North Coast Review: As students prepare to return to school next week, the Fraser Institute provides its annual reviews of the province's secondary schools. With Prince Rupert's CHSS topping the NW findings

Thursday, September 3, 2020

As students prepare to return to school next week, the Fraser Institute provides its annual reviews of the province's secondary schools. With Prince Rupert's CHSS topping the NW findings

The timing is a bit behind schedule for the Fraser Institute, with their list of findings on secondary school education in British Columbia coming at the start of the school year, as opposed to the usual placement as the school year winds down in the spring.

And with education already making for some controversy for the 2020-21 year, the Vancouver Based organization has added some other discussion themes for consideration to the school year start.

In the preamble to the 2020 report, Peter Cowley, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute outlines how parents can make use of the data suggesting that it's a helpful guidebook towards improving school performance.

“Parents should use this Report Card every year to see how their child’s school is doing, and if necessary, ask the principal how he or she plans to turn things around, We often hear that some schools are doomed to perform poorly because of the communities and students they serve, but that’s just not true—every school can improve and rank higher than the year before,”

Those sentiments are not always accepted by teaching professionals and administrators, who often question the value of the Fraser Institute project.

And considering how the school year ended in June, with everyone facing a remarkable amount of challenges related to COVID, those calls no doubt will be amplified as the new school year begins.

So far however, whether its administrators, teachers or union officials, all seem somewhat focused on just getting the 2020-21 school year underway at the moment, with few comments related to the annual Fraser Institute project delivered as of yet.

As for the data review and what it presents for the Northwest, the data compiled by Joel Emes and Peter Cowley shows improved results for Charles Hays Secondary in Prince Rupert, with an overall ranking of 6.7 out of 10 and a placement of 82nd spot out of the 252 schools included in the 2020 report.

The CHSS results for this years report places the Prince Rupert School atop the ranking of the seven secondary schools that make for the Northwest listings

Among the findings an average exam mark of 66.6 for 2019, which is much the same as years previous, the percentage of exams failed however rose by three percent from the 2018 report. They note that Charles Hays had a Graduation rate of 96.4 percent, with a delayed advancement rate of 27.2.

The Prince Rupert findings make for a significant jump from the 2019 report, when CHSS had been listed at 167/251 and 5.4/10.