(ADAM PROSKIW / iNFOnews.ca)
June 17, 2014 - 4:49 PM
KELOWNA – For students in School District 23, the teacher’s strike has cast a cloud of uncertainty over how their year will end.
SD23 Superintendant Hugh Gloster says regardless of whether or not the dispute is resolved, provincial final exams will go ahead as planned and all students will likely receive some form of report card as well.
“We’ve got some work to do before we get to report cards,” Gloster says. “Our first priority is to provide picket-free entrances for all five provincially-required exams.”
An Essential Services Order issued by the Ministry of Education requires sittings for Science 10, English 10, Math 10, Social Studies 11 and English 12 exams.
The first exam, Math 10, will go ahead as planned tomorrow morning and the last will take place June 24. All other final exams are cancelled.
Grade 12 exams will be marked by the Ministry of Education and a transcript mailed to students sometime in July.
If a resolution is not reached, grade 10 and 11 students will still receive a grade for the year based on recorded performance.
For grades 10 and 11, the expectation from the Ministry is that administrators will do the marking of the written components of the exams before final marks are tallied by the District.
The essential services order does not apply to kindergarten to grade nine students, in which cases the district will issue a grade based on the marks they have.
“Quite a number of those teachers have already entered final marks for their students and others should be coming in by June 20," Gloster says. “We will have a much better indication by the end of this week as to how many marks we have in the system. If it‘s a partial report card we have to send out then that’s what we will do. There are too many variables right now to say for certain what’s going to happen.”
School buses will continue to run and an administrator will be present at all schools during final exam period.
For daily updates from the district, visit the SD23 website.
To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-0428. To contact the editor, email mjones@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2014