Communications NB

Education

Provincial evaluation programs to focus on key subject areas (04/04/16)

NB 446

April 16, 2004

FREDERICTON (CNB) -- Education Minister Madeleine Dubé today announced a revamping of the provincial evaluation program, designed to gauge how individual students and the school system as a whole are succeeding in meeting higher achievement goals set out in the Quality Learning Agenda.

"Our evaluation program will focus on the key subject areas of literacy, second language, mathematics and science, and will include two new assessments to be introduced in the coming school year," Dubé said. "These are a kindergarten readiness test and a Grade 2 literacy assessment for all students."

Dubé said the focus on the key subject areas of literacy, second language, math and science aligns the province's evaluation programs with achievement goals set out in the Quality Learning Agenda as well as the subject areas being tested nationally and internationally.

"Our provincial exams will now more closely parallel the subject areas in which students are being evaluated across Canada and throughout the world," she said. "This will allow us to better measure and report publicly how our students are achieving in the key areas of math, science and literacy, which are the three areas identified in the Quality Learning Agenda as those we intend to rank among the top three provinces in national and international assessments."

The minister said evaluations will take place throughout the learning cycle to measure system-wide and individual achievement, and to allow for intervention, as needed.

"Our Grade 2 assessment, for example, will allow us to determine how well we are achieving in meeting our goal of having all students leave Grade 2 with an ability to read, including 90 per cent at grade level and 20 per cent of this group actually reading at a superior level," she said.

The individual results will also allow schools to identify students who need additional support in Grade 3 to improve their literacy skills.

"The 125 literacy specialists we added this year and a portion of the 200 teachers who will be added in 2004-05 are in place to ensure that children who need additional support will receive it," she said. "We do not want children falling between the cracks, which is why we are expanding our K-2 early literacy effort to Grade 3 so students who need additional support to read at grade level can receive the necessary intervention."

Dubé said that students will continue to be assessed in all subject areas either through provincial evaluations or school-based testing and examinations.

The minister said one anticipated outcome to the revamping of the evaluation program will be additional instructional time for students.

"We believe this will result in increased contact time between students and teachers because it will reduce the number of days students are out of regular classes to write exams or the number of days our high schools are now closed while exams are being marked."

The streamlining will also result in savings that will be reinvested in the classroom, she said.

As part of the changes to the provincial evaluation program, some of the assessments and provincial exams previously conducted by the francophone and anglophone sectors will be moved to different grade levels or discontinued. There will be no exams this spring for a number of provincial exams that are being discontinued.

In the francophone sector, the Grade 11 Mathematics exam and the Grade 12 French exam will be administered in June 2004. There will be no provincial exams in Physics, Geography, English Second Language, Chemistry and History.

In the Anglophone Sector, the Grade 12 French Oral Proficiency Interviews will be conducted during the current school year, but the Grade 11 Provincial Examinations in English and Mathematics are discontinued effective immediately and will be replaced in 2004-05 with new assessments in earlier grades. The Grade 3 math and Grade 4 literacy assessments are also discontinued effective immediately.

The following tables present a summary of the differences between the existing evaluation programs and the new programs, in both sectors.

04/04/16

MEDIA CONTACTS: Hugues Beaulieu or Steven Benteau, communications, Department of Education, 506-444-4714

Evaluation in Anglophone Sector

Evaluation in Francophone Sector

New Brunswick students will continue to participate in national and international testing programs such as SAIP and PISA.

04/04/16