Following outcry from parents, teachers and students, the Simcoe County District School Board has decided to bring back a form of final assessment days into the 2024/25 school calendar.
About 30 students, parents, teachers and supporters attended a protest in front of the Simcoe County District School Board’s education centre in Midhurst prior to the trustees’ Jan. 31 board meeting to express their concerns about the removal of final assessment days from the school calendar. It was during the meeting following the protest that the board announced the change.
“I feel it’s really important to prepare for university with these exams. In the three years I’ve been in high school, I haven’t had the chance to learn how to study for these, and learn how to cope with the stress of them,” said protester Nicole Kerr, a Grade 11 student at Collingwood Collegiate Institute. “Starting that in university... it’s so much on students and I don’t think it’s fair.”
Abby Brooker is a Grade 11 student at Barrie North.
“I’m scared that when I go to university I won’t be on the same level as everybody else,” said Brooker.
Her mom Alison Brooker also attended the protest, and said she feels learning to take an exam is a skill in itself.
“Abby wants to go into engineering. Not having learned the skill worries me a lot,” she said.
At both the Simcoe County District School Board (SCDSB) and the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board (SMCDSB), secondary students are given different forms of assessment depending on course material, which may include exams, portfolio submissions or essays.
Where the two boards differ as of the 2022/23 school year is the public board no longer plans for formal exam days through their school calendars, while the Catholic board still has formal exam/assessments built into their school calendars.
Instead, students within the public board are given final assessments (which could be an exam, essay or another form of assessment), and feedback days to go over the assessment outcomes. Final assessments are, in many cases, integrated into students’ regular course schedules. This year, those feedback days fell in the middle of December, more than a month before the end of the term.
Juliana Thomas is in Grade 8 at Warnica Public School in Barrie, with plans to attend Innisdale Secondary School next year.
“I feel like it’s really important. When you go to university and everyone around you has experience writing exams and you haven’t... high school is supposed to prepare you for that,” she said. “We need to learn how to persevere through the stress of exams.”
Her father Mark Thomas lives in Barrie, but is a high school teacher in the York Region District School Board.
“The York board has final assessments and exams in January and we spend a lot of time preparing our students for it. I see the effects, as a teacher, of that work we do. My concern for my children is they will be unprepared,” said Mark, adding that he gathers exams from his board to bring home to his kids to try.
“That’s not something that should be done. It’s important the board helps all students be successful,” he said.
The protest joined a chorus of voices who have spoken up against the public school board’s current system.
Two deputations have been given to the board on the matter since the change was first implemented in 2022, as well as a petition forwarded to trustees, a survey completed by Simcoe County OSSTF secondary teachers and feedback sought in schools by superintendent of student achievement Dean Maltby.
Maltby said the exact format of how final assessment days and feedback days will be structured moving forward will be part of a conversation happening in two weeks at the board’s program standing committee meeting, when trustees will be presented with the board’s school calendar for 2024/25.
Following the meeting, Maltby clarified that the key difference between what the board is proposing and just adding final assessment days back into the school calendar is that feedback days following exams will still be included, as the board feels it’s important for students to have feedback on final assessments.
“In a traditional exam period, things happen at the very end of the semester on the last instructional days available to students. There’s no feedback for it. It’s a lost learning opportunity,” said Maltby. “What we’ve done is take those culminating task days and moved them four days back so it gives students and staff a chance to learn how they’ve done.”
“Is it a whole lot different? Not really. But students will have an opportunity to learn from what they did on those assessments to be more transparent and fair,” he said.
