They're working on it.

That's what Department of Education officials, who appeared before the legislature's public accounts committee on Friday, are doing to address appallingly low high school graduation rates in the territory.

If failing students weren't enough, at the end of January, Auditor General Sheila Fraser failed the Education department for graduating just 40 per cent of first nations students and 58 per cent across the board.

Furthermore, Fraser determined, the reasons for this failure appear unknown and a plan to address them is non-existent.

So how can these poor results be improved? With more reviews, more plans and more working together, according to testimony from department brass.

"Our ongoing commitment is the initiatives that we are working on with our partners in education, whether it is ... the implementation of the education reform project or most recently, the secondary program review," deputy minister Pamela Hine said in her closing statements to the committee.

Hine, assistant deputies Christie Whitley and Brent Slobodin, Gordon deBruyn, facilities manager for the department and Yukon College president Terry Weninger faced an array of questions from MLAs who sit on the committee.

Every scheduled federal audit receives the committee's scrutiny, but bureaucratic jargon ensured little in the way of frank discussion.

For example, "disengagement" is a new term for the act of dropping out of school, while students arriving at school unprepared to learn is benign terminology for hungry bellies or overtired learners.

This morning, Patrick Rouble, the Education minister, spoke of these hurdles in schooling the territory's children.

"There are significant forces outside the Department of Education that will have an impact on student behavior and success," he said. "If they come ready to learn, we can educate them but if not, there will be challenges."

But some students are not coming at all. According to Fraser's report, rural students miss an average of 32 days of school each year.

With such attendance, by the time that student reaches Grade 6, he or she has skipped out on more than a year of elementary schooling.

When Hine was asked about determining the root causes of student absenteeism, the deputy minister replied the department is "working on that."

"If we don't ask the students why they are not coming to school or what is causing their absenteeism, then we are not going to get an actual answer to that," said Hine, adding attendance policies were left up to the individual schools.

Again, another plan is in the works.

"One of the things we are looking at to try to get more information is the new school growth planning process that we're introducing ... to what can we do to lower the absentee rate and have actual better attendance," Hine continued.

And some of this planning includes rejigging a school's schedule - which has occurred at several rural schools - to accommodate first nations students.

"It has been mentioned that the beginning of the school year is when it is really critical for first nation elders and families to have their children out on the land," assistant deputy minister Whitley noted. "(And) that is a really critical time in school."

While the department embarked on education reform aimed at incorporating more culturally-relevant curricula three years ago, the potential and actual implementation of 207 recommendations continues.

"It was very time-consuming. A lot of our partners were involved with the education reform project, and our commitment was that we didn't want to see a report that sat on the shelf," said Hine.

It is hoped that the reform, in conjunction with more accurate tracking of students' success, will improve graduation rates. When asked what level the department wants to achieve, Hine said something on par with the rest of Canada would likely be the goal.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2005/2006, the graduation rate nationwide was 75 per cent.

And the territory's below-average rate is also impacting Yukon College, which must direct 32 per cent of its resources towards bringing its students up to college level.

But the college's president said this is nothing new.

"It goes back a number of years," Weninger told the PAC. "I can remember in the 1970s, we were talking about basic training skills development and why we have so many students in that area.

"This isn't a current problem, as it were. We are moving forward in addressing these shortcomings."

Following Friday's public hearing, the committee's chair, Liberal Leader Arthur Mitchell, described the Yukon's secondary school success rate as unacceptable. But Mitchell is satisfied that department officials understand the gravity of the situation.

"We learned that the department is not satisfied with the current performance level and will try to be more rigorous and put forward a long-term plan," said Mitchell, who hopes in two years' time to see some positive results.

"Now I'm looking to see what actually gets implemented."

In all, Fraser made 13 recommendations in her report, all of which have been agreed to by the Education department.