Fred West introduced guest speaker: Dr. Kris Magnusson, Professor & recent Dean in the Faculty of Education at SFU.
How are Canadian schools measuring up in this world?
PISA studies in member countries (tests on 15 year olds). They’re being tested for Math, Science and Reading. Done since year 2000 and Canadian students performed very well.
Why Canada Excels in Education?
The numbers don’t tell the whole story, but we are doing remarkably well. Kris provided a bit of a history lesson re: American Civil War.
PISA: a method for countries to compare themselves to one another, but also to themselves.
The major focus and minor focus shifts every 9 years between Math, Science and Reading.
In 2018 they created adaptive testing that changed the questions after the first set.
Interpretation:
Scores are used to establish ranking (500 would be the statistical Mean).
Levels: level 2 is the minimum/baseline level needed to function in society. Level 6 is the top 1.1%, level 5 is top 7.7% - ask: how many of our students can get by (level 2) and how many can excel (level 5 and 6). Canada has no national education system, so each province is treated as its own country but Canada’s stats as a whole are an average.
Reading:
85% of students in BC excel levels whereas 86% meet it nationally
Whereas significant achievement levels are 15% across Canada and BC has 16%. Best in Canada is AB at 18%. Reading results by Score/Rank: 1. China 2. Singapore 3. Alberta 4. Macao 5. Hong Kong … BC would be 10th but a score 1 point higher would put us at #4.
Math
BC at 81% meet baseline; 14% meet significant achievement
2015 to 2017 Canada’s rankings have dropped in all sections. Now what we’re seeing is a “disturbing collapse.” Not statistically significant, but something to be aware of moving forward.
There is a significant achievement gap between high and low socioeconomic status. The more economic disparity you have, the larger of a score variation you have. In Canada 6.7% of score variation is due to socioeconomic status.
There is a significant performance gap between immigrant and non-immigrant students
The top jurisdictions in the world are monocultural. Canada has 2nd largest foreign born population. 41% of BC students are immigrants (21% 1st gen). Multiple languages in the classroom.
Approach to learning
The leading countries tend to rely on rote learning and high pressure performance. Better equipped to replicate knowledge. However, much poorer to adapt to change. Often pay a steep social cost for high achievement.
Conclusions:
Given the educational challenges we face, Canada (and BC) continue to do extremely well.
Extenuating factors help explain a recent slide in our rankings, but they do not excuse them; this is not the time for complacency. The new BC Curriculum is directly aimed at “adaptive versatility”; we need to ensure that we invest in the pre-service and in-service preparation for professional educators.
Food on the Corner Society was started In 1982 and their mission is to help those that are vulnerable and less fortunate then ourselves with a hot meal every
Jennifer E. Jones, a member of the Rotary Club of Windsor-Roseland, Ontario, Canada, has been nominated to become Rotary International’s president for 2022-23, a groundbreaking selection that will make her the first woman to hold that office in the organization’s 115-year history.
