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By Abby Zieverink

Diploma Exams

Alberta diploma exam results reliant on several factors: GPPSD superintendent

Aug 30, 2021 | 10:37 AM

With school set to be in person for Kindergarten to Grade 12 students in the 2021/22 school year, the Alberta government has made Grade 12 diploma exams, along with Grade 6 and 9 provincial achievement exams mandatory.

As students had an unpredictable education over the past couple of years due to the pandemic, Grande Prairie Public School District Superintendent Sandy McDonald says it is hard to say if the results for this year’s provincial tests will be impacted by the pandemic.

“The fact that there have been interruptions to schooling in previous years, I suppose it does have the potential to impact how students perform on these assessments but, if there is no interruption this year, the assessments are based on the current year that the students are in.”

McDonald suggests the success of the tests will depend on what happens between now and the time of the provincial assessments.

“If the students don’t have significant interruptions to their learning this year, I have no reason to expect that they won’t be well prepared for the provincial tests at the end of the school year.”

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McDonald says although the tests are based on the curriculum for the specific year the student is in, he suggests there is a circular element to it as the curriculum builds off previous years.

Although the diploma exam has the potential to impact a student’s mark, McDonald says post-secondary institutions consider the context in the year those exams have been written. He says the exam results often serve a bigger purpose.

“One is to provide students an opportunity to self-assess and see how they did with the curriculum, the second is when the assessments are aggregated at a larger level, like a division level or a provincial level, it’s also an assessment of the system a little bit.”

McDonald mentioned that since they haven’t had provincial assessment feedback in the past couple of years due to the pandemic, he is interested to see what the results will look like, to look into improvements they can make for their students.