Alternative Secondary School Programmes

Goals & Objectives

The ASSP within Native Friendship Centres was originally established in 1990 to address the endemically high drop out rates for Aboriginal high school students in Ontario. The ASSP's aim is to help students to deal with the issues affecting their academic achievement by providing access to a number of culturally appropriate supports including culturally relevant curriculum, traditional healing and a wide spectrum of programmes and services offered through the Friendship Centres.

Programme Summary

Friendship Centres deliver the ASSPs in partnership with their local district school boards. Each programme is considered a satellite campus to an existing host secondary school. Depending upon the individual programme design, students work individually on Independent Learning Centre credits or together in a teacher led group. The number of students in each programme varies from 20 to 120 depending on available space and programme design..

Focus on Success

For the 2008/2009 school year, students at the ASSP sites completed a total of 1015 credits. This is an increase of 54% from last year. This year we are proud to announce that 43 students graduated with their Ontario Secondary School Diploma marking a 26% increase from the previous year. This is a great accomplishment in the face of such high drop out numbers in the mainstream school system.

In continuing its efforts to support the ASSP's in delivering quality and culturally meaningful education opportunities for their students, the OFIFC partnered with the Ontario Arts Council to develop an Arts Education Project that was delivered in each of the eight programme sites. The goal of the Youth Media Art Project (YMAQ) was to demon strate to students how contemporary art forms can be used to investigate, explore, and express their cultural identity while encouraging connection and interaction between students from each of the ASSP sites. The full colour catalogue has been provided to each of the student artists. The interactive website http://www.ymaq.ca has been launched.

Development

In August 2008, the OFIFC contracted a consultant to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the ASSP's. Findings from the evaluation provided positive indication that the ASSP's play a crucial role in making a difference in the academic success of current and former students. Specifically, the evaluation found that the ASSP's were responsible for increasing the:

Average grade from 60% to 70%;
# of students who had over half the credits needed to graduate from 35% to 53%;
# of students who reported following through on guidance and career education advice from 18% to 46%; and,
# of students who made workplace, college, co-op and/or LDCC course selections form 15% to 35%.

The ASSP's were also responsible for decreases in the number of students who:

Reported issues with comprehension/literacy from 35% to 16%; and,
Dropping out of school from 64% to 7%.

In late August 2009, the OFIFC was notified by the Aboriginal Education Office that ASSP expansion was to continue with the development of three new alternative school programme sites in the province, bringing the number up to a total of twelve school sites. The OFIFC has received $150,000.00 from the Aboriginal Education Office at the Ministry of Education to assist in capacity development for the three selected sites in preparation for their programme start in September 2010.