Thank you for your question.
We have achieved an attendance rate of about 82% over the last decade and a half, I would say. That has been a stable indicator for us and a credit to the successes that we see. A lot of our focus on boys and girls in elementary is attendance. We know that if they attend school regularly, their chances of success in middle school, junior high, secondary and into post-secondary are greater. We cannot stress enough and emphasize enough the importance of attendance in all years, but especially in elementary.
We create a lot of opportunities—targeted opportunities, I would call them. We have cohorts to create.... Just recently and currently, there's a desire to have more early childhood educators, as it's a huge need in our communities. We design and create the cohorts with our partners. Certainly for us here in Nova Scotia, we have great working relationships with the institutions, the Nova Scotia community colleges. We redesign programs that they have already offered, giving them a Mi’kmaq focus and ensuring that the program delivery is appropriate to what we desire.
We do a lot of specific programming targeting girls in trade, for example, where we want to see more girls in trade. We do a lot of specific initiatives around wellness. One of the more successful ones that we have heightened a little bit more is boys and wellness. It is just as important for boys to be able to be in a safe space to talk about their well-being as well.
Certainly, for us wellness is a priority just all around the map. COVID has certainly opened a lot of gaps that we are seeing and triaging at this time, but I think we would be a little bit not focused if we didn't engage community. In every effort, starting as early as grade 5, we engage parents in their attainment, because parents play a critical role in the future of their children's education. They are likely the decision-makers for where their children will go, be it trades or be it university. We engage parents in a “try a trade” model, where they accompany their children to see the benefits of working in trades, for example. We have trades halls and apprenticeship halls and other things that we can access.
Then there's transition and a lot of opportunities as well for secondary students and middle school students in university attainment. We have created a lot of pathways. Those pathway themes are in education, health, entrepreneurship, business and STEM. We create all of these opportunities so that if you want to become a plumber, we have a pathway created for you. If you want to become a veterinarian, we have a pathway for you. Children know early on that the choices they make in junior high and high school will elevate them into the pathways they see themselves in.
We certainly encourage a lot of efforts by both our communities and our parents especially, because students are students but the parents are the boss, especially in Mi’kmaq territory.