The results of some provincial number crunching have once again painted a worrisome trend for Prince Rupert’s high schools, with the city’s completion rate among the lowest levels in the province.
The numbers from this Ministry of Education report show that in the most recent review, Prince Rupert’s rate of completion was 57.7%, down from the 2008 report when the city’s rate was listed as 63.9%.
For First Nations students in the city the levels are also lower and also quite worrisome, this years totals provide for a 35.1 per cent completion rate, down from numbers released in 2008 when the number was 39%.
My memory may be a little foggy, and I hail from a different province, (yes, a slight while ago too!), but it seems to me, we could not LEAVE high school until we passed, went to work, or made it to acceptance in a higher learning institute. Allowance was made for bringing in the hay. Otherwise, it seemed that escorted or not, your next “art” class involved, sponge pads, black ink and “finger painting”. We were warned about this from grade 9 on, and it seemed to have mostly come to fruition. So, it is now obvious, the freedom allowed school age kids to do what they wish needs to be tempered with education of the same kids in their obligation to society , not their perception of what society owes them. An open eyed look around, especially in this city, shows this degradation of normalcy and the declining school performance is alarmingly significant. Read, Cause and effect. This is not racially specific although from what I see, it is racially unweighed.
