Poor school performance a 'scar' for Alberta education, says opposition

The leader of the Alberta NDP says low student attendance in a troubled school division that serves mainly aboriginal studentsis a 'scar' on the province's education system.

The auditor general released a report Wednesday that found roughly one-third of about 2,700 students in the Northland School Division are not going to school regularly.

"What the auditor general described was a department that had basically thrown its hands up in despair and really stopped doing any work on that," saidRachel Notley. "That is very distressing."

Auditor general Merwan Saher found the school division has not analyzed its attendance statistics to figure out the reasons why students are not attending class.

He said there have been some new measures introduced to fix the problem, butwants to make surepublic money is being used as effectively as possiblewhich includes making sure the childrenactually go to school.

We've come to the conclusion that the failure of oversight over the last decades could be viewed as being at the heart of the attendance issues in the division, hesaid.

Its not the first time this school division has been challenged.

Five years ago, then-education minister Dave Hancock fired 23 elected school board members amid concerns over student achievement results and staff turnover. He then appointed an official trustee, a system of governance that is still in place.

Years later, the schools performance had not improved and in fact had slipped further.

In 2012, school attendance had dropped to 77 per cent.

In 2013, data released on provincial achievement tests showed the division scored well below average. For example, only 12 per cent of Grade 9 Social Studies students achieved the acceptable standard, compared with the provincial average of 73.6 per cent.

Education Minister Gordon Dirks said Wednesday he's "grateful" to the auditor general for bringing the attendance issueto his attention andplans to meet with the Northland School Divisions official trustee.