Nunavik school board's prez says province partly to blame for diploma debacle

An open letter to Quebec's minister of education claims that the province has been neglecting students in Northern Quebec, contributing to an urgent situation where Nunavik high school graduates haven't received diplomas in two years.

• Nunavik's school board quietly stopped issuing high school diplomas in 2015

The letter, sent by the Kativik School Board's president, Alicie Nalukturuk and addressed to minister SbastienProulx, states that for five years, the Kativik School Board, which oversees schools in Nunavik, has been "writing regularly to the Minister of Education to request assistance on issues at the core of our education mandate and responsibilities, without receiving due attention."

"As a result, Nunavik students find themselves in a situation for which both the Kativik School Board and the Ministry of Education share responsibility."

The situation

Since June 2015,Nunavik's high school graduates have been receiving a statement of high school equivalency (Attestation of Equivalence of Secondary Studies) rather than a standard Quebec high school diploma.

The province stopped issuing standard diplomas for Nunavik graduatesbecause the KativikSchool Board was not ableto revise its math and science curriculum to meet new province-wide standards set in 2000.

In 2007, the school board was given a five-year extension to have its math and science curriculum accredited by the province. After thedeadline passed and the requisite changes had not been made, the province began issuingcertificates of attestation instead of diplomas in the 2014/15 academic year.

This situation has complicated matters for any student who may want to pursue secondary education anywhere other than at one of two Montreal CEGEPs the Kativik school board streams students into.

Nunavik students and parents only learned of the situation after it was raised in the Quebec legislature.Many of theaffected families learned the informationthrough word of mouth, creatingconfusion among recent graduates regarding the quality of their high school education relative to other students in the province.

Plenty of blame to go around

In her letter,Nalukturuk pointed to a series of failures on the part of the provincial government to help the KativikSchool Board move forward with curriculum improvements.

"The accreditation of the Kativik School Board mathematics and sciences programs is one example of how the Ministry of Education has consistently ignored our request for assistance and support," she said in her letter.

Nalukturuk goes on to allege that the province has failed to provide a reliable provincial contact to help the school board navigate the process since the retirement of the previous director of curriculum development.

She also states the province is in a position to approve the school board's math and science programs, if it were to make it a priority.

"To date, we remain at a standstill and have received no indication that work is progressing at the ministry level," Nalukturuk said in her letter.

"We demand that a clear timetable be communicated to us immediately and that action be taken to complete the remaining steps in the accreditation process."

Neither Minister Proulx's office nor the Kativik School Board was immediately available for comment.