CANADA'S school boards have, as a group, proposed the elimination of income tax after high school to motivate aboriginal students to stay in school.
The idea arises from the concept increasingly embraced by provincial governments -- use the power of the public treasury to get their young to stay and work in their provinces. The school boards, however, should be looking a little deeper for the root causes of poor high school graduation rates among aboriginal people.
Indeed, school boards have considerable power to influence the factors that lead to children becoming discouraged with school. Money is an issue, but not in the way the school boards think.
Aboriginal, and particularly First Nations, children are much more likely than non-aboriginal children to be from low-income homes. Poverty has a powerful impact on a child's readiness to start school and ability to stick with it. It is closely associated with poor housing, frequent moves and hopping from school to school. Also, many struggling families are led by single parents with little education. A Manitoba Centre for Health Policy study, published in 2004, found that in Winnipeg's low-income neighbourhoods, children fell behind as early as Grade 3. Studies across Canada indicate high-school dropout rates among aboriginal people range as high as 50 per cent compared to the 80 per cent graduation rate of non-aboriginals. The allure of tax breaks for a student who feels he failed at school is very limited; more likely, school is another problem in a complicated life. Dropping out looks like a solution.
Money can make a difference. Overcoming the hurdles that children in poorer neighbourhoods face is not cheap: Get toddlers into full-time nursery school where they can be prepared to start school; Reduce the size of a class, allowing teachers to spend more time with those struggling; put in special supports for developmentally delayed children. This latter step is expensive, but a child who needs speech therapy faces hurdles in learning to read and write. The barriers aboriginal students face can get higher as they move through the grades.
The level of funding in schools within the same school board needs adjusting -- a provincial and local concern. A bigger problem with high-school dropout rates exists for reserve-based students. First Nations education authorities receive federal funding that is thousands of dollars less per student than their public counterparts. This, while dealing with more pupils lacking basic reading and writing skills. The national association of school boards should join in the push by First Nation educators to boost spending on education in those communities.
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