The two major high schools in Okotoks, Holy Trinity Academy and Foothills Composite High School, are taking a different approach to final and diploma exams due to COVID-19.
And it means students won’t be negatively impacted on their report cards by any final exams or assessments — particularly for Grade 12 students competing for scholarships and university spots.
“After Christmas we started polling the province and we found the five biggest divisions in the province and many others were doing ‘no-fault’ or ‘optional’ exams — where the kids marks can only go up,” said Scott Morrison, Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools superintendent of schools. “When it came to our kids being competitive for scholarships and early admission into university, we realized that gave our kids a disadvantage.”
The five divisions represent more than half the students in Alberta, he said.
As a result, all CTR Catholic Grade 11 and 12 students will write the ‘no-fault’ final exams.
CTR Catholic had initially opted for a lower-risk final exam for Grade 11 and 12 worth a minimum of 10 per cent and maxed out at 20 per cent.
The switch was made to the no-fault exam to ensure CTR Catholic students were on a level playing field with other students in the province.
A letter was sent out to families on Jan. 6 informing parents of the change.
Additionally, Alberta Education has stated students have the option to write provincial diploma exams, which are mandatory in most years. They are worth 30 per cent. If the student opts not to take the diploma exam this school year, he or she will receive the mark from the respective class.
Morrison said to his knowledge no students have opted to take the provincial diploma exam.
At Foothills Composite High School students will write a ‘final assessment’ but if the student bombs, it won’t affect his or her final mark.
“We are still going to have a ‘final assessment’,” said Comp principal Vince Hunter. “For our Grade 12s we will be having an assessment that is worth 30 per cent. If the student doesn’t do well on the assessment and it is going to have a negative impact on their overall grade, we are going to use professional judgment to determine if that teacher’s assessment up to that point has been accurate — and I assume it is.”
If the student excels at the test, it could improve his or her mark as it shows growth, Hunter said.
He said it creates an even playing field for students at the school, which has gone to the quarterly system this year due to COVID. In the first quarter students didn’t have any type of final exam.
“We want to create a consistent and fair assessment of all 1,300 students at our school,” he said.
Also compromising fairness is the issue of some students having to learn at home during periods of time because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the last quarter at the Comp.
“We had a number of kids who were quarantined,” Hunter said. “They weren’t in a classroom, they were put online and transitioned back in the school.
“We think that created a lot of stress in learning for students. They may not have had the same opportunities of a student who was not disrupted.”
He added these are strange times due to COVID-19 as students’ learning could be affected by such things as a parent losing a job, not being able to see grandparents and other factors.
There was speculation students in the Foothills division would have to write a 30 per cent final. Hunter said he did receive concerns about the potential for a 30 per cent exam.
Chris Fuzessy, Foothills division superintendent, said it has always allowed flexibility in a student’s grade.
“We allow the flexibility for teachers to determine that final grade based on all of the evidence the student produced throughout the course of the term and not just one final examination,” Fuzessy said.
On Foothills School Division’s website concerning final assessment, it states “the final grade will reflect the student’s overall achievement during the term; the type of assessment is flexible (i.e. Exam, project, performance task, etc).; This assessment will be weighted at 30 per cent."
“I don’t think we should have a high-pressure exam (this term),” Morrison said, “but kids need to know how to prepare for exams, they need to demonstrate what they have learned and we need to be able to measure how well our system is doing.
“There are a lot of good reasons for exams... The reason we made the change for Grade 11 and 12 is we didn’t want to disadvantage our kids when it came to post-secondary.”
Holy Trinity Academy is not on the quarterly system. These will be the first set of final exams this school year.
Final exams or assessments at both schools will start on Jan. 20.
Morrison said a SEE and SEA philosophy comes into play.
“When we decided on how we respond to the pandemic and the impact to kids and schools, we still needed to have ‘Standards, Expectations and Excellence,” Morrison said.
He said when COVID hit last March, the division leaned heavily on the SEA aspect.
“We needed to Support our kids, we needed to make Exceptions and we needed to Accommodate our kids,” Morrison said. “This isn’t about whether we should have final exams or not, it’s about where is the sweet spot between Standards, Expectations and Excellence and Support, Exceptions and Accommodation. We all know eventually we have to restore a healthy way to normality. That is one of the reasons we want to proceed with exams even though they are lower risk.”
Grade 7 to 10 students will write final exams which will count up to 10 per cent to students’ marks, according to a letter sent home to students.
At Edison School, a private school in north Okotoks, courses are a year long, not semesterly.
"We only had the Social 30-1 exam scheduled for January,” said Edison School’s Beth Chernoff in an email. “The students are not taking it as we could not be 100 per cent sure that they would be taught in person this month and also it would be harder to prep them for the exam with the past month being online.
"They will have a final exam that is modelled on the diploma and it will be weighted heavily.”
