Results for this year’s Foundational Skills Assessment (FSA) for School District 51 (SD51) Grade 4 and 7 students reveal overall marks above provincial averages in reading, writing and mathematics.
The FSA is an annual assessment tool that looks at student achievement through foundation skills of reading, writing and numeracy. According to the Ministry of Education, information gathered from the results is used to assess core skills and areas of improvement.
The overall assessment of Grade 4 students in SD51 revealed that for the writing portion, 72 per cent of students met of exceeded expectations, which is above the 70 per cent provincial standard.
The only dip in results was seen in Grade 4 writing skills at 64 per cent in the district. This is eight per cent below the 72 per cent provincial average. In numeracy, the average for the district and province were the same at 68 per cent. The participation rates for Grade 4 students was at 88 per cent. Though below its usual rate, it was still above the province’s average of 85 per cent.
The overall assessment of Grade 7 students in reading skills saw 75 per cent of students meet or exceed expectations, which is above the 64 per cent provincial average.
Grade 7 writing skills were also above provincial average at 83 per cent who met or exceeded expectations, over the provincial average of 73 per cent.
Numeracy for Grade 7 students was also above average at 78 per cent who met or exceeded expectations compared to the provincial average of 60 per cent. The participation rate for Grade 7 students was at 95 per cent, which was above the provincial average of 83 per cent.
Board chair Teresa Rezansoff questioned why the marks for Grade 4 students in the district were eight per cent lower than the provincial average during the school board meeting on Sept. 11.
“All of our other results are so far above provincial average and here we are, eight per cent below the provincial level,” she said. “The Grade 7 results are great and everything else is exemplary but it’s interesting that it’s reading strategies (for Grade 4s) that are below average.”
Superintendent of Schools Michael Strukoff noted that this is a conversation that would be discussed with the school principals.
“The FSA results came out really late this year; they came out in July,” he said. “This will be the first time the principals and I will be going over them.”
Strukoff also noted that participation rates at the Grade 4 level were down.
“So we had fewer kids at that particular level participating, which affects the numbers as well,” he said.
The percentage drop or increase is also dependent on the number of students in the grade.
Approximately 75,000 (84 per cent) of students in the province wrote the assessment in 2012.
Norm Sabourin, president of the Boundary District Teachers’ Association, believes that the FSAs should be altered to work better.
“The FSA should be changed to a random sample so that we don’t have the (Fraser Institute’s rankings) schools against each other,” he said. “Finland, who’s always ranked at the top of the educational world, they do a random sample and have a number of kids across the country who take the test, so it’s anonymous.”
Results in Finland are then taken and used to direct changes in curriculum, as opposed to results being sent to the Fraser Institute and they make a deal about ranking schools, Sabourin added.
“I’ve personally always had a huge problem with the FSAs and the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation does have an issue with it because it isn’t a random sampling,” he concluded. “Changes do need to be made.”
The FSA measures student achievement on the foundation skills of reading, writing and numeracy. It was designed and developed by educators in British Columbia and is based around the province’s curriculum.
