Moncton, NB – Parents in Newfoundland and Labrador know more about how their children are doing in school than anyone else in the region. And it is paying off in improved results for students and schools.

The province provides students, parents, teachers and the general public with the widest set of measures in the region. Additionally, data for every achievement and engagement indicator measured in the AIMS 6th Annual Report Canada on Atlantic Canadian Schools is available online to everyone through the Department of Education’s K-12 Profile System. While the province already had the greatest depth of information available of any of the four Atlantic Provinces, this year sees the addition of one more measure – participation in university preparatory courses.

Research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which administers the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), shows that schools posting results publicly tend to perform better, even after accounting for all other school and socio-economic factors.

“Newfoundland and Labrador students are the proof,” says Charles Cirtwill, AIMS Executive Vice President. “After the first AIMS high school report card, the province started publicly posting its school by school assessment results. As a result, Newfoundland and Labrador students have gone from last place in the country in international assessments to fifth, well ahead of students in the rest of Atlantic Canada.”

Admittedly, the wide number of measures is however, accompanied by gaps in available data for many of the province’s smaller schools. In the AIMS report card, some measures require a minimum number of students for fair comparison. In other cases, a minimum number is required to avoid identifying results for individual students. This year only 52 schools have final overall grades of the 142 schools in the province with high school enrollment. As always, AIMS will release all of the sub-grades available for every school, check out our website at www.AIMS.ca.

Gonzaga High School in St. John’s is the top ranked school in Newfoundland and Labrador, maintaining its ‘B+’ grade. J.M. Olds Collegiate in Twillingate improved from a ‘B’ to a ‘B+’ and was the second place school in the province. Bay d’Espoir Academy earned a ‘B+’ and third place after not receiving a final grade last year, because of insufficient post secondary achievement data.

Two schools showed improvement of more than one grade level, with Appalachia High School improving from a ‘C-’ to a ‘C+’ and Holy Heart High School in St. John’s rising from a ‘C+’ to a ‘B’. Two schools also saw their overall grade fall by more than one grade level. Last year’s top school, Dorset Collegiate, saw its grade fall from an ‘A-’ to a ‘B’ and Templeton Academy in Meadows went from a ‘B+’ to a ‘B-’.

AIMS encourages everyone to look beyond the overall rankings to explore the performance of each school across all of the categories. The On-Line report card on the AIMS website (www.AIMS.ca) provides the public with all the available measures for 312 high schools in Atlantic Canada. The on-line report card allows users to access individual school data, compare schools, and also compare results based on specific criteria.

Again this year, AIMS mailed individual report cards to every high school, parent-teacher association, student council and school board in the region so they could have the information before it became public. Similar packages were sent to municipalities and Chambers of Commerce throughout the region. The individual school report cards remind recipients that AIMS is always happy to visit to discuss the report card and how it can be used as a tool for reform.

The AIMS high school 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 sixth year the magazine has dedicated an edition to the AIMS Report Card.

Follow the links below for more details:

-30-

For further information, contact:

Charles Cirtwill, AIMS executive Vice President
902-489-7699

Bobby O’Keefe, AIMS Senior Policy Analyst
902-222-0944

Barbara Pike, AIMS Director of Communications
902-452-1172