BC’s only Aboriginal Focus School getting good marks from parents

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – BC’s only Aboriginal Focus School is getting good marks from parents.

A new study has been released, looking into the four-year-old public school’s accomplishments and areas that need improvement.

The school is located at Macdonald elementary, at Hastings and Victoria. It’s offered as a choice school by the Vancouver School Board.

Scott Neufeld is a SFU Masters student in social psychology who is one of three people who worked on the study.

He says the school has succeeded in fostering pride among its aboriginal students. But, perhaps ironically, parents told the researchers they wanted even more aboriginal cultural content in the classroom.

Perhaps more importantly, the researchers talked with parents whose kids don’t attend the school, to get a sense of how the outside community perceives the school. Many parents weren’t aware of the school, while others were under the impression is was designed solely for aboriginals.

The school has 50 students, one-fifth of whom are non-aboriginals.

“Contact between members of different groups in a supportive environment like this school helps promote tolerance and respect between the groups. It promotes better relationships between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students,” says Neufeld, explaining the benefits for non-aboriginal students.

But he does believe the school board needs to do more to help boost enrolment.

“To develop a more effective way of promoting the program. To develop a more effective way of integrating the kind of aboriginal content parents were hoping for.”

With the future of some under-capacity schools in Vancouver in question, the Aboriginal Focus School won’t be closing anytime soon. Last fall, parents won a five-year guarantee from the school board that it won’t face closure.