The six-year completion rate for School District No. 46 (SD46) shows the district has rebounded from a five-year low it hit during the 2018-19 school year – and Indigenous students have come out on top.
For the 2019-20 school year, 84.7 per cent of Indigenous students completed high school within six years, compared to 84.4 per cent overall.
Superintendent Patrick Bocking revealed the 2019-20 figures during a Dec. 9 regular board meeting, saying the completion rates “have never been higher” for Indigenous students.
Bocking acknowledged a “significant dip” in 2018-19, “particularly for our Indigenous students,” but that statistic flipped the following year.
“We’re extremely excited about this,” he said.
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.
During the Dec. 9 meeting, trustee Stacia Leech asked for a rationale for the increase.
Bocking said administrative staff “looked carefully at both the data and the individual students.” Adding variability each year is likely, he said, because “it’s not a huge cohort of people.” He noted the overall trend is on the rise, however.
Between 2005 and 2010, less than half of Indigenous students in SD46 completed high school in six years, but that number has been increasing steadily since then.
As for the overall completion rate, it also dipped in 2018-19, to 80.3 per cent compared to the year prior. The average six-year completion rate in B.C. public schools in 2018-19 was 89 per cent.
