Halton students are doing better than the provincial average in grade 9 math - but the marks at the applied level are nothing to brag about.

News 100 redBy Pepper Parr

September 21, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The data gathered province wide by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) shows Halton District School Board students outperforming the province in Grade 9 Academic and Applied Mathematics, and on the Grade 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT).

Secondary students must write the OSSLT as a requirement of graduation.

For Grade 9 Math, there are different assessments for students in the academic and applied courses. On the Grade 9 Academic Math assessment, 92% of students achieved the provincial standard, which is a 2% increase from the previous year’s result. The provincial average remained the same at 83% of students achieving the provincial standard.

Grade 9 math

Halton students are doing well in the academic mathematics program. There was some slippage in the applied mathematics program. No comment from the Board on where the slippage is taking place or why the slippage is taking place.  While Halton is above the provincial average – grades just above 50% are barely above a pass.

In total, there were 3,484 students enrolled in the Academic Math course in 2016-2017.

For the 619 students in the Applied Math course, 52% attained the provincial standard in 2016-2017, a three percentage point decrease from the previous year. Since last year, the provincial average decreased by one percentage point from 45% to 44%.

Secondary literacyThe OSSLT results for 2016-2017 were also released today. The Halton District School Board’s success rate for students writing the test for the first time decreased by one percentage point to 87%, while the provincial average remained the same as last year at 81%. The overall results for the OSSLT demonstrate that students in Halton continue to have strong literacy skills.

Julie Hunt Gibbons, Superintendent of Education commented that: “We continued to have strong results on the Grade 9 Academic Math and Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test.”  She added “We will continue to implement our Math strategy with a specific focus for improvement on Grade 9 Applied Math achievement.”

That number of 619 students seems kind of low for a Board of Education that has 18,500 + secondary students. Are enough of our students getting the math proficiency they need?

Wonder too what the gender split is for those 619 students.

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