Somali students’ high dropout rate prompts the Toronto school board to push for more mentorships and scholarships.
By: Katie Daubs GTA
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
At meetings in community centres and masjids, the data made mothers cry: students of Somali descent have significantly higher dropout and expulsion rates than the general population in the Toronto District School Board.
And now, a task force looking at ways to better support students and their families in that community has, after months of consultation, released five pages of how best to do that — everything from mentorships to scholarships, to intervention programs for teens, their parents and teachers.
After a series of violent incidents in 2012, the board was called to action by a community concerned with student achievement.
Task force members spoke with hundreds of people in consultations across the city before releasing their draft recommendations.
It was an emotional process.
“It’s very disturbing that mothers are crying in the audience, mothers are crying in the washrooms, they’re listening to some of this info we’ve received from TDSB … and really getting an idea that is isn’t just them, it’s a larger issue, and feeling helpless in a lot of respects … I think as a group, we felt the weight of really representing the community well,” says task force member Haweiya Egeh.
The recommendations also call for the creation of a Somali heritage month, an advisory committee to provide feedback, and a heritage centre where members of the Somali-Canadian community can provide curriculum advice.
“While there are members of the community who are just so thrilled that we’ve been able to come together and put together this series of recommendations, there are also some community members who have some reservations,” says Jim Spyropoulos, the board’s executive superintendent of equity and inclusive schools.
“There was a fear brought up that this is further going to target them or this is going to marginalize them further, because it’s going to set them apart.”
During the consultation process, the task force heard stories that spoke to the data — that 25 per cent of Canadian youth of Somali descent drop out of school, 31 per cent were taking courses in applied streams, and 58 per cent of males had been suspended at least once — all higher percentages than the general student body.
“We met students saying ... ‘I was told at the school I shouldn’t be going academic, I wouldn’t do well,’ or ‘I was told my family is very large and I live at XYZ postal code, and I was told that, you know what, just finish your high school and find a job, that’s probably where you are going to end up,’ ” says task force member Ali Mohamed.
Egeh noted that education is “the ground level” in life, and students need it to succeed.
“Our basic focus was, let’s do as much on the education side to see how those other issues can be prevented,” Mohamed adds.
Spyropoulos says some of the recommendations have already been implemented: the board held a Somali-Canadian student conference this past year, deliberately hired students of Somali descent for its Focus on Youth program this summer, and has worked on teacher development.
“Really there was a sense of urgency; we couldn’t wait,” he says.
Egeh and Mohamed say the board and its director of education, Donna Quan, have been very supportive.
Spyropoulos and the task force are looking to get more feedback and hope to have final recommendations before trustees by the end of the year.
Any planning will have to take into account the board’s financial constraints, he said.
However, he added, “we haven’t been going through the process for a year to waste people’s time.”