School Divisions need to know what is happening in many areas. To this end the Prince Albert Catholic School Division board of education looks at School Division Achievement Data through something called a “Wall Walk”.
The board of education did their first Wall Walk at their regular meeting on Monday.
The report from director of education Lorel Trumier and Superintendents Wade Mourot and Charity Dmytruk included Faith, Priority Action plans that focused on demographics and grad rates, mental health and wellbeing, reading, and other topics. The division aligns with provincial targets in some cases but also has its own targets.
Trumier said improvements in reading results and graduation rates are the highlight of the report. However, she also said student attendance is becoming a challenge for the division.
She said the division is extremely proud of its students, how resilient they are, and how they have reached those levels of achievement.
“I also want to applaud our teachers, our staff, our Board of Education, and being very laser focused on trying to improve things for students as it relates to student achievement,” Trumier said.
The graduation rates for Ecole St. Mary High School have met or outperformed the provincial results in all categories since the province started a growth plan in 2020 focused on eliminating the disparity between FNMI and non-FMNI students.
Roughly 55 per cent of Prince Albert Catholic School Division FNMI students graduate within three years of starting high school. That’s above the 48 per cent three-year graduation rate for FNMI students across the rest of the province. For non-FNMI students, 91 per cent graduate within three years in the Prince Albert Catholic School Division, while the provincial rate is 89 per cent.
“To have our students outperform the provincial averages in all of the categories is impressive,” Trumier said. “We’re doing it by as much as 14 per cent … this year and sometimes as much as 20 per cent in some categories. It goes without saying that that is the goal. We’re achieving our target. Obviously still wanting 100 per cent to graduate, but we’re going to stay laser focused on that.”
Of the PA Catholic FNMI students who do not graduate within three years, 78 per cent graduate in five years. For the rest of Saskatchewan, that number is 57 per cent.
Grade 3 reading levels are another data point that is monitored by the province. The division has experienced challenges with that because of the COVID-19 pandemic and students not being in school.
Students in Grade 3 in 2024-2025 had 45.1 per cent of First Nations Metis Inuit (FNMI) reading at or above grade level, 66.2 per cent non-FNMI and a total of 54.4 per cent. Students in Grade 3 began school in 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic was still presenting challenges.
“We know that having our children read at Grade 3 by the end of Grade 3 is a monumental task,” she said.
The division uses programs such as learning intervention and Strive for 5. In Strive for 5, Kindergarten and Pre-Kindergarten students are taught to use more than a yes or no response and taught to communicate through interaction with another person. Teacher’s focus on five quality engagement conversational elements. The goal is to build language by exposing students to more words, especially with new concepts.
“But to have reading results that have improved by 14 per cent over the last three years is, again, very impressive. It’s indicative of our very laser focused work that we’re doing in reading,” Trumier said.
She explained that because of the COVID-19 pandemic and learning interruptions, some students required more support but the numbers show the results are working.
“We’re taking a little bit of time for those students that are in the Grade 5 to 8 range to keep them working. But our reading results, again, a 14 per cent increase is a very important task,” Trumier said.
On the mental health side, the data shows 68 per cent of students have a sense of belonging, which nearly matches the Canadian rate of 72 per cent. As well, 80 per cent of students reported that they had groups of friends who were positive and encouraged them to make good choices, the Canadian average is 80 per cent.
Trumier said that the data shows that having students attend school is becoming a challenge. She said that attendance will become a focus in the division’s next Strategic Plan.
“It’s coming out loud and clear that we have a large number of students attending 80 per cent of the time or 90 per cent of the time,” she said. “We’ve seen some slight returns to the numbers pre-COVID, but we know that it can be better. I feel like that’s an area that we can focus on and work with our families to do that.”
She said that numbers are returning to pre-COVID levels but it has been a gradual process.
“We have 72 per cent of our students attending 80 per cent of the time. However, I feel like we just need to work with our families and have helped them to understand what the attendance does to the impact of student learning and achievement,” Trumier said.
She added that they want have conversations with staff and families on directions of how to improve attendance.
“Children do better when they’re … continuously at school,” she said. “Now there are children who can’t (attend all the time). There may be other reasons, but those should be one-offs. Those shouldn’t be the norm.
“I think that’s one of the targets coming out of our data that we know we need to do.
We’re going to still continue to work on our grad rates. We’re going to still continue to focus on reading, writing, and math, and all of those are very important. I think one target area to improve, which is something attainable would be to improve attendance.
“We can work with our families to improve attendance and try to manage how our students are coming to school and those kinds of things.”
The faith aspect of Catholic education is important to Trumier and includes aspects such as liturgical celebrations in schools and social justice teachings.
The division completed 7,786 Catholic Social Teaching projects in 2024-2025 compared to 6.015 in 2023-2024
“I feel that our faith dimension is one of the highlights for me. When we have 7,786 social justice projects occurring, it means our children and our teachers are impacting our community positively,” Trumier said.
One recent example was St. Francis School collecting donations for the Food Bank on Halloween to ‘Scare Away Hunger.’
“Scare Away Hunger that is a perfect example where we’re trying to have children understand that, as much as we come from varying backgrounds and varying economic status in our families, there’s always a place where you can do something for others,” Trumier explained,
“When you care for all of God’s creatures and all of God’s children and all of God’s families, then we’re doing what we’re called to do in our faith. It goes without saying that has a significant impact on Prince Albert and our community.”
Data examined by the school division included Social Justice, Liturgical Services Data and Faith Formation in the Faith category; Student Engagement included OURSchool Survey data, percentage of Grade 9 enrolling in Grade 10 and school attendance. Reading, Writing and Math included topics like Early Years Evaluation (EYE) and Math results Grade 1 to 9.
The division collects student achievement data and received reports from the Ministry of Education and presented the accumulated data to the board.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
