CANADIAN POST-SECONDARY ACCESS PARTNERSHIP – 2009 INAUGURAL CONFERENCE

Fortune may favour the prepared mind, but it also favours the prepared place.¹

Over two-thirds of all jobs now require a post-secondary education. Yet many young people are not completing high school and post-secondary achievement too often remains linked to birth and circumstance. Thirty-eight percent of Canada’s First Nations peoples (50 percent of those living on-reserve) are failing to complete high school. Post-secondary attainment rates continue to fracture on socio-economic lines, with a spread of 28 percentage points in the participation rates of individuals from Canada’s highest and lowest income quartiles.

While an overwhelming majority of all youth aspire to post-secondary studies, for those whose parents did not continue their own studies, a post-secondary education often seem beyond reach. Youth - and adults seeking a second chance - find navigating their way through program selection, application processes and student financial assistance overwhelming. Over one in three Canadian students don’t pursue their post-secondary studies despite secondary school completion. If they do go on, many drop out due to poor program fit, career uncertainty or simply because they feel they don’t belong. These statistics are both cause for social concern and a lost opportunity.

This achievement gap must not be allowed to continue. In the global village, prepared minds = prepared places. Education equity is just as important for economic competitiveness as it is for social justice. To maximize growth, it is not enough to produce a high-achieving elite. A nation’s economic success also depends on closing the achievement gap to ensure that all students attain a solid foundation of knowledge and skills. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that each additional year of schooling among the adult population raises a country’s economic output by between 3 percent and 6 percent.

Global recession-induced labour surpluses will do little to alter western labour market outlooks characterized by increasing skills gaps. To maintain national prosperity, we must work rapidly on two fronts: attracting and retaining ever greater numbers of highly skilled migrants, yes, while placing greater priority on closing achievement gaps at home. We cannot stand still, for our global neighbours are fast eroding our historical advantage in education performance while competing head-to-head with other “immigrant-hungry” nations for workers and students.
How best to address these achievement gaps? The efforts to date of schools and institutions acting alone have been necessary but not sufficient. A more concerted action is required, one that mobilizes a broader cross-section of society, deploys the best and most innovative practices and brings them to scale, and builds from a strong sense of the needs and barriers of youth and adults now underrepresented in our post-secondary institutions.

The Canadian Post-Secondary Access Partnership is leading the way. We are working to build connections among stay-in-school programs, post-secondary access programs, corporate diversity programs, community-based outreach, adult education, newcomer and employment programs. We are chipping away at the silos in our economy and society, to forge a broad partnership both nationally and in communities across the country.

Community organizations, acting in partnership with others through the Canadian Post-Secondary Access Partnership, can help bridge the gap between individual and institutional, school and campus, campus and workforce. They can provide the “outreach” capacity that industry, post-secondary institutions and government lack, and work hand-in-hand with schools and guidance counsellors stretched too thin. They can reach into neighbourhoods, create opportunities and venues for peer-to-peer and corporate coaching and mentoring and other services to improve post-secondary pathways and ease transitions. They can provide a window on post-secondary campuses, internships and work placements, scholarships and government programs to finance post-secondary studies. They can help students to aspire to, plan for and succeed at the post-secondary level and, help prepare their place in society.

One of the most ethnically and culturally diverse nations in the world, Canada should have a unique selling proposition on the world stage if it can close achievement gaps at home. In the global village, a diverse base of human capital is a major edge. In an ever more closely connected world, the success of diverse cultural and ethnic communities at home is a beacon for others. The success of our access and diversity strategies can be our marketing platform on the world stage, attracting foreign students and workers at the same time that we build our talent pool and social capital within Canada.

This conference is about prepared minds and prepared places. We must all prepare for a global economy and society in which human capital is the key determinant of our destinies as individuals and citizens.

• Join us October 25 - 27 for our Inaugural Conference
• Find out how you can help your community take up the Community Access Challenge (see Charrettes)
• Join a Practice Network prior to the Conference
• Join a Charrette team on-site at the Conference

So Everyone Can Go

---

¹ Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education, December 2008

² Eric Hanushek, Stanford University, referenced in Benchmarking for Success

³ Andreas Schleicher, OECD, 2008