Cara Loverock
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, January 16, 2008

YELLOWKNIFE - NWT students in French immersion programs scored higher in recent territory-wide testing than those in the English-only curriculum.

The GNWT Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) recently released the results of the 2007 Alberta Achievement Tests.

The tests were instituted three years ago and are written by Grade 3, 6 and 9 students across the territory. Developed by the Department of Education in Alberta, the tests are based on the curriculum in Alberta schools, which is the same as in the NWT.

Don Morrison, director of education opportunity and development with ECE, said although the territory and Alberta share the same curriculum, the circumstances for students are different, something that is not factored into the testing.

"That's one of the downsides (of these tests) and we're aware of that," said Morrison.

When comparing scores in math for Grade 9 students, 83.3 per cent of those in French immersion were at an acceptable standard, whereas only 48 per cent of English-only students were at the same standard.

Only Yellowknife and Inuvik schools have French immersion programs. Morrison said some of the reason French immersion students appear to do better includes the fact that most of these students reside in urban areas.

"In the smaller communities English might not even be the language spoken at home," said Morrison.

"Attendance is something we're looking at as well as a possible factor."

ECE also released results of Functional Grade Level (FGL) testing, also in its third year of being reported on by NWT schools.

"This provides hard data as opposed to just graduation rates," said Morrison. "(FGLs) are based on a number of assessments that teachers do throughout the year."

The FGLs are used to show if a student is working at the curriculum level for the grade they are currently in. The results show that almost 79 per cent of Grade 1 students in English Language Arts are working at a Grade 1 level, but by Grade 4 the number of students functioning at their expected grade level drops to 58 per cent. With math, 86 per cent of students in Grade 1 are at the level they should be, but by Grade 9 at that number drops to 57 per cent.

Morrison said the department will continue to study the statistics to see if improvements are being made.

"These numbers will tell us if we are making strides over time," he said.