While Grade 6 and 9 students in Pembina Hills Public Schools are on par with the province in most subjects, Grade 6 Math and Social Studies results from the Provincial Achievement Tests were significantly below.
Assistant Supt. of Education Services Mark Thiesen presented the Provincial Achievement Test (PAT) results for the 2016-2017 school year to the Pembina Hills trustees during their Oct. 25 meeting.
Thiesen said they value the credibility of these tests, as a lot of energy and effort was put into forming them and revising them year to year. “They’re a very good resource for teachers and administration,” he said.
However, Thiesen noted that any test comes with a degree of error in measurement. He urged the trustees to look at the PAT results as a “snapshot in time” of a group of students who were writing the tests.
“There are things in the background of all of these situations that are difficult to … identify, quantify and describe, because there’s just so many different things going on in a given day,” he said.
Students write PATs in four subjects: English Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies. Generally speaking, if Pembina Hills are within four per cent of the provincial average, they are said to be on par with the province.
It should be noted that the PAT results are reported in two different ways: cohort and writer results.
Cohort results represent the test results of every student in a grade, including students who don’t write the test due to absence or exemption. Those students are scored as zero.
Pembina Hills’ cohort results are greatly impacted by Vista Virtual School as their rate of participation is generally low for a variety of factors.
“For all the different reasons that Vista Virtual serves kids, that’s the reason why (they) tend not to write the tests,” said Thiesen.
Writer results only measure the scores of students who participate. Because the low participation of Vista Virtual students bring down the cohort results, Thiesen focused mainly on the writer results.
In terms of actual writers, Pembina Hills had a participation rate that were on par, or exceeded the province in all four subjects at the Grade 6 and 9 levels. Notably, Grade 6 students had a 95.5 per cent participation rate in Grade 6 English Language Arts.
“When we have a strong participation rate, it reflects the culture of our community schools, which is an indication of a significant amount of inclusion,” said Thiesen.
As for the writer results, Grade 6 students scored slightly below in English Language Arts; the average in Pembina Hills was 3.6 per cent lower than the provincial average.
However, the Grade 6 students were lower than the province average in Math by 8.6 per cent, Science by 4.1 per cent and Social Studies by 6.2 per cent.
Grade 9 students were virtually on par with the province in all four subjects, though Math was the lowest with a 3.8 per cent dip.
Thiesen also presented the results for Knowledge and Employability (K&E) courses, which are for students in Grade 8 to 12 who demonstrate achievement levels below their age-appropriate grade in reading, writing or mathematics.
Those students may take the regular curriculum in other subjects but follow the K&E curriculum in the one subject they’re behind on.
While K&E classes are only offered at R.F. Staples, Barrhead Composite High School and Swan Hills, students in other junior high schools may take the courses.
“If we have the numbers to run a standalone class, we tend to do that,” noted Supt. David Garbutt.
In K&E Courses, Grade 9 students exceeded the province in all four subjects. They scored 13.8 per cent higher in English, 5.7 per cent higher in Math, 13.3 per cent higher in Science and a whopping 22.5 per cent higher in Social Studies.
Thiesen also presented the Grade 12 Diploma Exam results from the 2016-2017 year, which showed they’re on par, or exceeding the province in all subjects except Social Studies 30-1, Chemistry and Physics.
Thiesen noted that diploma exam results utilize a slightly different set of terms, including exam marks, school marks and course marks.
The exam mark is strictly the result of the tests, which account for 30 per cent of a student’s mark.
The final course marks “tell us at the end of the day how kids did in these key courses,” he said.
In English Language 30-1 and 30-2, Pembina Hills students exceeded the province by five and 5.1 per cent respectively. This was consistent with their marks over the last three years.
Students dipped below the province in Social Studies 30-1 by 9.9 per cent, but finished above the province in Social Studies 30-2 by 5.7 per cent.
Math 30-1 students finished seven per cent above the province, which represented an improvement over last year. While Math 30-2 results were on par, the marks represented a decline from the past three years.
The average exam marks of PHPS students were consistent with the province in Biology 30, but were 8.4 per cent below the province in Chemistry 30 and 7.1 per cent below in Physics 30.
However, Thiesen noted that the Physics exam marks were actually the third year where PHPS students had improved.
Finally, the average exam marks of PHPS students were 2.6 per cent higher than the provincial average, but had declined from the previous year.
