The annual Fraser Report, which ranks all 276 high schools in the province, has placed Ecole Secondaire Sainte Marguerite d’Youville (ESSMY) in sixth place.
The French immersion school rated high on eight different criteria including exam marks, the number of courses taken per student and the diploma completion rate.
St. Albert Catholic High School ranked 55th on the survey while Paul Kane ranked 80th. Bellerose Composite High School placed 178 out of 276 schools. Morinville Community High School placed 121st and Sturgeon Composite High School was rated as being in the 196th position.
The Fraser statistics listed an average exam mark of 68.8 per cent for ESSMY, compared to 67.4 per cent for St. Albert Catholic High. Paul Kane’s average exam mark was 64.6 per cent and the average at Bellerose was 62.2 per cent.
But the number of students measured must also be considered when studying these averages. The Grade 12 enrolment for ESSMY is just 22 students, compared to the Grade 12 enrolment of 349 students at Bellerose.
David Quick, assistant superintendent for the Greater St. Albert Catholic School Board prefers to study the Accountability Pillar Summary to find out how the schools in his division are doing compared to provincial results.
“The Government of Alberta’s Accountability Pillar measures provincial achievement tests but it also measures how many go on to post-secondary schooling. It measures how the schools do in preparing the students to go out and work and it measures citizenship,” he said.
The Fraser Report ranks those schools that perform best academically but is less accurate in taking into account socio-economic factors such as whether students live in rural or urban areas and parental incomes, he said.
Barry Wowk, Superintendent for the Protestant school board, also preferred the Accountability Pillar as a report card to measure how his schools are doing.
“The results show we dropped slightly last year, but there was a decline throughout the province,” Wowk said, at the same time as he dismissed the Fraser Report as being “flawed.”
The Fraser Report does not count the number of students in advanced placement programs, and does not show accurate results for students who complete exams in the new Math 30 and Chemistry 30, Wowk explained, because there is only one year of measurement for those courses.
“Between five and 10 per cent of our students take advanced placement courses and we encourage them to take those tougher courses. It may be that we will have to look at that,” he said, adding that he will be trying to study the results of the Accountability Pillar to see why student marks dropped slightly in his school system.
