Arthur Milnes
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 13/99) - Educators in Yellowknife now have a key piece of statistical information at their fingertips.

Results from last June's Grade 12 departmental exams are now public and both city school boards say they're happy with what is reported.

"On the whole, we are pleased with the results," Yellowknife Catholic Schools' assistant superintendent Don Kindt said Monday. "It gives us a bit of a ball park against the provincial standard, which is Alberta."

All of the NWT's Grade 12 students must take the exams each year and in Yellowknife they are worth 50 per cent of the student's mark for the course.

In 10 subjects, the lowest percentage of acceptable marks achieved in the separate school board was 63.2 in Biology 30. However, there were only 19 students who took the exam in this subject last summer.

Kindt says the term acceptable means the percentage of students who passed the exams.

On the high end, there were four courses -- Math 33, English 33, Social Studies 33 and Social Studies 30, French -- which 100 per cent acceptable marks were achieved. Two more courses had acceptable levels above 90 per cent.

The story is similar in public school results from last June. Social Studies 33 and Social Studies 30, French, had 100 per cent acceptable marks in the tests and the board also had four further courses with acceptable marks in the 80 plus percentile. Another, English 30, had an acceptable level of 91.7 per cent.

The lowest acceptable level was 62.5 in Math 30, French.

Results from both boards also stacked up well against Alberta and the rest of the NWT.

The lowest acceptable percentage from Alberta, however, was 85.6, in Math 33. Generally the Alberta results also showed a higher percentage -- over both the NWT and Yellowknife -- of students attaining excellent results in the exams.

Both Kindt and public school board chair, Dan Schofield, cautioned against reading the results out of context. With such a small number of students in the NWT and Yellowknife, as compared to Alberta, they said it is difficult to make overall judgements.

"When you have 2,000 students (taking the exam in one course as in Alberta boards such as Edmonton and Calgary) it is easier," Kindt said. "It is hard to make a generalization when you have 17 students (as is often the case in Yellowknife or in the communities)."

Teachers, Kindt said, can learn a great deal from the exams, regardless of the numbers.

"It's really important that teachers take time to do an item-by-item analysis (of their classes' results)," he said. "It can really improve the delivery of instruction. (It helps teachers see) how they're doing (and) what areas they could improve upon."

Like students, Yellowknife's teachers don't get to see the departmental exams until the day of the test itself.

While they are developed by Alberta's Department of Education, there is NWT input into the design of the exams. Through the GNWT's Department of Education, Culture and Employment, some NWT teachers are sent to Alberta each year to help design the exams.