Despite a large year-over-year diploma exam results drop, CBE officials are content with their long-term learning plan for social studies students.
For the 2024-25 school year, all Calgary Board of Education (CBE) cohorts showed decline in Social Studies 30-1 and 30-2 diploma results. CBE officials have said that the decline may not be a one year outlier, but the board has plans in place for long term correction.
Last year’s results are still higher than the provincial average, CBE Superintendent of School Improvement, Mike Nelson, said, with the overall drop attributable to an increasing population of English as an Additional Language students (EAL).
A report shared at the Jan. 27 CBE Board of Trustees meeting highlighted that while 88.5 per cent of overall students reached acceptable results on their Social Studies 30-1 Diploma Exams, only 72.7 per cent of EAL students’ scores reached those same heights, a nearly seven per cent drop year over year.
Similar results were found amongst 30-2 cohorts, with 66.8 per cent of EAL students reaching acceptable results compared to 81 per cent of all students.
The result drops in social studies that were not seen in courses like French or science are largely due to the individualized, perspective sharing subject matter and rigorous language demands in source analysis, said CBE Superintendent of School Improvement, Jennifer Turner.
“Through careful analysis, we have been able to understand that specific strategies that we implement in social studies classes regarding evidence based writing, how you might take perspective on a particular topic and express that in writing as the key areas to target and that it is in fact, those skills and abilities that are pulling these numbers down,” she said during the meeting.
“When we focus our energy and our attention on professional learning specific to these items in the classroom, we should see corresponding gains.”
As an education system, the board continuously looks into how students respond to interventions and adjust where necessary to ensure that they are working collectively towards driving results higher, according to Turner.
“We have confidence about being able to target the things that are contributing to these declines,” she said.
Current initiatives targeting the diploma exam drop include sheltered classrooms specific to EAL students, which teach condensed reading comprehension and analysis skills and individualized learning plans.
“At the classroom level, the teacher is the one that’s having ongoing assessment and working with students. If they see students that are not meeting outcomes, then they have targeted interventions, whether that is on the writing portion of the social studies diploma or the content understanding,” Nelson said during the meeting.
When asked if the results were a one-time drop, Nelson joked that he’d need a pretty good crystal ball to answer factually, but is confident in the board’s ongoing learning efforts.
