Back to school

The province wants to send more than 8,300 Northern Ontarians back to school.

On Friday John Milloy, the minister of training, colleges and universities, announced the province will spend $14 million to deliver free literacy and basic skills training to adults at 83 sites across the region and prepare them for integration into the knowledge-based economy.

Milloy, in Thunder Bay for the annual Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association’s annual conference, said education is the key to success and far too many people just don’t have those basic skills.

It’s time to change that, Milloy said.

“It’s a first step toward training, toward retraining,” Milloy said. “This has become particularly a pressing issue in terms of the recent economic downturn, which I know here in the North in Thunder Bay has been felt.”

During the recession the federal government kicked in money to help cover the cost of retraining programs, but as the country emerged from it, that money has dried up.
Milloy said the need, unfortunately, is still there.

“The province has stepped in and what we’re outlining is a province-wide commitment of an additional $13 million for literacy and basic skills funding across Ontario,” he said, breaking down the impact it will have in the North.

“We right now have 83 sites across Northern Ontario that offer literacy and basic skills funding. Each of those sites will receive a funding increase of at least 8.3 per cent to allow them to offer more services to literacy learners,” Milloy said.

“We’re expecting about, in total, there will be more than 8,300 literacy learners who will participate in our programs over the next year. At the same time here locally we’re going to be spending about $2 million in total for about 1,100 learners.”

That’s about $1,818 per student, spread out over five organizations in Thunder Bay.

“I think this is wonderful news for people who are pursuing literacy training. I think everyone recognizes that it’s often a very important step when you’re moving on to training or retraining,” he said.
 
The goal is to increase the percentage of Ontarians with post-secondary education to 70 per cent.