Maggie Macintosh
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Winnipeg Free Press
The latest roundup of Grade 12 provincial exam results indicates pre-calculus skills suffered the most from COVID-19 disruptions to schooling in Manitoba.
Manitoba Education has published the average marks of last year’s test-takers, following an extensive hiatus due to virus-related cancellations, and new interpretive notes. There is no provincial test data from 2020, 2021, 2022 or 2023.
High schoolers scored — on average, in the three years leading up to the pandemic — a 68.3 per cent on the pre-calculus exam that is mandatory for everyone registered in the 40S course.
That figure has dropped nearly six per cent. Last year, it was 62.4 per cent.
“We all know in-person, in-class, everybody, every day is the best way to learn,” said Robbie Scott, a Grade 12 teacher in Winnipeg.
Scott said the teenagers who completed 2024 provincial tests, some of whom he taught at Dakota Collegiate, were disadvantaged because their foundational high school math courses were interrupted. They also had limited or no experience with multi-hour exams, he said.
The Class of 2024 was enrolled in Grade 8 when the Manitoba government shuttered schools and called off exams amid the onset of the pandemic. Members of this cohort studied at least part of their first senior years math course — units include variables and equations, patterns and data analysis — at home throughout 2020-21.
“A student’s success in Grade 12 depends to a large degree on their learning in earlier grades. Therefore, the quality of teaching at Grade 12 cannot be determined by comparing test results,” states a disclaimer on the province’s new education data dashboard.
The pre-calculus differences were even starker between pre- and post-pandemic groups of young women, northern residents and students who self-identify as First Nations, Métis and Inuit.
The Indigenous student average plunged 12.4 per cent.
Education Minister Tracy Schmidt acknowledged the data is not going in the right direction, but she said it is in line with what teachers have recorded elsewhere.
“It’s important to note — and for Manitoba students to know — that this is something that jurisdictions across Canada and in fact, around the world, are seeing,” said Schmidt, a mother of three school-aged children.
The minister added that the province’s universal school nutrition program, which rolled out in the fall, and directive to lower class sizes both aim to improve engagement and outcomes.
Applied mathematics scores were down overall in the last round of provincial tests, but essential mathematics results were up slightly in every category.
Math professor Anna Stokke questioned why far fewer students took the latter test than in previous years, if test exemptions were at play and whether a smaller sample size skewed data.
The total test-taker count dropped by 1,255 between 2019 and 2024 while enrolment data show there were only about 290 fewer Grade 12 students.
As for the pre-calculus scores, Stokke called them “alarming.”
“What that means is fewer students who will be prepared to take university math – that means fewer engineers, data scientists, computer scientists, etc.,” said Stokke, a professor of mathematics at the University of Winnipeg.
English language arts marks were not released as these assessments were interrupted due to copyright permission issues that were identified during the second semester of last year.
While French-language students encompass a far smaller sample size, Manitoba Education did release a breakdown of francophone and immersion performance on the literacy exams designed for teenagers in both programs.
The average francophone result fell 7.7 per cent. In contrast, students who completed the immersion French language arts exam generally scored higher than their pre-pandemic peers.
Robert Craigen, who oversees an optional math contest in Manitoba, said recent changes to provincial assessment — which he called “reckless” — have made it difficult to compare data.
“When the test for one year covers different material, is based on a different assessment model and grades to a different standard for another year, what are we to make of it when the results differ? Are we seeing changing outcomes, or merely changing meaning to the numbers?” said Craigen, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Manitoba.
At the same time, he said that, regardless of how the 2024 data was anchored, the results are worrisome.
“The disappearance of final assessments, I think, is a piece of that puzzle,” said Scott, who is currently teaching physics and science at Dakota Collegiate.
As far as he is concerned, there is reason to be optimistic about a rebound in average scores, owing to the return of formal final assessments, provincial ones and otherwise.
The former Progressive Conservative government and reigning NDP government have gone back and forth about the fate of provincial exams in recent years.
Last winter, the NDP announced it was pausing its costly standardized tests as officials began reviewing and redeveloping the annual assessment program. Public outcry about student preparedness for post-secondary prompted a U-turn.
These final-year, end-of-semester tests are worth 20 per cent of every student’s final course grade in each respective 40S course.
