The results of a new Primary Math Assessment show that overall, Island students are doing well in math at the end of the primary grades, says Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Doug Currie.
“This new assessment measures mathematical knowledge and skills learned up to the end of Grade 3,” said Minister Currie. “It tells us how well students are learning, where they may need more help, and how resources may be directed to help students improve.”
The assessment was taken in October 2009 by all grade 4 students in the Western School Board and la Commission scolaire de langue française (French Language School Board). It will be conducted in all school boards next year.
The assessment measured four areas of the math curriculum: number sense, patterns and relations, shape and space, and statistics and probability. Student success was measured by how students performed based on expectations set by a team of Island teachers.
The results indicate that 68 per cent of students met the expectation, 12 per cent were approaching the expectation, and 20 per cent were experiencing difficulty. The average score was 78 per cent. The scores of boys and girls were similar. There was very little difference in the scores of students in English, French and French Immersion programs. Approximately 500 students participated while 5 per cent were exempt.
Information from the assessments is used to improve student achievement in several ways. It provides parents with information on how their child is doing in math at this key stage of their learning. It helps teachers to plan instruction. It is used by school boards to allocate resources, and it enables the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to monitor and report on the performance of the public education system.
Several common assessments are now in place where all students in a grade take the same test at the end of the primary, elementary or intermediate grades. Literacy assessments are taken by all students at the end of Grade 3 and Grade 6, and math assessments are taken at the end of Grade 3 and Grade 9. More assessments will be introduced in the future to measure literacy after Grade 9 and math after Grade 6.
“When we know how students are doing at the end of these three key stages of learning, we will have key information on when and where problems are arising and whether our interventions are working,” said Minister Currie. “We ask parents to pay attention to the assessment reports that their children are taking home this week, and we encourage parents to talk to their child’s teacher about how they can further support math in the home.”
More information on the assessments is available at www.gov.pe.ca/go/studentassessment .