I never like this question because it sets up something that we're trying to fight, that the ministries of advanced education will say it's the education system's fault, the K to 12. There's a whole bunch of factors. It's certainly something that my other colleagues at the table might want to address, but certainly racial issues impede children's success.
Not all schools are the same: rural versus urban, isolated aboriginal communities, on reserve, off reserve, in Toronto, in Rosedale to Regent Park. There's a whole bunch of factors that impede a child's education. Parents in poverty, parents who have to work two or three jobs. Even if they can and do have good reading and writing skills, parents don't have the time to support their kids. It needs to be far more than only an education system. There has to be community involvement, and we know that many teachers don't live in the communities in which they teach, so they're not aware of the other community supports they could use to support the children. We need to have programs in place that introduce the community agencies to the schools and vice versa, and parents need to be involved in that.
There are a number of reasons why education can fail children. I think one of the ways we can ensure that children have better success is to ensure that there's more support outside of school for education, that once you say it should happen in a classroom from 9 to 5, it's not that. It's about engaging youth in their education, about empowering parents to be engaged in their education, and about community support.