Alberta Education announced on March 16 that the weight of Grade 12 diploma exams would be reduced from 50 per cent to 30 per cent, making course work done in the classroom account for 70 per cent of a student’s grade.
This reweighted system — that will come into effect on Sept. 1, 2015 — is pleasing to students and staff of the St. Paul Education Regional Division.
Timothy Shapka, a Grade 11 student at St. Paul Regional High School, took a chemistry diploma exam while he was being homeschooled. He was able to earn a grade of 100 per cent. Even in light of this fact, he opposed the 50/50 weighting system.
“When I first heard about (the weighting system) I thought that 50 per cent was such a ludicrous amount,” says Shapka. “It’s crazy to do all that work throughout the year and then half your mark comes from one exam.”
Education Minister Gordon Dirks shared similar sentiments when he was announcing the changes.
“A single examination cannot assess all the strengths or weaknesses of a student,” says Dirks. “A single exam mark, weighted at 50 per cent, does not allow students who may have greater difficulty writing high-stakes exams or who are undergoing unique stresses on the day of the exam, to fairly excel.”
“A lot of us struggle with exams and tests, and have minor test anxiety,” says Kendal Tilley, a Grade 10 student at the local high school. “So I think it would be a good thing because we just get nervous when it comes to big tests, especially when you know the test is going to be worth a huge per cent of your mark.”
Glen Brodziak, the superintendent of SPERD, had an opportunity to share his views on changing the weight of these exams at a meeting with Dirks in January.
Brodziak cited this move as a positive development in lessening the burden on students as he has “seen the stress of these exams up close” in his own home. On the other hand he says he hopes that students do still approach these exams with diligence in order to have success with other high-pressure situations they are bound to face in post-secondary education and other aspects of life.
In Shapka’s opinion there shouldn’t be a concern that students across the board will stop investing the time and effort necessary to succeed on the diploma due to the exam being worth less.
“If you are a person that cares, it is not going to matter if the exam is worth 30 or 50 per cent, it is still a large portion of your mark. So if you are the type of person that is going to actually study for it, you will study for it regardless. Overall I think it will generally be the same level of preparation.”
SLA Changes
Grade 6 students will have to wait an additional school year to experience a Student Learning Assessments (SLA) exam for the first time.
These exams were originally scheduled to pilot in the fall of 2015. However, Alberta Education posted on its website that after meeting with different stakeholder groups, “more time is needed to ensure the Grade 3 SLAs are a valuable assessment tool for teachers, parents, and students before transitioning from PATs to SLAs in Grades 6 and 9.”
Grade 6 students are scheduled to get their first crack at SLAs in the fall of 2016. They will write the traditional Provincial Achievement Test in May-June 2015 and May-June 2016.
Grade 3 students wrote the SLAs for the first time last September. This exam tested students on the Grade 2 curriculum.
A winter 2014 update on the SLAs released by Alberta Education stated that Grade 9 students would pilot these assessments in September 2016. There was no revised implementation date mentioned in the statement posted on the Alberta Education website.
