Prairie South School Division is highlighting how its students’ readin’, ’riting, ’rithmetic scores have nearly rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, with scores increasing from four per cent to 10 per cent.
Division administration presented the 2021-22 learning accountability report during the recent board meeting. The report contained information about students’ reading, writing and math scores.
Reading
Last year, 68.8 per cent of Grade 1 students were at or above grade level in reading, an increase compared to 67.9 per cent in 2020-21, explained Amanda Olson, superintendent of learning. However, those were not the same cohorts of children since last year’s Grade 1s were in kindergarten in 2020-21, where they were learning early literacy skills.
“So we’ll be interested to see their growth over the next couple of years as we continue to collect reading data in grades 2 and 3,” she said. “Although we are not talking about the same cohort of children, it is great to see that we made some growth from 2020-21 to 2021-22 school year.”
Last year, 72.2 per cent of Grade 2 students were at or above grade level, an increase of 4.3 per cent from their Grade 1 year in 2020-21, the data showed.
Last year, 73.8 per cent of Grade 3 students were at or above grade level, an increase of 3.9 per cent from their Grade 2 year in 2020-21 and a slight increase of 0.7 per cent from their Grade 1 year in 2019-20, the data showed.
“This cohort of students is also the cohort of students that would have been in Grade 1 during the 2020 (pandemic-related) shut down,” said Olson. “And they missed some key literacy instruction face-to-face during that time when we were shut down from March to June.”
Writing
Prairie South collects writing data in grades 4, 7 and 9. The assessment occurs throughout the year and is not a one-time event.
Last year, 70.4 per cent of Grade 7 students were writing at or above grade level. In comparison, the data shows that when they were in Grade 4 in 2018-19, their writing level was 60.1 per cent. This represents an increase of 10.3 per cent.
Last year, 63.8 per cent of Grade 9 students were writing at or above grade level. However, no data was available from their Grade 7 year in 2019-20 because the pandemic shut down schools.
Last year was the first time the division collected writing scores for Grade 4 students, with 60.3 per cent at or above grade level.
Math
The division began collecting math scores in 2018-19 as part of a province-wide initiative to assess students in grades 2, 5 and 8. This assessment occurs throughout the year, with teachers making a final determination on scores in June.
Last year, 69.6 per cent of students in Grade 5 were at or above grade level. In comparison, the data showed that when those students were in Grade 2 in 2018-19, their score was 76.6 per cent, a decrease of seven per cent.
Last year, 73.1 per cent of students in Grade 8 were at or above grade level. When they were in Grade 5 in 2018-19, their score was 63.5 per cent, an increase of 9.6 per cent.
Last year, 76 per cent of Grade 2 students were at or above grade level. In 2020-21, that number was 74.3 per cent.
There is a trend with scores from Grade 2 to Grade 5, with the former in the mid-70-per-cent range and the latter in the mid-60-per-cent range, said Olson. The division believes this is due to the increased number of skills needed from grade to grade and the complexity of those skills being taught.
“Because once you get from Grade 5 to Grade 8, we actually see a significant amount of growth (of 9.6 per cent),” she added. “… you kind of have the baseline skills; you have those skills you need and now you’re applying them. So, we’re seeing some nice growth from Grade 5 to Grade 8.”
