Number of Yukon students missing school worries youth advocate

The number of students missing school in Yukon is "worse than I thought," the territory's child and youth advocate says.

Annette King is working on a review of school attendance, which was first announced in January.

At the time, she said her office, through its advocacy work, identified more than 100 kids who weren't going to school regularly or at all.

Now, that number has grown considerably, possibly into the hundreds, King said Friday.

"[Absenteeism] is a widespread problem throughout the Yukon," she said. "We are really concerned on many levels."

King said personal issues, a lack of motivation due to schoolwork being too hard, and feeling unsafe at schoolare some of the top reasons for absenteeism that she has been come across.

For some, it's also due to their behaviour, she said."They might be told they're not welcome at school."

The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed a few aspects of the review, King said. It has also resulted in the end of in-person learning for the rest of the school year.

"We are actually seeing some kids who are more successful in this different learning environment, but I think that's not the majority," King said. "I think most of the kids are really missing what goes on by going to school, the connections they make, and the learning."

More data needed

King said she's working with the education department to collect absenteeism data for the past two school years and at least part of this school year.

"We're going to be able to understand fully what was happening prior to the pandemic," she said."I think there's a whole new set of issues that happened during the pandemic, and we have no idea what's going to be coming forward or what kind of issues we'll be seeing, if this continues longer."

King said she will ask the department how the success of schools' programs during the pandemic are measured.

"There's some kids that don't go onto the Zoom meetings but they get all their work done independently, right? So are they not attending or are they doing it in their own way that's working for them?" she said.

"There are some families that have decided different formats of learning are more important, and they're not doing the schoolwork but they're doing other things that are probably just as educational in some ways."

She addedshe doesn'tknow how attendance would now be measured.

The next phase of the data analysis will entail looking for patterns among age groups, locationsand grade levels, King said.

She said she especially wants to look at the effects of going from Grade 7 to 8, and when students move from communities to Whitehorse.

King said she wants to send a formal report to education minister Tracy-Anne McPheein the spring of 2021, but the full review will take longer to complete.