School District 46 is seeing First Nation graduation rates on par with the rest of their classmates for the first time.
The District Superintendent is Patrick Bocking.
“Just 8 years ago we tended to have a completion rate, which is the graduation rate in B.C. in the 40’s for aboriginal students and since then it’s climbed very steadily. Now, all of our students are pretty much equal so we are very excited about that.
Bocking attributes the improvement to, “Everything, and by that I mean we have a wonderful partnership with the Sechelt Indian Band, we have fantastic support from all or our teachers who deeply believe that all of our students should be successful. We have a terrific aboriginal educational team who goes in and works with teachers to help them understand aboriginal pride and being aboriginal.”
The bad news was, in 2017/2018 there was a drop in the graduation level for special needs students.
Bocking says the District is looking into the reason why, but he suggests it’s a very small cohort and even one or two students can skew the numbers quite a bit.
