Girls are seven per cent more likely than boys to graduate from high schools across Simcoe County, according to a Simcoe County District School Board (SCDSB) report.
Overall, the SCDSB's five year cumulative graduation rate has improved from 71% in 2005-2006 to 75 per cent in 2009-10 and to 80% in 2014-2015. Despite the improvement, the local board grad rates remain below the provincial average of 85 per cent.
The stats are included in a report to the Board's Standing Committee and is included in the March 9 agenda.
In 2005, the Ministry of Education established a target to increase graduation rates in the province of Ontario to 85% by the year 2011. The Ministry defines graduation rate as the percentage of students that graduate within five years of starting Grade 9.
It also includes only those students leaving secondary school with an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD); students leaving with a Certificate of Accomplishment or an Ontario Secondary School Certificate are not considered by the Ministry to be graduates for the purposes of calculating graduation rates.
"The method used to create these SCDSB snapshot graduation rates includes only students registered in the fall of their fourth year of secondary school. It then tracks the percentage of those students that graduate in four or five years," superintendent Anita Simpson explained in a report to the committee.
"Any students who enter the school after Oct. 31 of their fourth year in secondary school are not added into the calculation."
Over the past five years, females were, on average, seven per cent more likely to graduate than males. In 2014-2015, the gender gap was similar, six per cent with 77 per cent of males and 83 per cent of females graduating from high school within five years."
Here are the graduation rates from last year at individual schools:
- Banting Memorial: 92 per cent
- Barrie Central: 85 per cent
- Barrie North: 74 per cent
- Bear Creek: 79 per cent
- Bradford: 91 per cent
- Collingwood: 74 per cent
- Eastview: 85 per cent
- Elmvale: 89 per cent
- Innisdale: 84 per cent
- Midland: 68 per cent
- Nantyr Shores: 89 per cent
- Nottawasaga Pines: 84 per cent
- OD/Park (Orillia): 87 per cent
- Penetanguishene: 94 per cent
- Stayner: 76 per cent
- Twin Lakes: 82 per cent
A Student Success 2015-2016 Annual Action Plan approved by trustees late last year listed strategies that will be implemented to improve local graduation rates:
"This focused work represents the continuation of a number of initiatives to differentiate programming and supports for students, re-engage students who are at-risk, and provide a range of interventions appropriate to students’ needs," Simpson said.
"In addition, this plan places greater emphasis on increasing students’ engagement in their learning and providing increased opportunities for student voice."
Strategies include:
- Increasing student engagement by caring actively, knowing the students, planning forward, communicating effectively, being inclusive, and being relevant;
- Focusing on evidence-based instructional strategies to support ongoing improvements to classroom learning and teaching with an emphasis on meeting the learning needs of all students;
- Analyzing results from the Grade 8 and Grade 12 exit surveys in order to create transition plans to help meet individual student needs;
- Providing students opportunities to investigate and focus their learning through School-to-Work Transition/Pathways programs including: short term experiential learning; cooperative education; Specialist High Skills Majors (SHSM); Dual Credits; and, the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP);
- Targeted implementation of retention and intervention strategies developed with students through student success teams including mental health supports, credit rescue and credit recovery;
- System level intervention programs to support the re-engagement of highly disengaged and habitually absent students including the SCDSB Alternative Secondary School, Supervised Alternative Learning (SAL)/Educational Outreach, and Adult and Continuing Education including Phoenix programs for students aged 18 to 21, cooperative education, night school, summer school, and e-Learning; and
- Re-engagement 12 & 12+ program to support contacting students, developing a re-engagement plan, and monitoring these plans and students to help to eliminate barriers to successful graduation
