Halifax – Two of the three changes registered this year in high school performance in Prince Edward Island compared to last year are moving in the wrong direction. Bluefield High School and Kensington Intermediate Senior High saw their results slip from a B to a C+ and from a C+ to a C respectively. Six of the ten schools that received final grades scored C+ or lower.

 

Only the top school registered any forward progress. Souris Regional High School maintained its number one ranking and moved from a B to a B+. That is a full grade behind the leading school in Atlantic Canada.

 

“Providing the highest quality education requires the stakeholders to set goals and strive to meet those targets,” explained co-author and AIMS acting president Charles Cirtwill. “Islanders know a lot more about their schools now than just a few short years ago and the Premier has committed to common assessments. Until those assessments are fully implemented students will continue to suffer the consequence; a lack of certainty about whether the efforts made to improve have actually had any concrete benefit.”

 

AIMS urges all stakeholders to look beyond the overall rankings and consider the performance of each school on all available measures. Individual report cards were mailed to every high school, parent-teacher association, student council and school board in the region to help them assess how their schools are doing.

 

Grades are based on a three-year rolling average. If a school does not have at least two years of data for a particular measure, it will not receive a grade for that measure. RC5 is based on data from the school years 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05.

 

AIMS also provides an on-line report card on its website (www.aims.ca) which provides parents, students teachers and anyone else interested the opportunity to do some in-depth review of a school’s results.

 

“Last year our on-line report card received over a quarter of a million hits on the first day it was posted. That amount of traffic to our website proves that people are interested in this report card and want to know how it can be used to improve our public schools,” says Cirtwill. “Ultimately we hope the information will be used to push for reform and improvements for our students.”

 

The Report Card is published annually in Progress business magazine and a complete copy can be found as a centre insert in this month’s issue. This is the fifth year the magazine has dedicated an edition to the AIMS’ Report Card.

 

Complete results for Prince Edward Island click here

 

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For more information, contact:

 

Charles Cirtwill, AIMS (acting) president

902-489-7699

 

Barbara Pike, AIMS Director of Communications

902-429-1143 ext. 227 / 902-452-1172