Prince Albert Collegiate Institute (PACI) is having some success with Grade 9 students and Principal Dave Lokinger recently had the opportunity to talk about it on a national stage.
Lokinger was selected as a breakout session presenter at the Canadian Association of Principals (CAP) 2026 Conference in Regina on May 6. His session was called, “Rethinking Grade 9 – Finding Success in Reframing Grade 9 in High School”. It drew on his school’s transformative work to improve student success during a critical transition year.
Lokinger said it focused on how they have found success through innovation.
“We’ve had a lot of success with our Grade 9 program and reframing it to meet the needs of our students and our families,” Lokinger explained.
“We’re fairly reactive to what we believed our students needed to be successful in grade 10, and then we’re seeing a massive jump in the number of students in Grade 10 that are on their way to earning the required credits for Grade 10 graduation.”
When faced with challenges such as attendance, engagement, and student mobility, Lokinger and his team reimagined their Grade 9 program with a focus on community-building, executive functioning skills, flexible learning groupings, land-based education and restorative practices, according to a Saskatchewan Rivers School Division press release
Lokinger added that it is working because everyone has bought in.
“I think it’s working because we’ve established what Grade 9 should look like,” he explained. “I think we’ve identified what skills students need to be successful in Grade 10, 11, and 12. We have a team of Grade 9 teachers that have shared values and that work together, and because of that, there’s a lot of success.”
The results have been significant. PACI has seen improved student retention, increased credit attainment, and a stronger sense of belonging among students. The division said that his session offered conference participants practical strategies and a powerful example of how thoughtful innovation can positively impact school culture and student outcomes.
“Traditionally, we’d run Grade 9s … like a regular high school student with five different teachers. (Now) we don’t do that here. We keep them as a homeroom,” he explained.
Lokinger said that one reason Grade 9 can be a tough year for students is that they are not earning credits.
“We take these students from elementary school, we put them in high school, they’re not earning credits, so the biggest question that we get is. ‘What am I doing here?’” Lokinger said.
He said recognizing that as an issue has helped them reimagine how they work in Grade 9.
“I think we’ve engineered it in such a way that students understand what they’re doing in Grade 9 that they’re successful (and) they can be successful in Grade 10, which is going to ultimately lead to higher credit attainment rates in Grade 11 and higher grad rates in Grade 12,” Lokinger said.
St. Louis Public School Principal Greg Walker also represented Saskatchewan Rivers in Regina. In a press release, the division said both sessions were part of a national conference that brought together school leaders from across Canada to explore effective, innovative approaches to education.
Lokinger said he was impressed by the number of places represented for his presentation. He said there were education leaders from British Columbia, Manitoba, the Maritimes, Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario.
“Because CAP was in Regina, I had anticipated that the majority of the folks would be from Saskatchewan and they weren’t. Probably a third were from Saskatchewan and then had them from all over the country,” he said.
“We had a national group of people, of individuals. The one thing that was very interesting was the majority of them who had Grade 9s in their high school, definitely felt that this was an issue that they saw too.”
The division said the inclusion of Lokinger and Walker as presenters underscores the impact of Saskatchewan Rivers Public School Division educators and their work to improve outcomes for students, and the division’s commitment to Excellence for Every Learner.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
