Teacher job action has meant an increased workload for school principals and vice-principals, motivating the leader of the provincial administrators’ organization to ask that elementary schools skip provincially mandated testing this year.
Jameel Aziz, president of the B.C. Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association, said he talked with high-level Education Ministry staff about skipping the Foundation Skills Assessment exams, which are administered to Grades 4 and 7 students, during job action because administrators will have to give the tests to students and then mark parts of them.
The timeline for administering the FSAs was extended – schools have between Jan. 16 and March 16, with marking done by April 6.
Aziz said whether the extended timeline actually helps remains to be seen.
“Every additional piece means there’s something that’s not getting done within the school structure,” he said. “They already have a full-time job. What I’m hearing is a real concern around the province of the ability to lead schools.”
Tim Davie, president of the Nanaimo School Administrators’ Association, said in past years, teachers and principals have shared duties such as administering and marking standardized tests and playground supervision, so with teachers not doing these things this year, workloads have increased.
“I can’t say if people are working harder than they have been,” he said. “I think it depends school to school what’s happening. It’s a matter of prioritizing. Principals and vice-principals are doing everything they can to maintain an order of regularity.”
Certain district-level leadership initiatives that principals would spend some of their time on, which also require teacher collaboration, are on hold, he added.
Davie said the extra time allotted for the FSAs will help principals coordinate the delivery of the exams in as normal a way possible to ensure the data remains authentic – there was a concern amongst administrators that changing the environment or routine when administering the exams may impact results.
“It’s allowing administrators to work within their teaching time, work around their responsibilities as principals and vice-principals,” he said. “It means things aren’t as crunched.”
