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JESSE BOILY \/ FREE PRESS FILES<\/p>\n
According to a leaked government document dated July 2024, more than 15,000 Manitoba students were chronically absent from class in 2023-24.<\/p>\n
Dueck, the executive director of Inner City Youth Alive, has spent more than a decade advocating for interventions to address absenteeism in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should force us into action on the issue,\u201d he said. \u201cNow that it\u2019s out in the open and everybody knows, I think we\u2019re in a much better position \u2014 at least we can start to generate solutions and rethink our model.\u201d<\/p>\n
Independent MLA Mark Wasyliw raised the issue in the legislature Wednesday and tabled a stack of related documents.<\/p>\n
Wasyliw, a former school trustee, was the education minister\u2019s legislative assistant before he was kicked out of the NDP caucus in September 2024.<\/p>\n
During question period, he accused the government of a \u201ccoverup\u201d based on its rejection of a freedom-of-information request he filed over the summer and a leaked dataset that contradicts it.<\/p>\n
The province denied Wasyliw\u2019s request for chronic absenteeism data on the grounds the department of education \u201cdoes not collect (it).\u201d<\/p>\n
A document he obtained from a senior government official suggests otherwise. The internal briefing note, which is dated July 26, 2024, includes a breakdown of \u201csevere chronic absenteeism\u201d across Manitoba\u2019s 37 public school divisions in 2023-24.<\/p>\n
The province defines severe chronic absenteeism as an elementary student missing 20 per cent of classes during a reporting period. At the high school level, a student is flagged if they have 20 or more unexcused absences in a core course.<\/p>\n
Eight per cent of kindergarten-to-Grade 12 students in the province met those thresholds in 2023-24, the first year the province began systematically collecting data.<\/p>\n
In northern Manitoba\u2019s Frontier School Division, that figure was 60 per cent. <\/p>\n
More than 20 per cent of the respective student populations in Kelsey (The Pas), Turtle River (McCreary) and Mystery Lake (Thompson) schools were regularly absent.<\/p>\n
Seven other school divisions said severe chronic absenteeism was a problem for at least 10 per cent of their students. They include Flin Flon, Brandon, Park West (Birtle), Portage la Prairie, Pine Creek, Swan Valley (Swan River) and Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
Indigenous students are disproportionately represented in these groups in all corners of the province.<\/p>\n
Students who self-identify as First Nations, M\u00e9tis or Inuit accounted for 64 per cent of K-8 students and 58 per cent of high schoolers with severe chronic absenteeism.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Among elementary schoolers, that figure surpassed 80 per cent in Winnipeg, Swan Valley, Seven Oaks, Portage la Prairie, Mystery Lake, Kelsey and Flin Flon.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are children that we\u2019re writing off\u2026 The government\u2019s known about this since 2024 and you would think, with these kind of numbers, there\u2019d be some urgency,\u201d said Wasyliw, who served on the Winnipeg School Division\u2019s board of trustees between 2011 and 2019.<\/p>\n Dueck and Wasyliw are both proponents of increasing school outreach teams and tackling absenteeism on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n Inner City Youth Alive runs a shuttle program, staffed by community members, to reduce barriers to getting to class. Its employees also help students design re-integration plans.<\/p>\n Retired superintendent Reg Klassen said resources need to be put into early years instruction so students don\u2019t fall behind and feel embarrassed \u2014 one of many reasons they stop showing up to school.<\/p>\n \u201cReading is huge because if kids can\u2019t read at a Grade 3, Grade 4, Grade 5 level and can\u2019t understand content, now they\u2019re behind and they know it,\u201d said Klassen, who oversaw schools in northern Manitoba until 2024.<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t Education Minister Tracy Schmidt defended the province\u2019s decision not to release data about chronic absenteeism and would not commit to publishing figures in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cData in decision-making is very, very important but we have to balance that with our concern about not stigmatizing any particular community or school division,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n The minister called the NDP\u2019s $30-million annual commitment to supporting school nutrition programs \u201cthe biggest investment towards tackling absenteeism that\u2019s ever been made in this province.\u201d<\/p>\n Her office is developing an initiative, dubbed \u201cReach Out, Reach Up,\u201d to better track schoolchildren.<\/p>\n maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Maggie Macintosh Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she first reported for the Free Press in 2017. Read more about Maggie<\/a>.<\/p>\n Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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Education reporter
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