A new pathway to post-secondary in Calgary has been created for young students by the Calgary Board of Education (CBE).
With Alberta Education putting its recent focus on collegiate models, the CBE came up with CBE Digital Futures Pathway, here the CBE will partner with SAIT to get students (starting in grade 10) on the pathway to college.
At the start of the program, students in grade 10 will receive exposure to a broad base of ICT (information, communication, technology) courses. Then as they advance through grades, they will choose which area they wish to specialize in.
Joanne Pitman, Superintendent of School Improvement with the CBE and lead for the model, is pleased with how the program came to be saying it’ll have many positive impacts on the students and their future.
“I think this program is really important because it’s an opportunity for us to expand the options available to our students that is also responsive to the future,” Pitman said.
“This type of program is the best way to create those opportunities for the students and really leverage what they need to do in high school and what they may wish to do after.”
The program will be supported across all CBE schools.
Having this program in all CBE schools was important when developing the program as the CBE wanted to offer this to as many people as possible while also getting students on the direct path to college at a young age, Pitman said.
“What we looked to do was to consider how we could make this type of programming available to students across all high schools in the CBE as opposed to an individual site, through our work and proposal that we put forward to the Alberta Education they approved specific funding up to $6.2 million,” Pitman said.
Throughout the program, there will be options for work-related programming (internships), as well as dual credit offerings at SAIT.
This way, students in high school have the potential to gain college-level credits before even stepping foot on campus.
The model of the program will be designed over the course of the 2023-2024 school year. During the school year, the CBE will begin to take applications for registration from grade 10 students.
