This week, thousands of parents across the province will receive a new, plain language provincial report card as school breaks for the summer, Education Minister Nancy Allan announced.
“We know that children do better in school when their parents are full partners in their education. The new report card is a communication tool that gives parents consistent, clear information about how well their children are learning, what steps students can take to improve and what parents can do to help,” said Allan.
There are three report card formats – one for grades 1 to 6, one for grades 7 and 8 and one for grades 9 to 12. In addition to information about academic achievement, the new report card features information about students’ learning behaviours, so parents can understand their children’s effort and attitude in class. The new high school report card (grades 9 to 12) contains a completion of requirements for graduation chart, showing the student’s progress toward graduation.
In developing the new report card, the province consulted broadly with education partners and formed an oversight committee comprised of the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils, Manitoba School Boards Association, Manitoba Association of School Board Officials, Manitoba Teachers’ Society and Manitoba Association of School Superintendents.
After piloting the new report card during the 2011-12 school year, the province gave school divisions the option of implementing it in 2012-13. Divisions overwhelmingly embraced the new report card with 485 schools in 35 school division introducing it, Allan said, adding implementation of the new report card is mandatory in all public schools starting in September 2013.
The new report card is one of number of initiatives the provincial government has undertaken to strengthen Manitoba’s education system including:
- revising the kindergarten to Grade 8 math curriculum to ensure that students are getting the basic skills they needed to do arithmetic and solve problems,
- increasing funding for the Early Numeracy Initiative to support school divisions with the design and implementation of numeracy programming and teacher professional development to improve students’ math skills in kindergarten to Grade 8,
- reducing class sizes to 20 students or fewer in kindergarten to Grade 3, and
- implementing a new assessment policy to ensure more rigorous standards in schools.
The province recently announced that Manitoba’s high school graduation rate for June 2012 has increased to 84.1 per cent, an 18 per cent increase since 2002, Allan noted.
The minister also unveiled new multilingual parent brochures to help parents understand how to get the most of out the new report cards.
“Manitoba has a vibrant and diverse population and we have been welcoming newcomers to our province in record numbers. To help these parents help their child, we have developed a new multilingual parent brochure available in 16 languages to ensure whether you speak Tagalog, German or Punjabi, you will have ability to read and understand how the new gives parents the information they need to help their children succeed in school,” said Allan.
The Languages include English, French, Korean, Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Cree, German, Ojibway, Punjabi, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tigrinya and Vietnamese.
The brochures are available online. For more information about the new, provincial parent-friendly report card, visit the website.
