KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – The opportunity gap between African Nova Scotian learners and white learners continues to expand, therefore the achievement gap continues to expand as well.
Unlike their white counterparts African Nova Scotian learners do not have access to the same resources based on the fact that most African Nova Scotian parents continue to endure poverty and low incomes.
Equally, because of a long history of racism and poverty, many of their parents and grandparents did not have access to any formal education because they were forced to leave any kind of educational pursuit to feed their families.
The education system in Nova Scotia continues to fail African Nova Scotian learners. There is very little in this system that reflects our history, perseverance, indomitable spirit, contributions, culture or accomplishments.
As well, hundreds of African Nova Scotian learners have forever been stereotyped as unruly and learning-capacity impaired, causing them to be railroaded into what used to be known as the dummy class, the auxiliary class and now the Independent Program Plan (IPP).
African Nova Scotian learners are also suspended from school at higher rates than others.
All this has served to effectively limit African Nova Scotian learners from achieving and gaining higher education.
To add insult to injury, out of the two organizations that were funded to assist African Nova Scotian learners and advise the Department of Education, one continues to be underfunded while funding was pulled from the other.
The Government of Nova Scotia and the Department of Education get a failing grade indeed.
See also: Census 2016: African Nova Scotian poverty rates through the roof, unemployment numbers terrible
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While I have no doubt the conclusions of this article are true…this is an opinion piece with no supporting information. I would like to know the names of the two Education programs, one of which was cancelled and the other underfunded for example. I would like to know the specifics of the achievement gap. This is a serious and unacceptable situation. I hope we will read more about it.
The Africentric Learning Institute was defunded in 2014. The other institute Mr. Shepperd refers to is the Delmore Buddy Daye Learning Centre The achievement gap the witer refers to is documented in countless government reports. Here is one. https://www.ednet.ns.ca/docs/blac-report-education-redressing-inequity.pdf