Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Canada’s recent decline on the global stage on math performance has sent a shiver of anxiety to every parent. The first step is to try to understand the issues both nationally and here at home.
The Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, recently released a damaging alarm call where it showed our Canadian 15-year-olds have slipped in global rankings in math competency; in fact, Canada’s downward spiral from sixth to 13th among participating countries since 2000. This, ironically, coincides with the adoption of Discovery Learning.
Now, the NWT, Yukon and Nunavut do not participate in PISA rankings as our population is not large enough to acquire meaningful data to match provincial or international benchmarks. We do, however, use the Alberta achievement tests, or AATs, to monitor student performance in math.
Historically, our Grade 9 AAT performance in maths has been a bit of a concern. In 2012 only 34.1 percent of our NWT students achieved acceptable standards on this test. I know, Mr. Speaker, deplorable.
However, we all know the years of poor AATs have attributed directly to the recent development of the Education Renewal and Innovation Initiative that is currently being rolled out by the department.
So why am I still concerned? For starters, there is still the ongoing debate on whether Discovery Learning is really effective or that going back to traditional basics is the key.
Quebec, for example, has kept to a more traditional math teaching and has remained steadfast in international rankings and was also our nation’s top scorer. Alberta, where our NWT curriculum is mostly based, has been petitioned by many parents to return to basic math skills with their government defending their position.
So what does this mean for the NWT? Many have attended some of the early presentations of the ERI Initiative, coming away with probably more questions than answers. Has the department clearly demonstrated and convinced all stakeholders the pathway of our students’ success is solely depending on this ERI Initiative, or do people still feel a bit fuzzy on this program? Firstly, I think the jury is still out on this one.
So, despite the overwhelming calls from parents nationally to dial back so-called discovery math, obviously this government is paddling hard to get our students the best math education out there, but I have to honestly question the almost zero testing indicated during this ERI transition and with no vision of tying our territory to some form of national grading strategy, the department might be up a creek without a paddle if they don’t clearly find this path for this math debacle. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
