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Cornerstone board discusses student achievement

The trustees of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division (SECPSD) plunged into the study of system goal No. 2 on Oct. 15 during their open general meeting. Goal No.

The trustees of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division (SECPSD) plunged into the study of system goal No. 2 on Oct. 15 during their open general meeting.

Goal No. 2 is to have “our students achieve at high levels,” said Lynn Little, the division’s director of education in introducing the process.

The last half of the report included superintendent of education Aaron Hiske, who had gathered video reports from 12 schools throughout the division, outlining specific programs and innovations that have been deployed during the previous year that enabled students to meet that second goal.

Scholastic achievement is vital, said Little, but “development of the whole child is important,” she added in the report that covered other elements of a complete educational experience such as athletics, student leadership, fine arts, theatre, choir and debate.

To bolster a statement that indicated Cornerstone students were on solid academic and extracurricular ground, Little released confirmed statistics that showed students in the southeast were achieving marks on the academic fronts that were above the provincial average, including those who had self-identified as being Indigenous students.

For instance, in the core elements such as mathematics and English, SECPSD students registered at a 76 per cent average while the provincial average was 73.9 per cent in English and 74 per cent versus 73.3 per cent in math foundations.

The only areas where SECPSD students fell slightly below the provincial average were in math pre-calculus and workplace and apprenticeship math. All other areas, such as sciences, biology, physics, etc., they were ahead of the Saskatchewan benchmarks.

Success was also marked at the elementary levels of education with Grades 1-3 reading levels in the local division registering well above the provincial average by the time they completed Grade 2 and that continued through to Grade 3 assessments.

The reading and writing levels of achievement from Grades 4-9 continued to exceed provincial averages and expectations.

Little said a great deal of credit goes to the early years evaluations and programming embraced by SECPSD that also focuses on self awareness, social skill building as well as cognitive skills, language and physical development.

“As a division, our kindergarten children attained the goal of 90 per cent in three out of five domains,” said Little, who then noted that the record now indicated four out of the five domain targets had been reached, “and we are close to the goal for the fifth, with huge growth during the school year in kindergarten classes.”

There were also lists of achievement and growth on the other fronts such as athletics and drama that were used to illustrate the success of the students in extracurricular pursuits. The report noted there were 217 senior athletic teams in SECPSD in the past school year in 27 activities along with 275 junior teams.

Successes on the playing fields were documented in the report, showing achievements at regional and provincial levels and how some students have been capable of taking their skills beyond that scope to compete at national and international levels.

The on-time goal – Grade 10 students achieving high school graduation in three years – of having a 90 per cent graduation rate had been achieved, Little reported, with the graduation rate now at 91 per cent.

The next established goal is to set an extended time goal of a 95 per cent graduation rate within a five-year window. This rate currently sits at 93 per cent.

The FlipGrid video reports coming in from the 12 schools featured a number of school educators, administrators and, on occasion, students, outlining various practices deployed within their schools that were used to achieve success on a variety of fronts.

The schools that participated in the educational, informative and entertaining reports included Estevan Comprehensive School, Oxbow Prairie Horizons School, the Carnduff Education Complex, Gordon F. Kells School in Carlyle, Redvers School, Wapella School, Gladmar Regional School, Pangman School, McNaughton High School in Moosomin, Rocanville School and Radville Regional School.