Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Cities
Issue 2 - Evidence, April 22, 2009
[Editor’s Note]
Correction
At page 2:22 of the printed Issue, third paragraph, two references to “agenda-based analysis” should read “gender-based analysis.”
The html and pdf versions appearing on this site have been amended to reflect the corrected wording.
OTTAWA, Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Subcommittee on Cities met this day at 4:30 p.m. to examine and report on current social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the Subcommittee on Cities. Three senators are in attendance now, but there are five senators on our committee. The others will be joining us shortly.
[Translation]
Welcome to the subcommittee on cities. Today, we will be studying the links between education and poverty in Canada's largest cities.
[English]
We have several witnesses who will be helping us with the connection between poverty and education. We have with us today Andrew Sharpe, Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards; and, via a video conference link, from the University of Alberta, Alison Taylor, Professor, Faculty of Education, and Harvey Krahn, Professor of Sociology. Again in the room, from Simon Fraser University, we have Olena Hankivsky, Associate Professor and Public Policy Program Co-Director. From my home city, we have David Hughes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathways to Education Canada. Welcome, and thank you all for coming and participating in helping us as we deal with the issues of poverty, housing and homelessness in the large cities of our country.
I will take the witnesses in the order on the list, unless anybody has a different idea. We will start with Andrew Sharpe from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards. Try to keep presentation lengths close to five to seven minutes. We are starting late, and we have some time restrictions since our friends from Edmonton must leave by six, and we also have translators having to leave not long thereafter. Therefore, we will try to complete our work in 90 minutes, by six o'clock, so we will need to speed up this process.
We have now been joined by Senator Segal and Senator Dyck. We have a full committee and are ready to start.
Andrew Sharpe, Executive Director, Centre for the Study of Living Standards: I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear today, and I congratulate the committee for focusing on education. I think education is the key to a successful life and a healthy society.
I have four major points to make. I want to look at the pathways from low education to poverty through the labour market. Then I want to talk about the non-income effects of education on quality of life. I also want to talk about a particular area in which we are interested and doing much research: Aboriginal education, and the implications for society in improving Aboriginal education. Finally, I want to talk about the recession and what that will do to poverty across the country.
First, I want to identify the pathways that go from lower education to poverty status, or from higher education to non-poverty status. There is a mass of literature on this subject, as you know. I would point out that there is actually a close relationship between health and educational attainment. Basically, 22 per cent of the people who have less than high school education are in poor health compared to 7 per cent of the people in university. In terms of excellent health, two-thirds of the people with university degrees are in excellent health, while only 43 per cent of the people who have less than high school education are in excellent health.
There is a causal link between education and health: If you have a high level of education, you are able to use medicines effectively and have a better lifestyle. Of course, if you have better health that will help your income in terms of finding jobs and being able to work longer hours, et cetera. That is one pathway: Lower education, poor health and lower income.
Second, labour market performance is greatly affected by a lack of education. Persons with no high school education have 53 per cent of the participation rate of persons with a university education. Persons with no high school education have 50 per cent of the employment rate of persons with a university education. Persons with no high school education have two-and-a-half times the unemployment rate of persons with a university education. Again, there is a very strong relationship.
The same goes for wages: Persons who have less than Grade 9 make 47 per cent less than persons with a university degree. Even persons with a high school education make only two-thirds the wages of those with a university degree. Those factors together translate into much lower incomes for persons with basically low levels of educational attainment.
In terms of the 25 to 34 age group, persons without a high school education make 60 per cent of the wages of those with a university education, and it goes down from there. Between the ages of 45 and 54, persons without a high school education make only 44 per cent of the wages of those with a university education.
Again, there is a strong relationship between less education and less labour force participation and, thus, less wages, and therefore higher poverty. There is a close relationship between education and the poverty rate.
Turning now to my second point: Again, the relationship between education and poverty goes beyond income. There are many non-income positive effects of education. Persons with education are better able to manage household finances, for example. They have greater levels of job satisfaction. Then, at the public level, there are great externalities from higher levels of education: Such persons vote more, are involved less in crime, and do more volunteer work. Again, these are very positive things.
Regarding Aboriginal people and education, the CSLS is releasing a study next month. It is called The Effect of Increasing Aboriginal Educational Attainment on the Labour Force, Output and the Fiscal Balance. This is a study that we undertook for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. We looked at what would happen if we could eliminate the gap between the educational attainment and labour force participation rates of Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals by the year 2026. We actually only eliminated the gap that existed in 2001. Therefore, it is not the actual gap but that which existed in 2001. By 2026, we find that if we can eliminate this gap, basically GDP in Canada would be increased by $37 billion. The cumulative amount over that period would be more than a $400-billion increase in GDP for Canadians. Again, taxes would be up significantly — by about $64 billion cumulatively — and government would be spending less money on welfare, crime and housing. That would mean about $140 billion less in government spending. Therefore, there are massive positive effects of reducing the gap in educational attainment between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals.
My final point is on the recession. There is a close link between poverty and unemployment. We saw that in the early 1990s when the unemployment rate went up by four percentage points and the poverty rate went up by the same amount. Unfortunately, we are seeing the same kind of thing right now. In 2008, the unemployment rate was 6 per cent. I, and most economists, expect that the rate will be 10 per cent by 2010, which is 4 percentage points: an unprecedented increase in the unemployment rate.
What will happen to poverty? There is a big lag in the poverty data. Statistics Canada will be announcing the poverty rate in May, and it will go down because they will be reporting the poverty rate for 2007, which was almost a year and a half ago. The poverty rate even for 2008, which we will not get for more than a year, will not go up that much. However, the rates for 2009 and 2010, which we will not know for a while, will see a major increase in the poverty rate. I forecast a 4 percentage point increase in the poverty rate.
It is much harder to unwind those increases than it is for them to increase in the first place. We will not get back to the current level of poverty until 2015. Therefore, we will have seven lost years of poverty in Canada because of this economic crisis that we are now going through.
We really must take measures to offset the negative effects on Canadians from this economic crisis. One key measure would be, of course, to support the Employment Insurance system and extend benefits. I will stop there, and I hope I have not gone over time.
The Chair: No, you have not. You have packed a lot of helpful information into your presentation, Mr. Sharpe. Thank you very much.
Next we will go to Edmonton and we will hear from our two contributors. We have a slide chart here, which I take it is what you are using for the basis of your talk. I will turn the floor over to both of you.
Alison Taylor, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta: We know we are short of time, so we will not go into every slide. We wanted to start by saying that we were looking at the documents you gave us in terms of your subcommittee's interest in the relationship between education and poverty. We know that there continues to be differences in students' educational attainment that is related to the socio-economic status of their families.
We also know that in today's economy, individuals with limited or no post-secondary education are more at risk, or low income individuals living in poverty have a higher risk of low income and poverty. A question for us is around what effect schools have on the reproduction of generational inequality. Do they make it better, worse, or is there no difference?
One of the education policies we were interested in was streaming. We will just explain what streaming is about. I do not know if all of you are familiar with that term, but in high school courses in particular — for example, in core courses — you may find different levels of mathematics, English, science and so on.
Streaming can also refer to optional courses. Do kids take second language courses? Do they take more technologically-oriented courses? There still tends to be an academic/vocational divide in schools.
There are core courses options and then there are programs. For example, in Alberta and in many provinces now we have the registered apprenticeship program, where students can do part of their apprenticeship while they are at school, or they can do an international baccalaureate program. Those are the kinds of programs that kids tend to follow.
Then you have schools. In Alberta, and in particular in Edmonton, we have quite a number of magnet or specialized schools and we also have private and public school sectors — public and Catholic and publicly funded. There is streaming overall. We looked at the Youth in Transition Survey data, and because of those data limitations we were only able to look at core course streaming. However, core courses are influential in terms of where students are able to go in meeting prerequisites for post-secondary education.
Because of the shortness of time, I want to refer to the different opinions that exist about whether streaming is good or bad before Dr. Krahn talks about our empirical data. There are arguments for streaming. Certainly, teachers may be part of promoting streaming in that they may feel they are more able to accommodate student differences when you have diverse student groups. There is an opinion that students learn better and develop more positive attitudes when they are in groups of students like themselves. On the other hand — and this is where the concerns arise — students do not tend to be evenly distributed across streams in terms of their socio-economic status. In terms of prior research, there is also information about race and ethnicity — people from minority groups being over-represented in lower streams, and so on.
There are also questions around whether there is a parity of esteem across streams. For example, do low- and high- track streams lead to equally valuable outcomes? Those are the kinds of concerns that prompted our research. I will let Dr. Krahn talk about our empirical findings.
Harvey Krahn, Professor of Sociology, University of Alberta: I will start talking about the fourth page of the slides that we provided, called ``method.'' The data that we analyzed comes from Statistics Canada, from a large and wonderfully designed study called the Youth in Transition Survey. This study involved surveying about 25,000 15-year- olds across the country in the year 2000, and they filled in questionnaires in class. We received information from these students about their most recent mathematics, science and English courses. These tend to be the courses used to determine who gets to go on to higher education.
The definition of streaming that we are using in our study is basically distinguishing between students who have all of their post-secondary options open — they could go to a trade school, university or wherever because they took the right combination of English, science and math courses — and those students who have closed some doors behind them because they do not have the right level of those courses. We ended up looking only at four provinces — Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia — because we were most confident that in those provinces, the students were very clear about the courses they were taking. In other provinces, the curriculum was being changed, and there was some uncertainty.
To move along quickly and make a few key points, we found first of all that English, as a streaming course, is taken by the most students and math by the least students. The high-level math courses needed to get into university are taken the least often, so math is the gate-keeping course, followed by science.
Second, we found large differences between provinces in the percentage of students who had all of their options open — who had not been streamed, in other words. For example, in Saskatchewan, roughly 90 per cent of these 15- year-olds in Grade 10 were still taking all the courses that they would need to go to university; whereas in Alberta, it was 59 per cent, and Ontario and British Columbia were a little bit higher than Alberta. There were big differences between provinces, which really reflect different school systems and different curricula.
We found that family background is a very large predictor of who keeps their options open. For example, as you can see from slide 13, in Ontario, if a child came from a family where one or both parents had a university degree, 87 per cent of those children had all of their options open. If a child came from a family where neither parent had a university degree, 57 per cent had their options open.
Moving to the next slide, you see the same story for income. This time let me take you to Alberta, as a different example. For children from families with less than $30,000 in household income, only half of those children, 50 per cent, had all of their options open, compared to 68 per cent for the highest income families. As I often tell my students, choose your parents carefully, which is not really how it happens. The point is that family background matters; education and income are proxies for socio-economic status. If you come from a poorer, less educated family, you are less likely to have chosen the courses in high school that will let you obtain the education that will avoid the poverty that Dr. Sharpe told us about.
We found some interesting findings, namely that immigrant 15-year-olds were somewhat more likely to keep their options open. Their parents were encouraging them to take courses with more options open. The same was the case for visible minority parents. You expect to see those two groups being more disadvantaged, but in fact their children were slightly more likely to have their options open.
However, I want to caution that we were unable to distinguish between refugee and economic immigrants. If we could, we would see a big difference; and it also matters for first and second generation immigrants.
Wrapping this up, we know that more immigrants live in big cities where we have bigger schools with more options open. We know that immigrant parents are more educated than non-immigrant parents, but they earn less money. We know we have very different school systems in different provinces. As a social scientist, that forces me to get a little fancier in my statistics. Looking at a logistic regression — and I will not bore you with the details — the middle column says ``odds ratio.'' Here is a quick statistics lesson. If that number is less than one, it means that group is less likely to have their options open. If the number is greater than one, it means it is more likely.
To end the statistics story, there are big differences between provinces. In British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, other things being equal, the students there are less likely to have their options open than are those in Saskatchewan.
Taking that into account, then, family background, parents' education, and family income are the biggest and strongest predictors of who gets streamed. Again, choose your parents carefully, because if you come from a more advantaged family, you are more likely to not be streamed in high school, which keeps the doors open to allow you to obtain the post-secondary education and to avoid the poverty that we are talking about in this committee.
We are now planning, Dr. Taylor and I, to pursue with this study the very important question of what happens to these 15-year-olds, because Statistics Canada has re-interviewed them twice, and we shortly will be looking at the data to see if these background factors in fact opened and closed doors as we described them for this group.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I am not surprised by the results that you have arrived at, but the statistics that support it are quite thought provoking and interesting. It is good to have you as part of this discussion.
I will bring the discussion back to the table here, and we will go to Dr. Hankivsky, who is an associate professor in the public policy program at Simon Fraser University.
Olena Hankivsky, Associate Professor, Public Policy Program Co-Director, Simon Fraser University: Thank you very much for the invitation, and I think that you will find that my presentation today actually puts some numbers to the information that Mr. Sharpe shared with you earlier.
It is generally accepted that an adequate education is considered, at a minimum, to include a high school diploma. I would argue that few people really recognize fully the extent to which low educational attainment affects society. Now more than ever, however, we are starting to understand the relationship between education and a variety of other social outcomes. We are moving beyond making arguments about strong associations to causal links, which makes research in this area far more dynamic.
In our study, we looked at the economic consequences of high school non-completion in Canada. Directly or indirectly, high school non-completion has enormous financial implications in terms of expenditures on health, social services and programs, education, employability, criminality and lower economic productivity. Educational attainment is one of the most important determinants of life chances.
The goal of the project, which was funded by the Canadian Council on Learning, was to present a portrait of economic costs to both the state and the individual associated with high school non-completion. We drew on methodology used in the United States at Columbia University, at the teachers' college; we drew on numerous data sources, both at the national and provincial levels in Canada; we looked at census data and other kinds of studies in order to complete this research.
I do want to underscore that the numbers we present are conservative underestimates because data in all policy sectors is incomplete, and some of the research in the Canadian context around educational outcomes is also in its nascent stages of development as compared to the U.S. context.
Before presenting the results, I want to mention that often Canadians assume that we have quite a good level of high school completion in the Canadian context as opposed to other OECD countries. It is over 84 per cent now. Our findings show that this must not fall off the policy agenda, and that much more investment is still needed in the educational sector. What is even more important is that we need to be looking much more closely at the specific subpopulations at risk for high school non-completion.
The risk factors for non-completion in Canada are related, as we have heard: socio-economic status, family structure, school type, geographic locale, excessive employment during educational pursuits, and psychological variables such as low esteem and aggression.
In our study, we looked at a number of policy sectors including health, social assistance, crime, labour and employment, education and research. I know that you have the findings in front of you in chart form, so I will just highlight a few of them. I want you to keep in mind that these calculations are conservative estimates.
In the area of health, the annual cost to the individual — that is, to the individual who fails to complete high school — is calculated at over $8,000 a year. In terms of social assistance, the cost to government is over $4,000 a year. Crime is over $200 a year. In terms of labour and unemployment, there are a number of different, significant costs. Earning losses to the individual on an annual basis are just under $3,500 a year, tax revenue lost to government is over $200, EI loss is just under $100, and the EI cost of the government is just over $2,700.
If we look at aggregate costs and costs over a lifetime, you start to see the significance of the problem. For the individual, the health cost over a lifetime of failing to complete high school is over $211,000. In terms of earnings loss, it is just over $100,000. Tax revenue loss is over $6,000, and EI revenue loss is over $2,000. The aggregate numbers are staggering once we look at the number of all the high school dropouts in Canada. Again, just as a few examples, in the area of health it is $23.8 billion annually, in the area of social assistance it is $969 million, and in the area of EI costs it is over $1 billion. We do see, therefore, that the costs are significant.
I would also underscore that these costs do not include the intangible costs and consequences of high school non- completion, which are things such as pain and suffering and reduced quality of life, which some economists would argue are 50 per cent of the tangible costs that I have just mentioned.
The importance of these findings is that it give us a glimpse into the most accurate and up-to-date estimates in the Canadian context. They reveal the negative repercussions to the country's economic and social fabric that come from an inadequate educational attainment. They underscore the need for more comprehensive, pro-active solutions. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation. We need to find out what works and what does not in terms of keeping people in school. We need to know more about the experiences of particular dropouts and more about the quality of education being received.
In conclusion, significant cost savings can be realized by increasing Canada's high school graduate rates by even a small fraction, and the costs will be much higher in the long term if we do not make the investment at the front end.
The Chair: We have heard the results of some great research, and we will have questions to ask shortly about that research and about where we are going from here.
We will now hear about a program that I think has been a smash success in my city, in Toronto, and that is Pathways to Education Canada. David Hughes, president and chief executive officer, is here to speak about that.
David Hughes, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pathways to Education Canada: It is a privilege to be with you today. Quite different from the other panellists, we have come to talk about a case study that demonstrates both the work of our organization and, we hope, underlines the importance of education from a policy perspective, and as some of the other speakers have said, to ensure that this is something that stays forefront on the policy agenda.
In fact, just a short while ago it is possible that I could have been sitting here wearing the hat of another organization. I was formerly the president of Habitat for Humanity Canada, and I could have been speaking to you about another aspect of your report around housing and homelessness, something that I still believe is all-critical in the work that you have done. However, through my seven years with Habitat for Humanity and ten years with another housing agency before that, and now with the work I am doing in the role of president and CEO of Pathways to Education Canada, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that what often gets the most attention, and it is a large portion of the focus of your document, is around the investment and capital in the form of housing, and we fall short of putting the emphasis that we believe needs to be put on the focus of developing human capital. It is through the Pathways to Education program that we believe we can demonstrate that this kind of investment in human capital not only has a transformative effect on the lives of the individuals we touch through the program but, in a broader context, on the economy and on society as a whole.
With that being said, my proposition to you today is that if our focus is on cities and we strive to have great cities, great cities are born of great citizens. Education, if available to all, has the power to change lives, communities, cities and, in fact, entire nations.
Unfortunately, there is not enough investment being made in human capital, which is needed to increase the prosperity and competitiveness of our cities. As has been demonstrated by the previous speakers, studies show that high school dropouts tend to be unemployed or earn lower wages, thus paying lower taxes and incurring higher social assistance costs. They commit more crime, threatening the safety of our neighbourhoods and putting greater strains on the justice system. They have higher incidences of drug use and teenage pregnancy, putting greater strains on the health care system.
Based on data from Statistics Canada, we know there is, indeed, a strong correlation between the levels of education and levels of poverty in our cities. I will stray from my statistics, which have been presented by the other individuals, and will refer you to the deck or slides I have provided, starting with slide two. In that deck, there is additional information about the correlation between educational attainment and poverty and unemployment.
How extensive is the problem? A recent study reported that the province of Quebec has a 30 per cent high school dropout rate and that Ontario, while seeing great improvements in this area, still has one out of four youths not graduating from high school. I would underline what some of the others have said: National data available on this subject leaves much to be desired. Notwithstanding that, our own research tells us that there are potentially hundreds of communities in this country experiencing high school dropout rates in many cases at the levels of 40 or 50 per cent or even higher. Whether these issues are examined through a national, provincial or a local lens, they manifest themselves most clearly in our larger cities, and they compromise the safety, prosperity and pride of all Canadians.
What is the solution? Pathways to Education Canada believes that it is not only our moral responsibility but also a social and economic imperative that we close the achievement gap between the ``haves'' and the ``have-nots'' by lowering dropout rates in our troubled and vulnerable communities. Our vision is of a world where everyone, regardless of their social or economic standing, regardless of where they live or were born, achieves a high school education and is well equipped to pursue post-secondary education and meaningful employment. We know the solution cannot be found in the classroom alone because it is in the home and in the community where youths spend the greater part of their day and where they are tempted by the greatest number of distractions that could pull them off course.
Pathways to Education provides a full range of supports to help our youth focus on education and manage the day- to-day challenges that sometimes get in the way of achieving success. Our program consists of the following components: First, we identify high-need communities and help them build the capacity required to run our program. Second, we enter into a contract with the students, their parents and the schools that establish clear expectations and accountabilities for all the parties. Next, we engage volunteers in providing after-school tutoring and mentoring. We provide counsellors or coaches to help students seize opportunities and cope with issues they may be facing. Last, we provide financial support needed to reduce the barriers to success in high school and make it easier to make that transition from high school into post-secondary schooling.
While our tutoring and mentoring takes place primarily outside of school, we also work in and with the many schools being attended by our students, and share with them the responsibility for seeing them through to graduation.
In the deck that was provided, if you turn to slides five and six, I will speak to the results that we have seen with our program.
To demonstrate the impact of our program, I will turn to a very specific case of Toronto's Regent Park, home to Canada's earliest and largest social housing projects and known to be one of Canada's poorest communities. Eight years ago, this community was experiencing a 56 per cent high school dropout rate where more students than not were pursuing careers on the streets wrought with the temptations and realities of gangs, crime, drug use and more. Today, eight years later, we have over 90 per cent of the high school-aged youth from that area enrolled in the Pathways to Education program and the dropout rate for those in the program is now less than 10 per cent. Better yet, we see a quadrupling of the number of students going on to post-secondary education. It is now at 80 per cent, up from only 20 per cent just a few years ago. Ninety per cent of those students are the first in their families to achieve this result.
While our focus is on high school education, we are excited to see the first batch of our students graduate from universities and colleges this spring, and we are ecstatic to learn that the retention rate of students in these institutions far exceed the national average. That is quite astounding for a group of individuals who might otherwise have been written off just a few years ago.
These young men and women, most of whom will remain in Regent Park, will now go on to be the professionals and trades people of that community: the business leaders, the artists and the entrepreneurs. Through their education and employment, they are breaking the vicious cycle of poverty that once plagued this area and they will begin to rebuild and revitalize their community from within. This is a long-term, sustainable and cost-effective solution to address the needs of our low-income communities and will transform our cities, one student and one life at a time.
For the next section, I direct your attention to slides 8 and 9 in the deck. It is important to note that, at this point, these are not just our own findings. A recent report, produced by McKinsey & Company, for a task force studying Quebec's education system and the 30 per cent dropout rate I quoted earlier, quoted Pathways to Education as one of six leading solutions to this problem. Prior to that, The Boston Consulting Group undertook a detailed study of the Pathways to Education program and concluded that the social return on investment was valued at $25 back to society for every dollar invested in the program. I should add that these are very conservative numbers. They calculate that the program would have a $400,000 cumulative lifetime value to each graduate, or a net present value of $50,000.
In other words, the Pathways to Education program was able to demonstrate that it provides a 9.4 per cent internal rate of return on its investment using only the most conservative of figures as they relate to incremental tax receipts and lower transfer payments. This does not include calculations mentioned already that are clear benefits to our cities that accrue to us having better-educated youth involved in lower crime rates, lower drug use, lower teenage pregnancies, lower crime and vandalism.
While I have used the Regent Park case study for this presentation, I am pleased to inform you that our results in our newest sites throughout Ontario and Quebec are reducing the number of academically at-risk students at rates that we believe will be as good as or better than those we experienced in Regent Park. These new sites are on track to see measurable, sustainable and long-term social benefits in these communities.
Our story, while exciting, is only partly written. We have just finished our first chapter. We are working on our second, and we are far away from being able to predict what the epilogue will be 10 to 20 years from now. However, it is clear that our journey will be one that will take us across the country to low-income communities from coast to coast.
Our discipline around results and outcomes measurement will mean that there will be lots of new data to share with you in the future. We will have many rewards, challenges and lessons along the way, certainly. Our program will not be a success unless it has truly transformed the social fabric and economic prosperity of our communities.
Last, we will not be able to do this alone. This journey requires volunteers and professionals — educators and policy-makers, governments, corporations, civil society and others — to unite behind this idea.
Specifically, looking to your document and the policy implications or recommendations, we suggest that, first, government can fund programs such as ours that are reducing dropout rates, increasing educational standards and increasing the number of students attending post-secondary education. Speaking to your options 96, 100 and 102, you can establish bold and ambitious goals for our cities and provinces around educational attainment. You can require a new standard around statistics that relate to credit accumulation, school attendance, grades and other standards that will enable us — programs' practitioners and researchers — to better identify solutions that are working and those that are not in high-risk and low-risk communities — clearly underlining here that you cannot manage something that cannot be measured.
In option 45 in your document, we would point out that funding for recreational and cultural programs, while admirable and important, is less of an issue than is identifying the right programs that fit the right communities and that ultimately lead to increased academic achievement.
We applaud, as we do much of the report, your reference to option 95, which talks about greater involvement of the voluntary sector that are introducing programs and innovations such as ours. The statistics that you have heard are backed up by hundreds and thousands of stories of youths who have seen great changes in their lives and in their communities.
What will it take to make our cities great again? What will it take to reduce poverty, crime and drug use, restore hope, pride and dignity to our youth and to their parents, and prepare new Canadians and our entire workforce to be competitive in this vast changing economy? The answer is, keep kids in school, educate them, excite them, inspire them and wrap them in supports, both in school and in the community. We are already spending so much money to get our students through the first eight to ten years of school; let us not let them fall off the path in the last mile. Lowering the high school dropout rate or increasing the graduation rate will be the best return on investment that any government can make. It will transform our cities and our country and it will prove to all Canadians what we have already proven: that education has the power to change everything.
We are your partners in this effort.
The Chair: Thank you for addressing our issues and options paper. A number of the options that on which you gave us comments are helpful for us as we move towards this final stage of our hearings, taking our issues and options paper into recommendations, as we intend to do this fall.
We will get into dialogue with the committee. As is usual, I will take the chair's prerogative of asking the first question. I have one general question and one specific question of each one of you, based on your presentations.
Of course, we know that education is the responsibility of the provinces. We also know the impact that it has in terms of people who live in poverty, and the dire effects that living in poverty can have on them and on their educational attainment. The federal government does have some interest and some responsibilities in these areas, but not directly in education.
The general question is what would you see for either new programs or policies — some of you have answered a bit of this already, I note — or amended programs or services at the federal level that you think could be helpful in terms of the education gap?
Specifically, to Mr. Sharpe, you have talked about the increase in unemployment relative to the increase in poverty, although you say there is a lag and we will see the increase in poverty later. What will this do to the dropout rate? We are talking about an 84 per cent high school attainment in Canada. We are trying to make it even better, but will we go in the other direction? Is that what will happen as a result of this recession?
To Ms. Hankivsky, you talked about health private costs. How does that break down? Those are outside the public health system, I take it. Are we talking about prescription drugs? Are we talking about other kinds of medical treatment that are not covered? Can you comment on that specifically?
To our people in Edmonton, I want to ask about the sizeable provincial differences and the extent of streaming. What is happening to share best practices among the provinces to try to close these gaps? It sounds as though they could learn a lot from Saskatchewan, from where Senator Dyck hails. Could you comment on that part of it?
Finally, if I could get my last question out of the way to Mr. Hughes, the stories of Regent Park have been audited and verified by the Boston Consulting Group. These are staggering numbers — going from a 56 to a 10 per cent dropout rate, the number of people going on to post-secondary education is amazing. How do we get it going in the rest of the country? I know you are moving it into some other communities in Toronto or in southern Ontario, but it strikes me that this is a successful practice in some of our poorer neighbourhoods that could be used in other parts of our country.
Now that I have given you the specific ones and the general one, I will start with Mr. Sharpe.
Mr. Sharpe: In terms of federal policies, I will mention two policies. First, I am upset that the federal government is discontinuing funding for the Canadian Council on Learning, the CCL. They put out a report in February entitled Post-secondary Education in Canada: Meeting our Needs. I found that a very useful document. I think that group did useful work and yet it will not be around in the future. I think it would be nice to reverse that policy, if possible.
A second area where the federal government does have some clout is the education of Canada's Aboriginal population, because the federal government does fund Aboriginal education. The funding there, one can argue, is insufficient on a per-student basis. The federal government, in terms of reserve funding, spends less per student than many of the provincial governments. I think more can be done in that area. Those are two specific policies that the federal government could pursue.
In terms of your question about the effect of the recession on the high school dropout rate, it will not be a negative effect — in fact, just the opposite. You hear stories in Alberta where, because of the very low unemployment rate until recently, young people did not have incentives to finish high school because they could be making $25 an hour in the oil patch. They will no longer have those opportunities, so they can stay in school. Many older people will be laid off and they should be going back to school to complete their high school degree. We should see this as an opportunity to retool the skills of Canadians during this downturn. We should be spending more on training and upgrading the educational attainment of the population. It will not have a negative effect unless we allow it to happen. Normally, people will be going back to school now.
Ms. Hankivsky: I will start with the specific question you had with respect to the health costs that I referred to, the private costs, that you had a question about. These are costs that we refer to as ``quality adjusted life year costs.'' This is an economic calculation. It is based on the methodology out of U.S. studies. Basically, it combines the morbidity and mortality costs to the individual to reduced quality of life in terms of health per year. It is very much a private cost. We just did not have the appropriate Canadian data or the disaggregated data to look at the health care system cost, although that is an area for future research.
In terms of general policy interventions, as I was reading your report and all of the options, it struck me that it is important ahead of time, in terms of proposing a policy, to think about the differential effects it will have on the diversity within the Canadian population. As probably this committee is well aware, one of the very dominant frameworks that exists currently is referred to as gender-based analysis, which looks at the potential differential effects of proposed policy legislation on men and women. I would propose to this committee that we need to move beyond gender-based analysis into a more refined and sophisticated analysis which, in the European and American contexts, is now referred to as an intersectionality framework where we take into account the complexity of interactions of gender and race, ethnicity, class, geography, age and ability in order to understand people's experiences and to better tailor policies that are inclusive. This is not looking at things through a single category of analysis like gender, race or class, but bringing them all together and considering how those combine to affect experiences and educational and health needs. For areas such as poverty and homelessness, this kind of an approach would be extraordinarily effective.
The Chair: Dr. Krahn has left or temporarily left?
Ms. Taylor: He has had to go to a medical appointment, so I will take over. Your specific question about provincial differences is something that intrigued us in terms of the results and what is going on across the country in terms of provincial policies around education in relation to streaming. When we looked at some of the information in terms of curriculum in different provinces, there are different approaches. When we looked at Saskatchewan, there seems to be a more deliberate attempt on the part of the province to avoid streaming, and to have a more comprehensive system.
It is interesting that you should talk about sharing best practices. The Council of the Ministers of Education, the CMEC, tries to collaborate across provinces, but they seem to be focused mostly on national and international testing programs. What ends up happening is that you are looking at student achievement on tests, and the provinces that do the best on particular tests are the ones seen as having the best systems. There needs to be a step back and a look at how we assess these systems. Are there more factors that need to be taken into account, for example, things such as the availability of options open for students when they do graduate high school?
One of the trends that we see happening in Alberta, and I think some of the other provinces, is that because of these international influences through programs such as PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment, we have moved towards harmonizing curriculum across provinces. The question is, which system tends to be the one we look to as the leader? I grew up in Ontario, so I know that system fairly well. In Alberta, there is a system where we actually have one certificate that requires 80 credits to graduate. That is one of the streams. That does not lead to post- secondary education. I see it as problematic in this day and age that we still have that kind of certification at the high school level.
In terms of federal policies, my colleague, before he left, quickly mentioned the idea of remedies that might influence the effect of tuition on people at different income levels. Of course, we know that tuitions have been increasing, and continue to be increasing. Are there ways at the federal level of taking that into account through things like income tax measures?
Mr. Hughes: I addressed your first question in part through my presentation already. I spoke to the options identified in the report that specifically related to areas that we find of interest and importance. Just taking that one step further, one of the critical things that can be done is just to make education, and specifically education amongst the most vulnerable communities, focusing specifically on high school dropout rates, an important piece that needs to be focused on and probably put more emphasis on the work of this group in that document.
Moving to your second question around how can this program be scaled up and moved to other parts of the country, that is the primary focus of our organization right now: maintaining excellence with the existing programs and ensuring that we can find a way to scale our own program up in ways that do not compromise the quality of the program. Looking for cost efficiencies and economies of scale by having a larger organization reaching into new jurisdictions or new areas is something we are looking at internally.
As far as what can be done by government or with government to support this initiative and move it forward, one would allow it to stay largely a volunteer and community-based effort and recognize that one of the best ways to move it forward is through funding, and finding some form of a funding framework or a pathway for having a discussion around funding.
We were talking about this particular matter before the session started today. The challenge with the issues that we have spoken about here is that they cross so many different disciplines. When we list the remedies or the areas that our work touches in communities, it falls under so many different government departments and different disciplines that it is hard to know where to go to address issues of funding, policy and partnerships. Finding a mechanism within the government that would be focused on these types of things that pull together those different ministries and different disciplines would certainly be a help.
The second matter would be to somehow develop a national consortium or task force that is multilevel, multisectoral and multidisciplinary in nature, and that works with government, corporate and non-profit sectors to really put this issue on the forefront, and to establish zero tolerance goals around dropout rates, setting as a 10, 20, 30, 40, 50-year goal the complete elimination of dropouts and what are increasingly being referred to as ``pushouts.'' These are not kids that do not want to go to school, work hard or to have a prosperous future, but there is something in their communities, families or schools that is pushing them out as much as they are dropping out.
We need to recognize that this is a complex conversation and a complex issue, one that will require all sectors from all levels and all disciplines to sit around the table and agree that this is not just a discussion on policy or funding; this is about deciding that we will not accept statistics and dropout rates that are not anything close to what we are experiencing in this country, and that make us statistically among some of the poorer performing countries. If you look to Europe and other jurisdictions, we have a lot of work to do. We must recognize that we will not accept that and put an action plan in place, as we have seen in housing and other areas. Look at the Calgary 10-year or 20-year plan to address affordable housing. These types of initiatives are needed around the dropout rate, to mobilize that kind of attention and resources towards this cause. We would be one of many organizations that would be excited to work with you on that initiative.
The Chair: I will now turn the floor over to the deputy chair of the Subcommittee on Cities, Senator Segal from Kingston, Ontario.
Senator Segal: I want to thank all of the academics, experts and advocates who have been good enough to share their time with us today. I thank them for the important work they are doing.
I want to put one question to all, and it is a brief one around instrumentality.
Ms. Hankivsky, my problem with what you said in a recent response here at the committee was that, as you talked about the various complex indices of disadvantage and how they link up, what you produce, of course, is the classic ''inertia frame'' for public servants. I realize, however, it is not your intent to do so. By that I mean people in Treasury Board and Finance, right across the country, will say, ``It is so complex; there is no particular way we can be helpful. All we can do is `eat around the edges.''' You tend to get those kinds of well-meaning ``eat around the edges'' responses from governments. We see that, in critical areas, the numbers — the percentage of people who are still living in poverty, the percentage of single mothers who live in poverty — not only have not improved but, in some respects, have become substantially worse.
The question around instrumentality goes right to Mr. Sharpe's initial analysis about the seminal role that education has with respect to life attainment and net positive outcomes for society and for the individual. If I may say, it reflects the analysis that I think we heard from Professors Krahn and Taylor with respect to those families from which kids are more likely to make what I call a ``positive screening decision'' relative to subjects they take that open the door to post- secondary education versus the low-income families.
The elephant in the room is poverty. I understand that poverty has many causes, and it is very complex. However, if you think about the instruments available to the state — provincial government, federal government, as the case may be; left, right, centre does not matter — do they really have the instrumentality to do anything other than address the question of poverty ineffectively? Also — and you may disagree with this, which would be fine for the purposes of us learning together around this table — would they not be best advised to invest what it takes to bring all Canadians over the low-income cut-off, because governments can do so relatively easily, via the tax system, as opposed to dissipating their efforts across a myriad of compelling, important, helpful but, in the end, not necessarily seminal outcomes in terms of actually changing people's lives.
I ask the question with some anticipation that you will disagree with me because I know of the work you have done so constructively in so many areas. That said, I want to put it on the table because I think your response would be of great value, regardless of the side you take.
Mr. Hughes: I agree with the proposition that, if I understand correctly, this is not a housing problem or an education problem; this is an income problem. I think the question is really one around what it will take to drive up that income level.
Our proposition — and I believe I have this heard from the others — is that what we must recognize is that there is this strong correlation between level of education attainment and income, and that there is a critical point at which one must surgically focus their investments in a way to ensure that education achievement is being achieved; that the level of achievement is what it needs to be. It is recognizing where that nexus point is in terms of the challenges and problems in the lives of these kids who are not making it through the system. We believe the greatest challenges are around Grades 9 and 10. We start working with the kids in our program, for example, in Grade 8, and move them through the system from there because we recognize that that is a critical point.
The other thing is to again recognize that this is not a school problem, a community problem or a family problem alone; it is a problem that involves all of those elements. I would agree with the proposition that this is something else, and it is really a question of the linkages of education and that income level.
Ms. Taylor: I think I am interpreting your question to be: What are the best policy levers? I will go back to what Mr. Hughes said about when students get pushed out. Certainly, in some of the other research projects I have been doing, one involving research in First Nations and Metis communities in Northern Alberta, we found that in addition to the issues of income, there are also issues of race and racism. The situation is a little more complex. In the case of some of those students — getting back to the topic of our paper, which is streaming — these kids were coming from a small rural school and came into the town school because they had to. They came in and were two years behind in terms of their academic level, and then they were put into, again, what is perceived to be the lowest stream of courses.
Where do you stop that process, and to what extent are we able to stop that process? Those are very good questions. The education system could address some of those questions. Again, if you do have a low stream, then there is somewhere to put those kids. If it does not lead anywhere, then it is a problem.
I agree with you about the poverty issue being critical and the need to have income in households, but there are also things focusing specifically on education that could be done. Again, the provincial differences suggest that that is the case.
Ms. Hankivsky: Thank you for your comment. I do not think poverty is just about income or socio-economic status. The research that we have demonstrates the complexity around this phenomenon. Complexity is the reason that it continues to persist.
Regarding your hesitance about my proposal around intersectionality, I would like to share a couple of things with you: One, if you look to the European context and, in particular, to the U.K., this is an approach that is being operationalized in the context of policy, and it is actually making some very significant changes around how certain issues are being addressed. It is doing some of the kind of work that Mr. Hughes was talking about in terms of bringing sectors, different advocacy groups and different ``equality strands'' together to work strategically to address some of these issues in new and more effective ways.
The issue of complexity in the context of policy is real and, when gender-based analysis was first being introduced, people would say that it is too complex or too time-consuming to do; that policy analysts did not have the time, resources or skills to do it. We have come a long way. I did some training with Treasury Board Secretariat policy analysts in January, and I am happy to report that they get it: They can be complicated, they can be sophisticated and they can understand how to look at issues bringing together all of these complexities. I do think that, if we want to create efficiencies and efficacies in the programs and services that we are developing, we have to think about a different way of doing things.
Mr. Sharpe: I do think we have the instruments to reduce poverty in this country. It is very important to note that poverty has come down — measured by Statistics Canada's low-income cut-offs, LICO — significantly since, say, 1994, when it peaked because of the recession. It has come down from 14 per cent to around 10 per cent. Among particular groups, it has plummeted amazingly. You mentioned single-parent poverty. That number rate has actually fallen from around 50 per cent to 30 per cent. There has just been a massive decline in single-parent poverty. The key reason for that is public policy contribution. Obviously, a strong economy and a low unemployment rate have also contributed. The seminal program was the National Child Benefit Program, which has been expanded significantly in recent years. That has had a major impact on child poverty.
Second, elderly poverty has almost been eliminated — that is, for couples at least; not single people. That is because of the Old Age Security, OAS, and also the Guaranteed Income Supplement. That is a public policy that targeted elderly poverty and has done a great job.
Now we are focussing on working families without children, for example, or individuals. Their poverty rate has not come down. However, now we have a particular policy called the WITB, the Working Income Tax Benefit, that has come about in the last couple of years and will probably be enriched over time. That policy will be effective in reducing poverty. Therefore, we have lots of instruments to reduce poverty.
However, there are other groups with high poverty rates that we must work on. I mentioned Aboriginals — that is a group that really needs a great deal of attention in terms of poverty. Also, recent immigrants have had problems in recent years; there has been a high poverty rate for recent immigrants. It is hoped that they can attain the language skills and the Canadian work experience that will allow them to make a transition to the average income of Canadians. With a strong economy, they can do that.
There is no panacea, no one policy that will reduce the poverty rate. It is really a multifaceted reality; we need to have particular instruments for particular types of people.
Senator Cordy: Thank you all very much for the work you are doing. The results are not surprising to hear — I guess because I used to be a teacher — but it is nice to have the data for our report.
First, for Ms. Taylor, I remember many years ago taking university courses and reading a book that was talking about the U.K. school system. It dealt with the question: Does the school system actually allow the social class system to continue? Hearing you today, and from reading that book back in the 1970s, I think that we have not come very far in Canada. When we read it, we were aghast at what was happening because it did perpetuate the class system within the school system.
I looked at the numbers in Alberta, as being very low, where the students had basically eliminated most of their options at an early age. I am wondering whether that has to do with the employment rate in Alberta. It has been changing dramatically since the fall, but before that it was very easy to get a high-paying job with little education.
I know in Nova Scotia, where I am from, in the fishing communities when the fishery was booming, there were many boys, particularly, who would drop out of school because they could get jobs on their parents' fishing boats, in most cases, and make good incomes.
In view of the information that we know, if your parents are well educated, you are more likely to keep your options open, because well-educated parents are more aware of what you are doing if you close your options off at an early age. I can see the connection. I assume you work in the faculty of education. In teacher education programs in 2009, for classroom teachers and also for counsellors, is the whole issue of streaming being taught in the faculty of education so that they understand that they need to provide mentoring to certain students who would be more at risk of closing off their options at an earlier stage, and also that they would be more at risk of dropping out of school at an earlier age?
Ms. Taylor: I will talk about your most recent question first. In the faculty of education, just before coming here, I have been grading student papers and we are talking about some of these issues in undergraduate teaching. People have different views of streaming, and that is the question: whether it is a good thing or whether it is problematic. Some students do not feel it is a bad thing, so that is the kind of sentiment with which we are faced. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it is important to be raising these issues with teachers.
They often get into the classroom, and as you know, having been there, it is hard to put some of these issues into the broader context. If it is easier to teach to particular groups of students, and we know that classes are streamed, then you may not think about it too much. However, when you see it in that broader perspective of what proportion of students are not pursuing their post-secondary options, just making the information we found statistically available to students at least raises the awareness that maybe there is more to it, and that there is a critical understanding that can be brought to the question.
As far as the employment rate goes in Alberta, that is a constant question. I think the high school dropout rate here is a little bit higher than most other provinces as well; it is one of the higher rates across the country. Certainly, it is related — there is some effect of the economy. It would be interesting to look at that now, given the recessionary period. It is also somewhat gendered. What is the return on investment by gender in terms of post-secondary education? You do find more young men able to still make a fairly decent income without it. Given the study that I have just been doing in northern Alberta with First Nations and Metis communities, we certainly see that there. That is in Fort McMurray, where people can get those kinds of jobs making very good money.
People are also aware that when recession comes, it is the case that the people who are making the very good money as general labourers are also being pushed out first when the construction contracts are coming to an end. The other thing that is becoming clear in those communities, and the companies out there have done a good job in this regard, is saying that Grade 12 is the minimum. Companies can play a role in encouraging people to stay in school and complete their education before looking for employment, et cetera.
Of course, there is also the issue of post-secondary opportunities in some of these communities, and whether people are able to go on to that level. More outreach programs and the availability of university programs within communities, and so on, also make a difference. Does that answer your question?
Senator Cordy: Yes, thank you very much. Mr. Hughes, what you and your organization are doing is amazing. I am not that familiar with Pathways. Who makes the financial investment in Pathways? Is it private or public; is it the department of education in Ontario? At what age does the program start? I see Grade 9 and 10 in your information; is that it? Also, how involved has the family become in the process, because these are students whose families are not likely to be well educated as well, is that right?
Mr. Hughes: From a funding point of view, we are supported by private donors and some government money. We are looking at our future funding models. In Ontario, in particular, we have also been funded by some foundations and agencies — the United Way has been supporting us in Ontario. From the Ontario government, it has been the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, but there has been lots of support and discussion with other ministries.
With regard to ages, the program starts in Grade 9 and goes through Grade 12. In Quebec, it starts at the equivalent of Grade 7 and goes forward from there. That is a bit of an anomaly from what the program started as, but it is intended to really engage the kids at the end of Grade 8, and then they are actively involved starting in Grade 9 and going forward from there.
As far as the family's involvement is concerned, it is absolutely critical that they are a part of the overall process in supporting their own children through this program. We meet with them right from the very beginning, educate them around what our program is and involve them in the process, to the extent they can and want to be involved. They enter into a contract — it is really a three-way contract between us, the students, family and parents, and the schools — that really identify the importance of this process of the education of their children, and the responsibility that we all share in seeing them through to the end result.
Senator Dyck: Saskatchewan seems to have done very well, according to the people from the University of Alberta.
I consider myself a professional student, a life-long learner, and I have three questions. The first one has to do with gender; I am still on the gender-based analysis phase.
I noticed in the presentation by Professor Taylor that being female comes out high in terms of keeping your options open; it was greater than 1.1 or 1.2 on your scale. In the program that you have, Mr. Hughes, I was wondering if you had noticed any difference in terms of dropouts, whether it was mostly boys or was it an even mix between boys and girls?
Certainly, Mr. Sharpe, within the Aboriginal community, it is very clear that the dropouts are mostly boys; the reason seems to be boredom. The dropout rate for girls is not as bad. What is intriguing is that the people in the Aboriginal community who are continuing on for post-secondary training are single mothers. That is a barrier that, somehow, has been breeched. I wonder if you have any idea as to what has turned that situation around?
Dr. Sharpe, do you think that the model proposed in Regent Park could be applied to an Aboriginal community? I really like this model. Personally, I think the school system was designed I don't know how many hundreds of years ago, and it is filling your mind, but we are whole people. You cannot just educate the mind; you must educate the whole person. I think you have captured in this program the education of the person, the family and the community.
Ms. Taylor: If I understand you correctly, your question was about the fact that in our findings, young women were more likely to keep their options open. It is consistent, certainly, with what we know about enrolments in undergraduate programs, where women are the majority, at least at that undergraduate level. If you look at whether the gender gap has changed, certainly it has in terms of post-secondary enrolment at the undergraduate level.
At the graduate school level, the shift is still more in favour of males in terms of the proportions, and of course when we get into the labour market, there are still differences, but in terms of undergraduate enrolment, our findings are consistent with what has happened.
Mr. Hughes: Ironically, I think you will find a letter to the editor tomorrow in The Globe and Mail, or an article responding to a piece just a few days ago that spoke about the importance of focusing programs such as ours on boys more than on girls. My response, of course, among other things in the article, is to point out that while there might be a slight leaning in favour of the girls in this area, we find that boys and girls are both in need of significant investment to move them towards the academic achievement that is required here. A critical part of our program is that we are not selecting anybody, regardless of income or profile of any kind, to participate in our program. It is a community-based program, and anyone in a community identified as a community in need of additional supports can and should participate in the program. With a 93 per cent participation rate in Regent Park, and similar rates in other locations in Ontario and Quebec, we see that it is important that it is not segmented or sliced in any way. We think that is a critical part of this discussion.
Mr. Sharpe: You are absolutely right that boys do much worse in terms of high school than girls now. In university, 60 per cent of the students now are female, and only 40 per cent are male. All the progress made in increasing the educational attainment at the post-secondary level has been made by females, and not much progress by males. That is certainly true, as you point out, in the Aboriginal communities. It is an issue. Boys do not seem to do well in high school compared to girls, and we should be looking at that from a gender perspective.
In terms of the model of Pathways, I do not know enough about it to know if it would work in the Aboriginal community, but we should certainly try it. It has been so successful. Those numbers showing $25 for every dollar put in is a high rate of return. I would like to check to see how it is calculated.
Mr. Hughes: We will share all of our data.
Mr. Sharpe: The Boston Consulting Group has credibility, so I take it, but if that could help in the Aboriginal communities, it would be fantastic. Mr. Hughes should respond to the question of whether they have applied the model to Aboriginal communities. He is better situated than I to talk about that situation.
Mr. Hughes: This is a topic of considerable conversation internally with our organization. We are in discussions in one urban centre where we have a large Aboriginal component, and a critical part of our program at this stage of our development is that we have a normal distribution of participation in the program. Where it comes to special needs or special requirements, all of our program sites so far have a fairly broad distribution. Applying this to the different cultural and learning requirements that might come from one cultural group or another we do not see as being problematic. We are excited about it and looking forward to seeing the program applied in communities that have a high Aboriginal concentration. To date, our focus has been in larger urban centres. That will be part of the conversation. There is nothing inherent about any group, the Aboriginal communities in particular, that would be a problem for the program, as long as there is a relatively normal distribution in terms of special needs for the people in those programs.
Senator Martin: I, too, was a teacher, and I feel as though we are always teachers and students. In my teaching career, I often sat around tables with colleagues talking about the benefits or the question of streaming. I have taught courses where I had kids in accelerated programs, all integrated with such a range of ability. In the more recent years, I would say five to ten, every classroom had such a diverse mix of students that it was quite a challenge for students. Pathways sounds like a very effective program, just from having been in the schools and seeing how it could really work.
Dr. Taylor, in terms of streaming, we were short for time so you did not talk about how streaming could impact the graduation rates for students. Are there studies on whether students being in more streamlined classrooms would have more success if they were able to get that kind of attention? I am thinking of alternate schools as one example. They are in B.C. but not in all school districts in the same way.
Dr. Hughes, how could Pathways be used in streamlined groups? Is it more effective when the group is more homogeneous, and where you are not having to deal with such a range of students? Of course, they are all at-risk students, but how would Pathways perhaps be used for programs or schools that have alternate programs and students who are high risk?
We have talked about graduating students and how we close the achievement gap between the student haves and have-nots, but I also worry about the students once they graduate. Even for students from very affluent backgrounds, first year university and post-secondary education can be daunting and extremely difficult. You have 80 per cent of your students entering post-secondary education. I am curious as to the completion rate, and whether that is a piece we need to think about as well, because we graduate them, but then what? Especially with these high-risk students.
Ms. Taylor: On the first question on the problematic aspects of streaming and the alternatives, in terms of the literature, certainly the kinds of things that have been identified as issues associated with kids in low tracks are issues around self-esteem, because kids know where they are placed and that often has an influence. Increased alienation in school has a correlation in terms of dropout rates for kids in lower streams, and aspirations are often affected. Those are the problematic aspects that have been identified.
When you look at alternatives, certainly again in our provincial study we have seen that the options in Saskatchewan, in terms of curriculum and the number of streams, are less. If you have fewer streams and a more unstreamed system, that certainly is one way of addressing the situation.
At the classroom level, the kinds of things that have been talked about are more cooperative learning, using kids who are doing well academically to help those who are not, and just having a lot more sharing. It is a difficult issue — no question about it — and that is why there tends to be quite a bit of discussion about it in the teaching profession. It is not easily addressed, but the question is whether the harms caused by streaming outweigh the efficiencies, so to speak.
Mr. Hughes: For the record, a number of you have referred to me as Dr. Hughes and I am not Dr. Hughes, but thank you for the promotion.
With regard to the streaming issue, I will just say that Pathways to Education Canada is designed to work with any system, and does not focus on wanting to even change the education system or comment on it. Rather, it seeks to work and focus on the students and helping them work within whichever system and whichever environment they have to deal with. Our role is to work with students through mentoring and tutoring support to help those students negotiate the system, to work within the system and to be able to move forward, notwithstanding various things they encounter. Our focus would be more on helping them learn, and learning how to learn, than on what it is they are learning. We are there to be that kind of wrap-around support that helps them through the system. I will leave the conversation around streaming to those more qualified.
With regard to the post-secondary support piece, we do continue to provide various supports for those students after they graduate and go into the post-secondary institutions in their various forms. These are less formally structured programs, but often the students are coming back to us anyway because they feel they have found a trusted friend and mentor. Those are relationships, and much of this is about relationships. When we forge these supportive relationships, they feel they can come back and connect with our staff and volunteers, and that is something that has been a great aid to many of them. We know that from both the data and anecdotal evidence.
More specifically, we have introduced our tri-mentoring program where we are engaging the post-secondary students in mentoring backward. It is ``paying it forward,'' so to speak. Where they benefited from the mentoring and tutoring program, they now become the tutors and mentors for the students who are more advanced in post-secondary school. They are helping those who have just come into the post-secondary school, as well. For those in the early stages of post-secondary education, they are helping the Grade 11 and 12 students through career training, career preparation and these types of things. We think that is a model that works very well.
The Chair: I think we have come to the end of our session. We have some six o'clock deadlines in a couple of cases, so we have run a few minutes over that.
I want to thank everyone who has participated. Dr. Taylor, please thank Dr. Krahn, as well, on our behalf. Thanks to the three of you here at the table. This session has been very helpful to us. It is a perspective on the poverty issue that we needed to get a handle on and I think we have received a lot of valuable information on this aspect of it.
Tomorrow morning, at 10:45 a.m., we will have another session with a witness from Calgary about the living wage. It is an interesting proposition. We have that happening, as well as a 10-year ``end homelessness'' commitment.
(The committee adjourned.)