Skip to content

Low test results in NWT schools

logo

The latest Alberta Achievement Test results are showing low grades, especially outside of Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Smith and Inuvik.

“The results aren't what you hope for them to be,” said John Stewart, director of teaching and learning for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

The Alberta Achievement Tests, in Math and English Language Arts, are given to students in Grade 6 and in Grade 9.

The 2016-17 results, compiled this spring, show the communities lagging behind the capital and the regional centres. Of total enrolment in the communities, only 27.1 and 17.7 per cent achieved acceptable results on their ELA tests in Grade 6 and 9, respectively.

In math, only 20.7 and 8 per cent of students in the communities achieved acceptable results in their tests in Grade 6 and 9, respectively.

These numbers get a bit better when you don’t include people who were absent or only wrote part of the test in the results.

Stewart said one of many factors behind these results, the department believes, is attendance. The average in the communities in 76.8 per cent, and 81.5 in the regional centres. A reasonable target, he said, would be 95 per cent.

“Eighty per cent sounds pretty good when you talk about attendance, until you scale that out,” he said. “Over grades 1 to 10, they've missed two years if they're attending 80 per cent of the time.”

He describes attendance as a symptom rather than a cause. If students aren’t in school, they might not have transportation to school; they might have family disruption issues; they might be worried about bullies; they might not have available to them courses in which they are interested.

When students are at school, they might not be arriving on a full stomach.

“We're expecting a lot if we expect them to focus on their math lesson when their stomach's grumbling,” said Stewart.

In light of these identified factors, Stewart said the GNWT has been implementing a healthy food in schools program, to give kids food if they’re hungry. The GNWT has also, over the last year, began the introduction of counselling services to schools throughout the territory, which will eventually encompass all schools.

The Northern Distance Learning program, which brings high level academic courses to small communities, is going to be scaled out to all small communities and it has already shown success.

“In Ulukhaktok ... literally for the first time, they’ve got graduates who are heading off straight to post-secondary – not to a bunch of upgrading, but straight to post-secondary,” said Stewart, of the community’s historic three high school graduates this year.

“That’s a big deal.”

He said the department is also working on bringing in cultural, health and wellness aspects into the curriculum, and it’s designing a math curriculum to fill in students’ gaps as they enter high school.

Jacqueline McKinnon, communications manager for the department, said a lot is changing in the education world.

“I'd say probably in the last 10 years that there's been a big push and there's a dawning realization that kids learn differently now,” she said.

“They like to be more involved in their learning and they can't just sit in a chair and listen and watch and take notes.”

 

FACT FILE: 2016-17 average attendance, K-12 (in per cent)

  • Communities: 76.8
  • Regional centres: 81.5
  • Yellowknife: 89
  • NWT: 82.9
Source: Department of Education, Culture and Employment