NWT students to receive less class time
Pilot project to bring instruction hours in line with Canadian average starts this week
Kirsten Fenn
Northern News Services
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A pilot project that will reduce teaching time in some NWT schools by up to 100 hours a year is getting underway this week.
Yellowknife Education District No. 1 superintendent Metro Huculak speaks at the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association office on Monday during a media conference on teacher instructional time. - Kirsten Fenn/NNSL photo |
The Department of Education, Culture and Employment made the announcement on Monday with the help of superintendents and the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association (NWTTA).
"Our shared vision is to strengthen teacher practice to produce better student outcomes," NWTTA president Fraser Oliver said.
Schools across the territory and Yellowknife Education District No. 1 now have the option to reduce classroom instruction time by a maximum 100 hours a year over a three-year period.
"These redirected hours are not days off," said Shannon Barnett-Aikman, director of education for the Tlicho Community Services Agency. "These hours are to be used in the school for what we are calling embedded or structured time."
The pilot program will give teachers more time to work on lesson plans, gain professional development and complete other school activities while students are not in the classroom.
For students, that could translate to shortened school hours, half days or fewer full school days during the year.
Oliver said while people believe teachers have a lot of time off, NWT teachers work an average of 52 hours a week to find time for all the responsibilities they have on top of teaching in the classroom.
"It's not sustainable," he said, adding sick days and long-term disability have been increasing.
Allocating more time for teachers to do their work will improve their well-being, which will lead to better relationships with students and better teaching instruction in the classroom, according to Oliver.
"We're trying to make all our decisions based on data and evidence, and we have a lot of compelling data in the Northwest Territories that drives us to make a change," said Education, Culture and Employment assistant deputy minister Rita Mueller.
Mueller and the panel of speakers presented research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that shows the amount of time spent in the classroom is less important than the teaching methods used, the curriculum and how that classroom time is spent.
Although the NWT has some of the highest instructional hours in Canada - 1,045 for upper secondary students compared to the national average of 940 hours - it had the second lowest high school graduation rate in the country in 2010-11, at 55 per cent.
While the average NWT high school graduation rate was 67 per cent in 2015, it remains well below the Canadian average of 78 per cent, Mueller said, and is even lower in small communities.
"We know we have a lot of work still to do," Mueller said.
The three-year pilot program will allow schools to reduce their minimum instructional hours to 945 per year, she said, bringing the NWT closer in line to the rest of Canada.
The hope is that this will also increase student attendance, which has decreased among students in Grades 6 to 10 over the last decade, Mueller said.
"That'll probably be one of the ways that we evaluate these pilots," said Oliver. "If we're starting to see student attendance go up, student achievement go up, teacher wellness improvement ... that would be something that would be a positive thing."
Yellowknife Catholic Schools could also take part in the pilot project, depending on the results of the school board's ongoing collective bargaining with the teachers' association.
The pilot project is part of the association's four-year collective agreement with the GNWT, which was ratified in September.
