Page 18 - Building Bridges to Success for First Nation, Métis and Inuit Students – Developing Policies for Voluntary, Confidential Aboriginal Student Self-Identification: Successful Practices for Ontario School Boards

• Building Bridges to Success for First Nation, Métis and Inuit Students
School boards will need to employ a variety
of strategies to successfully raise awareness
and understanding of the initiative among
First Nation, Métis, and Inuit families and
communities, and to gain their support. School
boards should also ensure that board and school
staff, particularly front-line staff, have a good
understanding of the initiative and the issues
and concerns related to it, so that they can
respond informatively to questions from
students’ families.
3 Step 3: Implementation
ARTICULATING INTENDED USES OF THE DATA
In order to ensure success in implementing an Aboriginal student self-identification policy, it is critical that First Nation, Métis, and Inuit families and commu- nities understand that self-identification is voluntary and confidential. It is also essential that they understand and support the ways in which school boards, the EQAO, and the Ministry of Education intend to use their personal information.
School boards will need to determine at the outset what the uses of the data will be, and communicate this information to families and communities through consultations with them. Boards should discuss the collection of
data with their MISA leaders and information technology staff, as well as with the EQAO, at an early stage of the development process.
The Ministry of Education’s Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework, 2007 includes specific quantitative and qualitative performance measures that will be used to assess the progress of the imple- mentation of the framework. The ministry’s framework implementation plan is to include specific targets connected with the performance measures to aid in assessing system effectiveness and First Nation, Métis, and Inuit student
BUILDING AWARENESS
2 3
1FOUNDATIONS 2 CONSULTATION 3 IMPLEMENTATION
1
DEEPENING YOUR KNOWLEDGE
A variet
y of effective strategies
that boards may find helpful are
2
policy development processes of
described in the accounts of the
3
spectives of Aboriginal representa-
three school boards and the per-
1
represented in some of the sample
tives presented on pages 16–25. In addition, relevant strategies are
2
materials provided on pages 26–32.
14