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THE STUDY IN BRIEF
The gap in education levels between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals is one of the great social policy challenges facing Canada. The Kelowna Accord of 2005 proposed to close the high-school completion gap within a decade, but it proposed no administrative reforms to bring about such an education transformation. The most recent data from the 2006 Census show widening Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal education gaps for younger (relative to older) groups. While younger Aboriginals are indeed seeking more education than previous generations, they have not kept pace with the increase in education among other Canadians. The magnitude of education gaps is prohibiting Aboriginals from exercising a realistic choice between leading a traditional lifestyle and a lifestyle integrated with other Canadians.
After reviewing trends in off- and on-reserve Aboriginal education, John Richards argues for creation of Aboriginal-run school authorities able to administer onreserve schools independent of individual band councils. The existing tripartite agreement involving Ottawa, Victoria and the BC First Nations Education Steering Committee is a promising precedent for professionalizing on-reserve school administration. However, most Aboriginals now live off-reserve, and their children attend off-reserve provincially administered schools. While off-reserve education outcomes are better than those on-reserve, the provinces, too, need to undertake reform. Here, the preferred strategy is to expand practices in successful school districts to other districts.
When then-prime-minister Paul Martin, the provincial premiers and national Aboriginal leaders met in Kelowna, B.C. in November 2005, they committed to close the Aboriginal/ non-Aboriginal high-school completion gap within a decade.
In doing so, they implicitly endorsed the principle that individual Aboriginals be able to make a realistic choice between a traditional lifestyle on-reserve in the case of those registered under the Indian Act- and successful participation in mainstream Canadian society. Successful participation in the modern Canadian economy requires that Aboriginal education levels converge with non-Aboriginal levels. It is almost universally the case that low education levels condemn people to fail in a modem industrial economy.
In assessing Aboriginal education levels, this Backgrounder relies on the 2006 Census. Younger Aboriginal groups have somewhat higher education levels than their elders. But the intergenerational increases among younger non-Aboriginals are larger. In general, Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal gaps at all education levels ate higher among younger groups.1
Before examining the policy implications of these...