Friday September 27, 2024 – The Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board utilizes the EQAO data, recently released, to further get to know our learners, one of our key essential practices for student achievement. The EQAO Assessment results are used to guide improvement initiatives as they relate to student achievement. Catholic Board’s EQAO Primary Grade Results Holding Steady and Grade 9 Mathematics Assessment Results Continue to Trend Above the Province.
“The more information we have to better know and understand our students, the better we can support them reaching success, closing gaps, and improving their overall academic achievement, said Superintendent, Lorrie Temple. Our educators continue to work hard to build the knowledge and skills of our students, as evidenced in the foundational results in Grade 3 across Reading, Writing and Mathematics. The data suggests that we are holding our own trending just above the province in all three areas. We always strive to get better though and are looking to improve these results. The educators continue to learn about their learners to support student achievement across all grade levels, across all our schools.”
We are pleased with our results in Grade 6 Reading at 83%, just above the provincial average and the Writing results are holding steady, on par with the provincial average of 80%. Having over 80% of our students at level 3 and above, is a success and we will continue to build on that moving forward. In addition, the Grade 9 Mathematics showed satisfactory results exceeding those of the province by 2%.
Even though we had some good results in Primary and Junior literacy, the data for Grade 6 math shows some concern, and we are continuing to work to address this with board supported resources, in class coaching support, and work on the High Impact Instructional Practices for our educators and administrators. We look to continue our focus on primary math for early intervention and engaging pedagogy, to support better trends for success in the coming years and adding some more focused attention in Grade 6, across the system.
The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) completed at all our secondary schools, saw solid results as well. Our board result for Grade 10 students, first time writing the assessment, had a success rate of 84%, just shy of the provincial average of 84.5%. We have already begun a deeper dive into the data and are currently creating plans for skill building for the Fall assessment. Our focus remains how to prepare students with the skills to be more successful once they graduate secondary school.
“We are always ready to closely analyze this data obtained from these measures to support our educators in helping our students learn and achieve success. Even though we are pleased with our results, in Grade 3 and Grade 6 literacy, there is always work to do”, said Superintendent Lorrie Temple. “The achievement in overall Mathematics continues to be a focus for our district and these results let us know that the intentional math teaching and high impact instructional practices, as well as targeted support in schools, are working and we need to now amplify the focus for our Junior educators to further support this learning in Grade 6.” The BHNCDSB Student Achievement Team is also working at continuing to address Reading and Writing in our Primary divisions with targeted instruction and collaborative planning using the new curriculum including Structured Literacy practices and now, the new early reading screening that is currently being launched across the system. This information and clear data will better inform interventions and support for our students in Kindergarten-Grade 2.
We have learned to use these results to help inform educators, department heads, principals, and program consultants in their efforts to improve classroom practice and success rates. The system plan continues to support ongoing efforts in building students’ knowledge and skills in mathematics and aligns with the provincial documents and directions. We thank all parents and caregivers for their partnership in the learning success of our students.
EQAO Overall Results: Highlights of the Provincial Results – Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) – EQAO
For more information about this media release please contact Lorrie Temple, Superintendent of Education | 519-756-6505 Ext. 11237.
