French Guiana’s Education System: Current Challenges

Written by Juliana Campos.

France’s largest territory in South America, French Guiana, faces social and economic growth challenges still yet to be addressed by the French government, including difficulties in administering the Guianese education system.

Guianese population has doubled in the last 20 years and is now estimated at 301,099 inhabitants i. Recently, due to its status as an overseas department of France, the region has experienced a surge in immigration from neighbouring countries such as Brazil and Suriname. The uncontrolled immigration, along with inadequate infrastructure, poverty and elevated unemployment rates have significantly lowered the quality of life in French Guiana and the region faces several challenges which make access to basic services such as healthcare and education more difficult.

The issues which stem from social and economic inequality would greatly benefit from a bigger interest of the French government in improving and expanding education in French Guiana. Although substantial investments have been made in the last decade, money alone is not enough to ensure access to quality education.

The Guianese Education System

In French Guiana, education is free and mandatory from ages 6 to 16. Primary education lasts five years and, for that particular stage of school life, enrolment rates are as high as ever in bigger cities and are slowly improving in more remote areas where there aren’t as many resources, such as in Indigenous settlements. As it is the reality of other developing countries, high Primary School enrolment is contrasted by alarmingly high drop-out rates in Secondary School and High School.

One big contributing factor to this phenomenon is the fact that Primary school is usually cheaper for governments to provide and children in that age group are more likely to stay in school, as parents can’t yet leave them unattended at home while working. In Secondary education, however, many children are given extra tasks at home or in the growing informal market, some live too far from school, and others simply do not receive encouragement from family members to continue their studies.

Besides, it is worth mentioning that although all Guianese children have the right to attend school free of charge, studying is not free. Additional costs with transportation, clothes, food and school materials take a toll on low-income families and may affect students’ attendance rates.

To address this issue, the French government and Guianese authorities have come up with financial aid programmes that aim to motivate students and their families. The bonuses are given to scholarship holders, aiding 46.4% of all middle school and high school students in French Guiana.ii However, there is a lack of follow-up data on whether these measures are actually effective.

Teacher shortage and inequality

Another issue currently hindering quality education in French Guiana is the shortage of trained teachers. The number of licensed educators native to the region is insufficient compared to the number of students, a problem which resulted in overpacked classrooms as the Guianese population grew. This demand brought teachers from mainland France and adjacent countries in South America to work in French Guiana, causing new problems as these professionals are usually unaware of the region’s specificities.iii

In fact, one of the biggest challenges faced by the French government when administering education in French Guiana is its extremely diverse and multicultural society. Though teachers are given freedom to adapt materials to their students’ realities, textbooks are usually made in mainland France and classes are administered in French, the official language.

By erasing French Guiana’s history, geography, languages and heritage from textbooks and national exams, French authorities perpetuate the colonialist idea that mainland France’s history and culture are somehow more relevant than that of its other territories. As a result, children may find school contents difficult to understand or hard to relate to and can grow up unaware of many of their local heroes and historic figures. Besides that, this erasure has a direct effect on students’ self-esteem and may discourage them from continuing their studies.

The adaptation of school contents by local teachers cannot derive much from the French curriculum, as French Guiana students are also subjected to standardized national exams such as the Brevet, the Lower Secondary School exam, and the Baccalauréat, the French academic qualification exam.

Considering the points previously mentioned, it is unsurprising that Guianese students do not reach the same results as mainland French students. According to GrowThinkTank and INSEE (2014), the year of the study in French Guiana, only 76% of students aged 15 to 19 were enrolled in school, whether as pupils, students or apprentices, compared to 89% in mainland France. Furthermore, more than one in two Guianese no longer attend school from the age of 19, compared to 72% in mainland France at the same age.

This stark difference surely doesn’t come from lack of resilience, lack of intelligence or any characteristic exclusive to French Guiana’s youth. It is simply a product of inequality and lack of opportunity. Not being in school or dropping out of school has long lasting effects on young people, not only for their professional future, but also for their individual growth as human beings and as citizens, as school is also the main place where children socialise.

Kids and a Teacher in a Classroom / Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz via Pexels

Education of Indigenous People and other minorities

Indigenous peoples play a substantial role in Guianese society, preserving culturally valuable knowledge, fighting for structural change and demanding protection of their territories. The erasure perpetrated by the French school curriculum affects these populations even more strongly, starting by the lack of data available on them. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) affirms that, according to estimates, Indigenous peoples represent some 4% of the Guianese population, or more than 12,000 individualsiv, but there is no way to be sure, as the French Constitution prohibits the collection of race-based census data.

For decades in French Guiana, as well as in many adjacent regions, education was only present in the form of Catholic Schools, residential institutions where Indigenous children were forcibly interned and required to replace their traditions and religions with the Catholic ideals. Their native languages were also prohibited and children were taught French instead.

This serves as an example of how school can be used as political tactic, as colonial France risked the disappearance of invaluable Indigenous knowledge in order to maintain its territory. To this day, the French government has not directly dealt with the cultural loss from French Guiana’s period as a colony, and the erasure of Indigenous minorities is still a very present issue, with their history, culture and languages often being ignored by the French education system.

Future Prospects

French Guiana suffers from social and economic inequalities that would greatly benefit from an education system that is better tailored to its extremely multicultural society. The French government has a responsibility to invest in French Guiana’s education by building new schools and preparing and hiring native teachers, as well as training foreign teachers on how to approach French Guiana’s diverse society. This would partially solve the issue of overpacked schools, while also stimulating the local economy.

In addition to these measures, the government should also include more about the history, cultures, geography, climate and religions present in French Guiana in textbooks and standardized exams, which could make school more relatable to students and have a direct effect on the current drop-out rates. A special effort should be made to ensure Indigenous peoples and other minorities have access to quality education which also respects their culture and heritage.

In order to effectively make these improvements, it is crucial that the French government monitors the developments of their investments, either by conducting their own research on the ground or relying on local leaders and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). It is particularly important to collect data on enrolment rates for both Primary and Secondary Education, but also to understand what can be done to make sure these children receive quality education and encouragement to finish their studies.

References:

Current status on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Presented by Caren Thomas, Francisca Rosales and Samantha Orozco

This report was drafted by Broken Chalk to contribute to the call for inputs to analyze the status of the rights of Indigenous Peoples worldwide in the achievement of the ends of the Declaration, focusing on one or more interrelated articles of the Declaration. Broken Chalk is an organisation that fights against violations of Human Rights and improving the quality of education around the globe.

Despite the efforts, a significant gap persists in the obligations of different regional human rights systems to establish binding bodies and enforce their resolutions, hindering the effective safeguarding of indigenous rights. While regional bodies acknowledge the binding nature of the ILO 169 convention, shortcomings, particularly in Latin America, where domestic laws lack regulation of procedures, impede policy implementation.

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Photo by Pamela Huber on Unsplash

Educational challenges in Panama

Written by Francisca Rosales

Panama is a country in Central America with a population of approximately 4.2 million people in 2020 (Puertas et al. 2023). Panama has a Human Development Index of 0.815 due to widespread socioeconomic inequality, especially among the country’s indigenous population (ibid.).

The Panamanian education system is divided into different stages: preschool; primary school; pre-secondary school and secondary school. Education is free until middle school (The Oxford Business Group 2023). Despite recent progress in children’s access to education, Panama’s educational system is still facing grave challenges, especially as the quality of the country’s education continues to lag (The Oxford Business Group 2023; UNICEF 2021). There are still great disparities in dropout rates between rural and urban areas, and the number and professional qualification of teachers remains unsatisfactory (The Oxford Business Group 2023). The state budget for education continues to be disappointing (Herrera et al. 2018). In 2020, the Panamanian government only invested 3.9 percent of its GDP in education (Trading Economics 2023). Currently 17.2% of children aged between 15 and 24 are not enrolled in education or employment, entailing that many adolescents lack access to education and to the necessary skills to find an employment (Unicef 2020).

This report highlights educational challenges that Panama is facing at the moment; namely, the lack of quality education and infrastructure, and inequalities in access to education that affect especially rural and indigenous communities. The report concludes with recommendations to improve the Panamanian educational system.

Elementary school in Boquete, Panama. Photo by Fran Hogan on Wikimedia Commons.

Quality of Education & Infrastructure

The quality of education in Panama continues to fall behind (UNESCO 2020). There are not sufficient services at schools to ensure quality education for students, especially in rural and indigenous communities (UNICEF 2021). To illustrate, approximately 30 percent of children do not have access to preschool education (UNICEF 2021). Also, educational infrastructure is deteriorating due to poor maintenance (Herrera et al. 2018). The lack of capacity to accommodate students has led to the introduction of the two-shift school day to optimize school infrastructure (The Oxford Business Group 2023). This strategy entails that one shift of students attends school during the morning, while another shift attends school in the afternoon. However, this has hampered the development of students’ basic skills. The physical infrastructure of schools in rural areas is lower than in urban schools (Unesco 2020). Rural schools face major infrastructure challenges: there is a lack of infrastructure to accommodate the local demand for school; this results in children dropping out of school or forces children to walk for long distances to access their schools. Also, compared to schools in urban centers, schools in rural areas often lack the necessary learning materials, such as textbooks and notebooks (Unesco 2020).

Moreover, the educational style remains old-fashioned, as the curriculum is still based on memorizing concepts rather than developing key competencies and developing skills important for students’ future employability (UNICEF 2021). The lack of enforcement of a bilingual curriculum and, therefore, the lack of proficiency in English has negatively affected students’ preparedness for the labor market, especially in the sector of tourism. As a response, the government implemented a Bilingual Program in 2015, to improve basic and secondary teachers’ proficiency in English (The Oxford Business Group 2023). Furthermore,  schools lack a clear approach to teaching in schools in indigenous communities, which compromises the quality of education for students with an indigenous background. In fact, many teachers teaching in schools in indigenous communities follow non-inclusive educational practices (Unesco 2020). For example, non-indigenous teachers often do not allow students to speak in indigenous languages among themselves, creating tensions in the classroom environment and the current bilingual curriculum fails to include indigenous languages (Unesco 2020). 

Inequalities in Access to Education

According to UNICEF, 3 out of 10 children are affected by multidimensional poverty in Panama (UNICEF 2022). Children living in poverty and children with an indigenous background lack access to quality services (UNICEF 2022). Although preschool education is compulsory, approximately 40 percent of children aged between 4 to 5 years do not attend preschool (UNICEF 2020). Ensuring children’s access to preschool education is essential since the level of oral language kindergarten can have a great impact on a child’s learning outcomes through primary school in reading and writing, as well as mathematics (Puertas et al. 2023). The educational system also does not reach all adolescents to the same extent: only 7 in 10 children aged between 12 and 14 years were enrolled in pre-secondary school before Covid-19, while only 5 in 10 adolescents between 15 and 17 years were enrolled in high school (UNICEF 2020). Consequently, only 35 percent of students reached the minimum proficiency levels for literacy according to the Sustainable Development Goals (UNICEF 2020). Also, 19 percent of boys and 16 percent of girls in pre-secondary schools are overaged; this fact points that unsatisfactory learning leads to school dropout, curtailing the possibility for young adults to acquire the necessary skills for future employability (UNICEF 2020). 

Inequalities greatly affect children with indigenous backgrounds, as indigenous children display lower achievement in literacy and numeracy rates. The indigenous population in Panama mostly lives in rural areas, where the supply of schools is substantially lower, compared to urban areas (Unesco 2020). To illustrate, adolescent girls from indigenous communities are more likely to be excluded from access to education and to complete secondary education and 1 in 10 children from rural areas are more likely to not be enrolled in school (UNICEF 2021; Unesco 2020).  The literacy rate for women from indigenous backgrounds between 15 and 24 years of age is 84 percent, which is lower than the national average (97 percent) (Unesco 2020). Also, schools in indigenous communities have poorer infrastructure and lower school attainment. Violence, including abandonment, or neglect, currently affects 44.5 percent of children, and indigenous girls show higher vulnerability to violence (UNICEF 2020). Children with disabilities also face exclusion in access to education as 1 in 4 children with disabilities does not attend school (UNICEF 2021).

Students’ reading performance greatly decreased after Covid especially due to inequality (Puertas et al. 2023). At the end of 2020, only 51 percent of children in primary schools and 42 percent of high school students could read proficiently (Puerta et al. 2023). A large portion of the population does not have access to internet from home or electricity. In fact, only 40 percent of households with children in public schools have internet access (Puertas et al. 2023). During the Covid lockdow, children from higher-income households could use online platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, to engage with their teachers; however, students in lower-income households often only had WhatsApp as a means of communication with their teachers. Consequently, thousands of students were at risk of dropping out of school during this period (UNICEF 2022).

Photo by Katie Chen on Unsplash.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This report highlights that the major educational challenges in Panama lie in the lack of appropriate infrastructure to ensure that students have access to quality education and social inequality that hinders students from achieving satisfactory educational outcomes. Education is an essential mechanism for development. Thus, the government of Panama must commit to expanding the current budget for education to improve schools’ physical infrastructure and quality to ensure that its population can access the necessary skills and increase its capabilities. Also, it is essential to continue investing in teachers’ capacity building to improve the quality of teaching and develop a curriculum that enables students to develop essential skills for the job market.

The government should also prioritize children from indigenous communities to close the current gap in unequal access to education. The government should invest more in schools in indigenous communities to improve learning outcomes in reading and mathematics among primary school and high school students. This is only possible through the implementation of inclusive policies that take into consideration students’ educational needs and recognize the disproportional exclusion of children with indigenous background from accessing quality education. Ensuring that students with an indigenous background have access to quality education is essential to prevent students from dropping out of school and from being further marginalized from society. 


References

Cubilla-Bonnetier, D., Grajales-Barrios, M., Ortega-Espinosa, A., Puertas, L. and De León Sautú, N. (2023). “Unequal literacy development and access to online education in public versus private Panamanian schools during COVID-19 pandemic”. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 8, p. 989872). Frontiers.

Herrera M, L.C., Torres-Lista, V. and Montenegro, M. (2018). Analysis of the State Budget for Education of the Republic of Panama from 1990 to 2017. International Education Studies, 11(7), pp.71-82.

Oxford Business Group. (2023). “Panama makes progress towards sustainable education growth”. https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/reports/panama/2015-report/economy/learning-curve-progress-is-being-made-towards-sustainable-growth-via-a-rising-budget-and-a-push-to-raise-post-secondary-offerings#:~:text=The%20Panamanian%20education%20system%20is,five%2Dyear%2Dold%20children 

Trading Economics. (2023). “Panama – Public Spending on Education”. https://tradingeconomics.com/panama/public-spending-on-education-total-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html#:~:text=Government%20expenditure%20on%20education%2C%20total,compiled%20from%20officially%20recognized%20sources 

Unesco. (2020). “Rurality and education in Panama”. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374672 

UNICEF. (2021). “All children learn in Palama”. https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/all-children-learn-panama 

UNICEF. (2022). “Country annual report 2022: Panama”. https://www.unicef.org/media/136316/file/Panama-2022-COAR.pdf 

UNICEF. (2020). “Country Programme document”. https://www.unicef.org/executiveboard/media/3176/file/2021-PL9-Panama_CPD-EN-ODS.pdf

The Legacy of Colonialism, Discrimination, and the High Cost of Living: Areas of Improvement for the Canadian Education System

Written by Enes Gisi

Canada is a wealthy country with rich natural resources and one of the highest GDPs in the world. Behind this wealth, however, lie deep inequalities in access to quality education. These barriers to education are not always confined to school buildings, as Indigenous peoples of Canada experience the impacts of Canada’s colonial past today. Other challenges in education include sexual abuse of kids, food insecurity, and lack of housing for post-secondary students. Addressing these challenges proves difficult as the three levels of the government – federal, provincial, and municipal, are each responsible for some of them. Taking effective and quick action, however, is a challenge for the Canadian bureaucracy. Government levels sometimes pass the responsibility for an issue back and forth, causing confusion among Canadians about who is responsible for what.

Children at Fort Simpson Indian Residential School holding letters that spell “Goodbye,” Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, 1922. Photo by J. F. Moran. Library and Archives Canada on Wikimedia Commons.

Access to Education for Indigenous Peoples of Canada

To understand why the Indigenous education system is especially troubled, it’s essential to investigate the historical injustices they suffered. Indigenous peoples (also referred to as “Aboriginal peoples”) are native to the land that we today call Canada. The colonization of the land began in the 16th century with the arrival of British and French colonizers. Indigenous peoples were called “savages” and were believed to be “less civilized” than the European Canadians (“Lower Education”, 2023). Beginning in the early 17th century, various forms of schooling systems were set up (Gordon & White, 2014). The first systems created by the French settlers aimed to “Francize” the Indigenous peoples. While the British settlers initially formed alliances with the Indigenous peoples against the French and the Americans, later their policy shifted towards the same goal: “civilizing” them. Until 1951, Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and placed in residential schools, where they were prohibited from speaking their native languages and practicing their cultures, all to “reclaim” them from “a state of barbarism” (Wilson,1986, p. 66, as cited in Gordon & White, 2014). They received low-quality education and experienced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse (White & Peters, 2009 as cited in Gordon & White, 2014). When they returned home, they could no longer connect with their families or the non-Indigenous society (“What Is The Root Cause Of Indigenous Education Issues”, 2015). The last residential school was shut down in 1996, but the legacy of colonialism and negligence on the part of the federal government are still affecting Indigenous children.

Housing

Indigenous people experience a significantly higher rate of homelessness compared to the Canadian average (“Inadequate Housing And Crowded Living Conditions”, 2023). However, the issue of inadequate housing may have a closer connection to student success. Nearly 25 percent of Indigenous children under the age of 15 live in low-income households, which is double the percentage for non-Indigenous children (“Inadequate Housing And Crowded Living Conditions”, 2023). One implication of this situation is that some families are residing in homes that are too small for their needs. Indigenous students living in overcrowded houses may not get enough sleep and be able to study or do their homework in a quiet space. These, in turn, may impact their mental health, school success, and secondary education and employment prospects.

Graduation rates

The rate of high school completion of Indigenous children living on reserves, land reserved exclusively for the First Nations people, is low at 24 percent. This number was initially misrepresented by the Canadian government when it published a report presenting the rate as 46 percent (Coates, 2022). This calculation didn’t account for the students who had dropped out between grades 9 and 11. According to a report by the Auditor General of Canada, the Canadian government had also neglected its reporting responsibilities concerning Indigenous education, reporting on only 6 out of the 23 education results it had committed to report on (Office of the Auditor General of Canada, 2018).

While Indigenous children living off-reserve generally had better educational prospects compared to those on-reserve, their graduation rate from off-reserve provincial schools was still lower than that of non-Indigenous children. According to a 2021 report, the rate of on-time high school graduation from provincial schools in Saskatchewan was 88.7 percent. Among these students, the on-time graduation rate of Indigenous students was 44.7 percent (Clemett, 2023).

When it comes to post-secondary education, the data also highlights disparities. First Nations people, one of the three groups within the Indigenous population, have a post-secondary completion or recent attendance to a post-secondary institution rate of 37 percent, whereas the rate for non-Indigenous individuals is significantly higher at 72 percent (Layton, 2023).

Students, a former premier of British Columbia, a former British Columbia minister, and an Indigenous leader gathered around a bonfire. Image via Flickr by @bchovphotos.

School Funding and Resources

Many Indigenous students go to school in difficult circumstances and need extra support from the education system. Most on-reserve Indigenous students are not able to continue their studies without some, in some cases extensive, school-provided support or direct intervention (Coates, 2022). In most Canadian schools, perhaps 80 percent of students can succeed without school-based services or intervention. A significant number of on-reserve Indigenous students, sometimes one in three or more, however, require extensive support from their schools to succeed.

The ability of reserve schools to provide services to their students is, however, limited due to insufficient funding from the federal government. First Nations schools receive 30 percent less funding per student compared to other schools (Dart, n.d.). This leads to one obvious thing: Indigenous children are disadvantaged. They don’t have access to as many social workers, mental health professionals, and special education instructors. Alethea Wallace, a (former) principal of the Alexis School, a First Nation school, describes how inadequate funding impacts the school (Hampshire, n.d.). She says that the school is not able to offer art, drama, and music programs due to lack of funding. It also does not have a science lab or a computer lab. Parts of the school are utilized for unrelated purposes: the library and the janitor’s office as classrooms. Kristina Alexis, a student from the school, says her classroom hosts two classes at the same time where two teachers teach different subjects. Classes are overcrowded, and most classrooms are split among two grade levels.

Evan Taypotat, a former principal of Chief Kahkewistahaw Community School, and the current chief of the Kahkewistahaw First Nation, says “The average funding for a reserve kid is about $6,800 (Dart, n.d.). The funding for a kid in Broadview, which is about 10 minutes away, is $11,000.” Federal funding increases for reserve schools are capped at an annual 2 percent, which is lower than the inflation rate in Canada. There are two main issues that Indigenous leaders are currently seeking to resolve: gaining control over how federal education funding is allocated and advocating for more funding to match the funding other schools receive. Granting First Nations control over how the money is spent may allow them to implement more culturally appropriate systems.

A student bullying a classmate who’s sitting at her desk. Photo by RDNE Stock project from Pexels.

Racism, Exclusion, and Violence in School

A comprehensive 2023 report published by Children First Canada shows that bullying and violence among Canadian children have become serious threats to children’s well-being (Children First Canada, 2023). Students avoid visiting washrooms where they would get bullied, even if it means soiling themselves. Bullying mainly occurs at school or in online environments. The report highlights that 7 in 10 students between the ages of 15 and 17 experience bullying. Violence and hate speech remain pervasive problems in school and sports settings.

Most disabled students experience discrimination and exclusion. According to a 2022 report from the New Brunswick Office of the Child, Youth, and Seniors’ Advocate, only 1 in 5 disabled students feel like they belong, and they often feel unsafe at school (“Advocate Releases Office of the Child Report, 2022). Their participation in sports is also lower compared to their peers.

Jacqueline, a Jewish-Canadian high school student in Toronto says she experiences antisemitism as some people make references to Hitler or draw swastikas (Wong, 2023). She says that these acts are seen as funny among these people. She finds the Holocaust education at school insufficient in countering the hateful content that young people share online.

Sexual violence statistics are alarming. According to the 2022 report by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, between 2017 and 2021, “at least 548 children and youth” in kindergarten to grade 12 “experienced an act of sexual nature made by 252 school personnel”, and 38 school personnel were criminally charged for offences related to illicit digital content involving minors (Children First Canada, 2023).

Religious students from Quebec who practice their faith face a discriminatory challenge due to a directive from the Quebec Education Minister, Bernard Drainville. This directive prohibited “any practice of religious activity” in schools and other education centres (Feith, 2023). According to a legal challenge in response to the ban, Muslim students had been praying in a designated area in a school for months with no issues. The father of a Muslim student in Quebec says that his child is now forced to pray in secret, without knowing the consequences if he’s found praying at school.

Workers handling food hampers. Image via Flickr, by @bcgovphotos.

Food Insecurity

Canada is the only G7 country that doesn’t have a national school food program (Alphonso, 2023). Many Canadian students rely on food programs that are funded by provinces and charities. One in five, or roughly a million students, are receiving assistance in the form of meals and snacks. An educational assistant in an Ontario school says that some students would not be able to come to school if the school didn’t provide food hampers. The charity working with the school says the increasing demand strains their budget. Black and off-reserve Indigenous children are more likely to live in food-insecure households than their White counterparts (Children First Canada, 2023).

Post-secondary affordability

The rising cost of living is leaving university students unable to afford food and rent. More than 60% of university students reported earning less than 20,000 dollars a year, and almost 3 in 4 students (72%) reported allocating 30% or more of their income to paying rent (Cameron et.al., 2023). Centre for Addiction and Mental Health states that there’s a “critical” lack of affordable housing in Canada (“Housing and Mental Health Policy Framework”, 2022). Mateusz, a University of Calgary Student’s Union representative, says that the university is being irresponsible by admitting too many students without supplying housing (Tran, 2023). He says that rents are skyrocketing and argues there’s a housing crisis (Kaufmann, 2023). There have been students who lived in their cars in Calgary due to the housing shortage, he adds. Some students were only able to find housing in remote areas, where commuting to the campus became an issue (Derworiz, 2023). In addition, two in five university students experience food insecurity, more than half of them reported they could only afford low-quality food, and 1 in 6 students said they had days where they couldn’t eat at all.

Concluding Remarks and Recommendations

Indigenous peoples’ rights are protected by international law, most prominently under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was an important step in the right direction. It was a government initiative that was mandated to collect testimonies from the victims of the Residential School System. It helped create public awareness and encouraged further action to reconcile with the Indigenous peoples. Jack Harris, a former National Democratic Party Member of Parliament, cites Canada’s poor Indigenous rights record as one of the potential reasons why Canada lost its 2020 bid for a temporary seat at the United Nations Security Council (Harris, 2020). Providing Indigenous communities with the necessary legal and material tools to offer culture-appropriate and high-quality education should be Canada’s priority.

Another significant challenge seems to be the increasing cost of living. More post-secondary students experience food and housing insecurity, two things people shouldn’t have to worry about when pursuing higher education. From students living in their cars to students living in overcrowded houses, the high cost of living in Canada is taking a toll on students’ well-being. Better student loans and grants and more student residences provided by the universities can help.

References
  • Alphonso, C. (2023, March 15). With food costs soaring and no national program, Canadian schools struggle to feed students. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-school-food-programs-rising-costs/
  • Cameron, A. C., Grant, R., Kemle, A. (2023, August 16). Living in the Red. Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. https://assets.nationbuilder.com/casaacae/pages/3587/attachments/original/1692213033/LivingInTheRed.pdf?1692213033
  • Center for Addiction and Mental Health. (2022, February). Housing and Mental Health Policy Framework. Center for Addiction and Mental Health. https://www.camh.ca/-/media/files/pdfs—public-policy-submissions/housing-policy-framework-pdf.pdf
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  • Clemett, T. (2023, June). Report of the Provincial Auditor to the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan. Provincial Auditor of Saskatchewan. https://auditor.sk.ca/pub/publications/public_reports/2023/Volume%201/2023-report-volume-1.pdf
  • Coates, K. (2022, May 18). Indigenous education can and must be fixed: Ken Coates for Inside Policy. Macdonald-Laurier Institute. https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/indigenous-education-can-and-must-be-fixed-ken-coates-for-inside-policy/
  • Dart, C. First Nations Schools Are Chronically Underfunded. CBC Docs. https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/first-nations-schools-are-chronically-underfunded
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  • Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. (2023, January 31). Lower Education – #2 Of 8 Key Issues For Indigenous Peoples In Canada. Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/lower-education-2-of-8-key-issues
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