Sometimes school itself is not enough to keep kids in school, and despite their best efforts or intentions, parents can’t always prevent their children from dropping out. That’s when the famous line that it “takes a village” to raise a child rings true and organizations like Pathways to Education can make a big difference.
The Verdun neighbourhood of Montreal has their eyes on the success of community involvement – through Pathways to Education – in one of Toronto’s poorest neighbourhoods. Yes, in Regent Park, where the dropout rate plummeted from 56% in 2001 to 10% today.
Pathways to Education will represent the first dropout prevention program instituted in Quebec and isn’t simply a place for students to do homework after school. One big difference? Students will be eligible for a $500 bursary for post-secondary education for each year of the program they complete (max of $2500). The bottom line, though, is that the tired old approach of keeping kids in school just doesn’t make a difference.
As reported in the article, “the dropout rate hasn’t gone down one percent,” according to Laurier Fortin, a Université de Sherbrooke researcher who has studied the dropout problem for more than 30 years and estimates that over the past 10 years more than $250 million has been spent on programs to keep Quebec kids in school.
Not only does each child benefit from education, but the whole of society is better when everybody is getting a good education. So it makes sense that the community is involved in make sure students stay in school, and programs like the ones in Toronto or getting established in Montreal go a long way to making sure everybody feels like they have a stake in each child staying in school.
[...] I wrote about a program starting up in Montreal that utilizes the community to keep kids in school. That program, Pathways [...]