Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

DEH CHO
The latest achievement test results in the Deh Cho have the Divisional Education Council examining ways to improve student achievement in the region.

The results of the 2011 Alberta Achievement Tests and the Functional Grade Levels were released last month. The tests, which students have written for the past seven years, are based on the NWT curriculum in the areas of language arts and mathematics. Students in Grades 3, 6 and 9 write the tests.

"We do quite a bit poorer than the rest of the territory," said Terry Jaffray, the superintendent of the council.

Jaffray couldn't disclose the exact results for the Deh Cho region but said overall they are below the territory-wide scores in both math and language arts, adding the results are discouraging.

"We're not on a steady curve," she said.

The results for the region in each grade and both subject areas have remained almost the same every year, with some slight variation either up or down, said Jaffray.

The 2011 results show that students achieving an acceptable level across the territory as a percentage of total enrollment in Grade 3 language arts is 26.4 per cent in the communities, 68.6 per cent in the regional centres – such as Fort Simpson – and 67.9 per cent in Yellowknife. In math, at the same grade level, the percentages are 24.7, 62.8 and 64.3. The results in Grade 6 and 9 in both subjects vary but students in communities always achieve in the lowest percentile.

Jaffray said the fact students in the Deh Cho aren't showing steady improvement in the test results is related to a number of factors, attendance being one of them.

Territory wide the average attendance was 84.3 per cent for the 2010/11 school year, the equivalent of a student missing approximately one and a half days of instruction every two weeks. In the Deh Cho, the average attendance is closer to approximately 85 per cent but varies following a pattern related to the grade a student is in, Jaffray said.

Between kindergarten to Grade 2 the average attendance in the region is less than 80 per cent and rises to an 86 per cent average in Grades 3 to 7. The average drops again between Grades 8 and 10 to about 80 before rising to approximately 85 per cent in Grades 11 and 12.

Even if a student only misses school a quarter of the time in the younger grades, that's a lot of information they aren't learning, said Jaffray.

Last year there was a concerted campaign to improve attendance. Special activities, rewards and recognition, however, proved to make little difference in attendance, she said. If there was a reward one month for good attendance, students would work to achieve it but slip back into their previous habits as soon as the month was over.

Other factors may also be responsible for the test results, including students not being at the necessary level when they enter school and students not having their learning needs fully met in school, said Jaffray.

As a result of the tests, the council has concluded more attention needs to be devoted to reading and writing, she said. This year the council received funding from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to hire a literacy consultant.

The consultant is in the process of writing a three-year literacy plan for the region.

The education council is also providing more literacy resources to the schools, Jaffray said.

A focus on reading is also expected to help math results because reading is an important component of understanding many of the questions, she said.

The council has also implemented a once-yearly region-wide math assessment that gives students the chance to practise for the Alberta Achievement Tests and for teachers to identify areas in need of improvement before the tests, said Jaffray.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.