This is a response to the message to parents in an advertisement from the North Okanagan-Shuswap Teachers Association entitled, “What parents need to know.”
Here are some things the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) will do for you an your children:
• It will provide a picture of how he/she is doing relative to other students in the same grade within B.C.
• It will provide an opportunity to see if the teachers are actually doing what they are paid to do.
• It will provide some measure of how the student may rank compared to students in other parts of the world. Canadian students will increasingly be competing for jobs with peers from around the world.
• It will provide a picture of how well this school jurisdiction is doing compared to others in B.C.
• It may provide a picture of how well a particular school is doing within the district.
These are all useful things for parents to know.
I should know because I am a parent, may I add with three children who did well in school and have very successful careers, and I am a retired teacher, albeit from Alberta, a place where teachers do more than strike or talk strike 50 per cent of the time.
Al Schalm
