills 4 Success document to make sure...

As I mentioned yesterday when the question came up again, junior kindergarten will be implemented in the 2017-2018 school year. All education authorities will be required to offer junior kindergarten in 2017-2018, and education authorities have that option to offer it half day or full day.

Currently we run junior kindergarten in 20 of our 33 communities. We did go out and do that inventory stock. We did the discussions with all the schools to look at what was needed. A lot of our schools have the utilization available; space, classroom space, that's available. Hay River is one that we do have low utilization rates in some of the schools. There are some infrastructure costs that are associated with implementing junior kindergarten. The number that we've looked at allocating is over $3 million, and that's for infrastructure needs as well as looking at resource materials that are...

I want to remind the Member that I did make a statement in the House last year about significant improvements and changes to our early childhood programs for funded daycares and day homes. Maybe I can remind the Member to look at that statement again and speak with his constituents and the people who provide these programs, because they're very significant changes that actually improve the quality of staffing, the quality of funding, and even the curriculums moving forward.

It's not possible for the GNWT to fund both the public education system and private nonprofit early childhood programs...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned earlier in one of the other questions, that JK will be delivered in the school setting. It's both practical as well as fiscally responsible. It also utilizes already maintained, inspected, and publicly funded available school space. Students that enter the junior kindergarten system will also have access to more support from the JK to 12 system that daycares don't have right now, and that was the rationale behind it.

No programs are going to be impacted. The way we fund schools through the school funding system is on enrolments, and we have been seeing low enrolments lately, and the money that we usually give for students are going into the school system. We're using that money and re-profiling it into junior kindergarten.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Any early childhood programming that's offered to our children, we have in partnership with the Department of Health and Social Services. We've developed Right from the Start, a strategy, an action plan. Any early childhood programming is going to benefit the children, going to benefit the families, and is going to benefit the communities for the children. Any children that go through an early childhood program are going to see results, whether it's through junior kindergarten, through a day home, or a day program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The NWT JK curriculum for four- and five-year-old children is play-based and supports children's cognitive, social, emotional, creative, and physical development, as well as cultural. As I mentioned, the EDI results that we've been seeing with the programs that already run in the Northwest Territories, we're seeing a big improvement in the communities that are offering junior kindergarten that are entering into the kindergarten system.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned earlier, we are going to have the new strategic plan for the Aurora College. That's going to redefine how Aurora College runs its programs to provide the program services that our Northerners want to get into, and also for the indemand jobs.

As I mentioned, this program in particular had low admission and low graduation rates. As I mentioned, again, the Aurora College, they have the autonomy to make the decisions that they want to do in terms of developing their whole strategic planning, and we support the decisions that the Aurora College makes. Thank you...