Work being done to remedy low secondary completion rates says SD8 superintendent
By Nelson Daily Editor
By Timothy Schafer, The Nelson Daily
Although admittedly a “disturbing” statistic, school district No. 8 has already taken action on remedying an alarming 74 per cent secondary school completion rate, says the Kootenay Lake superintendent.
Jeff Jones said the school district is very concerned that such a low number of students in the district — below the provincial average of 79.7 per cent — are obtaining their Dogwood diploma, B.C.’s secondary school graduation certificate.
“If I got on an airplane and I was guaranteed that 74 per cent would survive the flight, I would not want to get on that airplane,” he said.
“Yes, we are very concerned that students aren’t completing high school, but we are very eager to engage with our community (on this).”
Jones said there are many contributing factors as to a student’s ability or decision to complete high school, but the school district is trying to become more responsive to them: learning to restructure the organization so that learning is more accessible, and that access to learning is more accessible to students,
“We are working towards a higher level of engagement with students, and part of that is understanding the varying contexts so we know that a student’s decision to complete high school or not complete high school is not solely laden on the school that they attend, or the school district,” he said.
Jones sat down with the district’s director of learner several weeks ago to see the list of young people who did not complete high school last year, and then the director compiled stories about each one of those people.
“We are a small enough district that we can see who these kids are and what their stories are and find out, as a school district, what we can do to support these kids with those kinds of stories,” he said.
Those stories will help with a restructuring of the school system, said Jones, one that will accommodate different learning rates and requirements of the individual student.
It is support that is lacking sometimes, particularly with students in the distance education program, for which SD8 is the focus of the region.
Some students come for part of the year, said Jones, but those young people don’t have the mechanisms of support when they need them because the resources just aren’t there for them — and they end up not finishing their program.
“We are also recognizing that it is taking our youth longer to complete high school overall, so sometimes those statistics aren’t reflective of that,” said Jones.
Some students leave, go to work and then come back and finish high school, he said.
By the numbers
School District No. 8 had a secondary school completion rate amongst boys, girls, aboriginal and English as a second language (ESL) students of 74 per cent, 5.7 per cent less than the provincial average of 79.7 per cent, according to figures released last week by the Ministry of Education.
Completion rates are determined by tracking the number of students entering Grade 8 who graduate within six years with a Dogwood diploma, B.C.’s secondary school graduation certificate.
In all, 72.5 per cent of girls and 75.7 per cent of boys in the school district obtained a Dogwood diploma, while 58.7 per cent of aboriginal youth and 29 per cent of ESL students did. The number of completions left the school district at 33rd out of 60 provincial school districts.
Nearby, Kootenay-Columbia School District No. 20 had a completion rate of 83.9 per cent, with 87.3 per cent of girls, 80.6 per cent of boys and 65.2 per cent of aboriginal students obtaining a Dogwood diploma.
To the north, Arrow Lakes sat at 88.1 per cent, Revelstoke at 97.9 per cent (the highest in the province) and Southeast Kootenay to the east was 80.8 per cent.
Provincial highlights:
• Just over half of aboriginal students (50.4 per cent) completed school last year – that’s 1.6 per cent more than in 2008-09.
• Twenty-three school districts have aboriginal completion rates of 60 per cent or more — including SD8 — up eight districts from last year.
• Revelstoke had a completion rate of 97.9 per cent last year – 100 per cent of the girls completed.
• Independent school completion rates remain high at 88 per cent for 2009-10, down from 89.7 per cent in 2008-09.
This year’s completion rates are available online at: www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reports/pdfs/graduation/prov.pdf
Note:
Completion rates should not be confused with graduation rates.
Graduation rates are determined by tracking the number of students enrolled in Grade 12 who graduate at the end of the school year.
Provincial completion rates include students in both public and independent schools, but only data from public schools is used to calculate school district completion rates.
Districts with small numbers of specific student groups, like Aboriginal or ESL students, may experience dramatic shifts in completion rates for those groups.
