Final overall completion rates for the 2018-19 school year are out and have hit a five-year low.
Eighty-three per cent of students who are B.C. residents completed high school in six years at School District No. 46 (SD46). In 2017-18, the completion rate was 86 per cent.
The provincial average for 2018-19 was 89 per cent.
Since 2005, completion rates on the Sunshine Coast had steadily climbed and ranged between 76 and 86 per cent. Last year, 205 B.C. residents graduated from Sunshine Coast high schools.
For Indigenous students, the completion rate declined to 66 per cent in 2018-19, or 34 students, after reaching an all-time high of 83 per cent in 2017-18. Last year’s completion rate marks the lowest since 2012-13.
The provincial average completion rate for Indigenous students was 69 per cent in 2019.
Completion rates for special needs students in SD46 rose in 2019 to 69 per cent from 55 per cent in 2018.
At a June 10 school board meeting, superintendent Patrick Bocking addressed the sharp decline in Indigenous graduation rates. “A lot of work has been done in that area and we watch the data right from kindergarten all the way up to the graduation years.”
In December, when the preliminary figures were released, staff identified errors in the calculations, but the final numbers have remained the same.
Paul Bishop, SD46’s director of instruction, said high school principals and support staff met when the preliminary numbers were released to analyze the results. “It gave us a lot of information about things that we’re doing right,” including adding counsellors, he said.
In the 2019-20 school year, the district “implemented a wider variety of courses, particularly around social studies and language arts,” Bishop said. That included adding an Indigenous-education focus for English in Grades 11 and 12 at every school.
“Obviously we’ll be looking at all of our results next year to see how things went this year and trying to take everything we’ve got into consideration.”
