The big news at the end of the 2011-2012 school year was the Provincial Auditor of Saskatchewan's report urging the Ministry of Education to identify and implement key strategies to improve the province's lagging Grade 12 graduation rate.
Although the ministry has yet to publish a plan in response to the auditor's recommendations, Dwayne Reeve, Good Spirit School Division's director of education, told Yorkton This Week that parents and students can expect area schools to start implementing programs this year to improve student outcomes and grad rates.
Improving student performance and graduation rates have been general goals of the provincial government since 2006 and much of the auditor's criticism was leveled at the Ministry of Education's lack of concrete direction to school divisions on how to implement programs to facilitate those goals.
Reeve says the division has already started to receive some of that direction.
"[The Ministry] identified some common assessment pieces that they're going to be using and if they don't get there this year, they'll be looking at how they develop them," he said.
Student Engagement
Reeve is particularly excited about the opportunities presented by new learning environment surveys that will gather perceptual data on student engagement from students and
staff from Grades 4 through 12. Current research indicates greater student engagement in the learning process enhances performance and leads to increased high school matriculation.
"One of the pieces that was identified in our strategic planning was the whole piece around student engagement," Reeve said. "Are we hearing the student voice? Are we making sure we meet the needs of the students? Where [the surveys have] been used extensively across Canada and North America, it's been a very valuable data tool."
Academic Assessment
Even before the auditor's bombshell report, the Ministry of Education released its Student Achievement Initiative outlining a comprehensive strategy to improve assessment.
Since 2004, students have been assessed using the Assessment for Learning program (AFL). While the ministry says the program has been useful, it has identified several shortcomings including: students and parents do not receive individual results so teachers have difficulty translating results into individual improvement; the schedule (three subjects, three times spread over a student's career starting in Grade 4) is not sufficiently frequent to support improvement and; it is difficult to assess improvement over time because the assessments were not designed for accountability purposes and are not comparable from year to year and school division to school division.
Starting this year, Saskatchewan school divisions will begin a new approach to student assessment that will include early years evaluation, Grades 1 to 3 literacy and numeracy assessments and the aforementioned learning environment surveys.
Students in prekindergarten and kindergarten will be assessed to determine their readiness for school to ensure they are able to make the successful transition to Grade 1.
Literacy and numeracy assessments will be conducted in Grades 1 to 3 to help teachers meet the individual needs of students. These assessments will also assist with consistency, allowing students to be assessed in a similar manner regardless of where they are located in Saskatchewan.
Standards
Of course assessment without accountability has been proven to be nearly useless. Reeve admits reporting to parents and students has held back progress on improving student outcomes.
"The other piece I think we'll be looking for won't be coming this year, but there will be a move to identify provincial standards," he said. "We definitely have not started as soon as other provinces, but I think what we're looking at now, based on what I've heard from the province, is that we're on the right track. It's a matter for us to move quickly, but I think we've created a culture of acceptance around assessment data where that wasn't in place probably five or six years ago."
The ministry hopes providing feedback based on standards will improve the competitive position of Saskatchewan students entering university and the work force.
Technology
Good Spirit School Division is also counting on a new development in technology to give prekindergarten and kindergarten students a better starting point for their future academic career. Over the summer, classrooms were fitted with sound field amplification systems that will carry the teachers' voices equally to all parts of their classrooms.
"Research shows that the ability for our students to hear is a huge, huge determinant in terms of the ability to comprehend and to achieve," Reeve said.
The school board was able to complete this project because the technology has become cheap, portable and easy to use. The retrofit only cost $45,000 across the entire division. If the pilot is successful with the young kids, the project may be expanded to later grades.
Student well-being
With obesity reaching epidemic levels among North American children, the school division is also turning an eye toward the physical well-being of its students.
"One of the items we've identified for this year is to begin to look at our nutrition policies across the division," Reeve explained. "Right now we don't have a standardized nutrition policy, but it is in the works as one of our tasks."
Physical activity is another component of the wellness program, but Reeve says that will not be on the agenda until next school year.
Challenges
Of course, implementing new programs does not come without external challenges. Good Spirit faces several, including an election year, expanding enrolment, and aboriginal under-achievement.
Of these, Reeve takes the election question in stride.
"We always go through change when an election happens," he said. "I don't know what that change will be, but I think one of the things we look at is there's always an opportunity for renewal."
Even if there is a wholesale overturn of the board, however, Reeve expects the focus to remain consistent.
"Our overarching goal and area we need to look at is student learning and well-being."
Enrolment
"We are projecting this to be our fourth year of increases," Reeve said. "There's always a challenge when you're planning for growth whether that be the types of students and families you're serving because we're serving families from around the country and around the world we haven't served before. There's also some challenges with respect to our physical capacity and we'll see that that's an issue we're having to deal with."
Part of the solution to the capacity problem is temporary portables. For example, the school board recently went to tender for three new portables for Canora Junior Elementary School. But with projected growth for the next 15 years, Reeve says it's only a matter of time before new construction is required.
That may come sooner rather than later. Talks with the province for a new combined prekindergarten to Grade 12 facility in Langenburg have been ongoing and ministry officials have toured the area as recently as two weeks ago.
"We're hopeful that we're very close to an announcement on a new facility there, which would be our first new facility as a school division," Reeve said.
First Nations
The aboriginal question may be a tougher nut to crack. While graduation rates have improved slightly for First Nations students, it is still an abysmal 33 per cent. Reeve suggested this is an area where the concept of student engagement is perhaps most pertinent.
"We're looking for a partnership with the Treaty 4 Student Success Program that will see us work in conjunction with them to look at how we can provide better opportunities for our aboriginal youth," he said.
"Another piece we're working on is a piece to try and engage programming around our traditional aboriginal languages. I look at that as an important piece because if we can provide language instruction to our students and also engage our families, then we know we have a much better chance achieving academic and school success."
Many more details about the 2012-2013 school year will be forthcoming today when the division reveals its five-year plan at the Gallagher Centre. Mark Tewksbury, former Olympian and Team Canada chef de mission for the London Games this past summer, is scheduled to speak about teamwork and optimism.
