Call to Action #8 We call upon the federal government to eliminate the discrepancy in federal education funding for First Nations children being educated on reserves and those First Nations children being educated off reserves.
The Call to Action is one that is near and dear to my heart. I worked with Fort Nelson First Nations as one of their high school science and math teachers in 2006 and at the time, the band had voted to agree to pay BC teachers the same amount as we would have had worked at one of the BC School District Schools. This meant there was less money from their accounts going to elder care, and children programs, but they wanted to recruit and retain teachers at an independent school. That’s something to note, that many of the on-reserve schools are considered independent schools and are not eligible for the same funding model from the province per student in the schools. There are also stricter reporting guidelines. My goal is to see what the government says is happening in Module 1 and research what is happening in Module 2 and how to get people interested, invested and caring about Truth and Reconciliation.
The Government of Canada says that the following about what is happening with this particular Call to Action.
https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1524495412051/1557511602225
To help address the education attainment gap, the Government of Canada has made significant investments, totaling $2.6 billion over 5 years for primary and secondary education on reserve. This includes funding to address immediate needs and to keep pace with cost growth over the medium term, as well as investments in language and cultural programming and literacy and numeracy.
The Government of Canada has worked closely with various First Nations partners to implement an inclusive and comprehensive engagement process on First Nations kindergarten to grade 12 education on reserve, including investing $3.6 million to support community-level discussions. The engagements were led by First Nations organizations and provided community members with the opportunity to share their views on how to improve First Nations student success.
On January 21, 2019, a new co-developed policy and improved funding approach to better support the needs of First Nations students on-reserve was announced. As of April 1, 2019, the new funding approach:
- replaces outdated proposal-based programs with improved access to predictable core funding
- ensures base funding is comparable to provincial systems across the country while working towards additional funding agreements based on need to better account for factors such as remoteness, school size, language, and socio-economic conditions
- provides First Nations schools with $1,500 per student, per year, to support language and culture programming
- provides new resources which will support full-time kindergarten in every First Nations school for children aged 4 and 5
- ensures special education funding is more predictable, with fewer application-based requirements