Olivia Cao/Staff Reporter
On April 26 and 27, grade 10 and 12 students will complete Literacy and Numeracy Assessments. Students in grade 9 and 11 who are not required to take the assessments will not need to come to school on exam day.
Due to staffing concerns caused by COVID-19, the B.C. Ministry of Education decided to cancel the assessments in January. According to data from Vancouver’s Fraser Institute, only about half of students in B.C. wrote the Literacy and Numeracy Assessments this year.
“The cancellation of the Literacy assessment in January gave me more time to prepare for the exam. I think this exam is like a ‘final result’ of my entire high school English courses, which can reflect my development. Moreover, it will allow me to prepare better for university study and demonstrate my literacy skills,” said Yuli Ma, grade 12.
According to the new rules of UBC, students graduating in June 2022 are required to achieve “Proficient” on the Grade 12 Literacy Assessments, students who do not meet this level will have their admission offers reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
Ada Chen, a grade 12 student who has got the conditional offer from the UBC Faculty of Arts, said, “this rule has given me more pressure, so to prepare for this exam, I spent about one hour a day doing questions from previous years’ assessments. UBC is my dream school, and I’m scared that my hard-earned offer will be cancelled if I don’t achieve the level they required.”
Based on the public policy think-tank reveals, only 40% of participating students scored proficient or above in the Grade 10 Numeracy Assessments, while 75% scored “Proficient” or above in the Grade 10 Literacy Assessments.
“I have heard that the Numeracy Assessments will be much harder than the unit tests in school. Since my math is a little bit worse compared to my English, so I will spend more time in the future math reviewing to achieve ‘Proficient’ in both math and English,” said Sonia Hebrahim, grade 10.
Samantha Li, grade 11, added, “I think math teachers should lead students to review the content for the exam. Based on my last years’ experience, it is very different from what we learned. Without the guide of teachers, students probably will not know how to review it better.”
When being asked about the opinion on this news, Chen comments, “in my opinion, preparing seriously for the assessment is necessary whatever the situation is. I think it is an exam can show our learning ability in high school life, and know our knowledge level. Furthermore, I will try my best to adjust my emotion and bring my last semester of high school life to a successful conclusion.”
Sources:
“How to keep your offer of admission”
“Only half of BC students wrote assessments – even fewer pass in numeracy”