Central Alberta partners in education met for the first time formally at an Educational Summit to discuss a variety of common issues like dropout rates, transition from high school to post-secondary, and high school completion.
School board chairs, superintendents and college representatives hoped by the end of the day-long meeting on Monday that they would find more common ground on key issues, new strategies and opportunities to work together.
Enterprise and Advanced Education Minister Stephan Khan said it was encouraging to see this type of initiative between school boards and the colleges.
“We are hoping this is a sustainable model that perhaps we can utilize in other (regions) as well,” said Khan, at RDC on Monday.
RDC president Joel Ward said the more opportunities for the school boards and the college to work together, the more likely that students will make good choices about the programs they take when they get to post-secondary institutions.
“We want to ensure the teachers and counsellors in (kindergarten to Grade 12) have a complete understanding of the options that might be available for kids when they get to high school,” said Ward.
Ward said they would like to find opportunities to bring college faculty into the schools, talking to students, giving presentations, attending career fairs and offering lectures on areas of interest that may not exist in the kindergarten to Grade 12 system.
“If we start to look at education as kindergarten to Grade 16 instead of kindergarten to Grade 12 and post-secondary, and ways to integrate, I think we can find a common ground,” said Ward.
At the end of the day, a working group will be formed to look at opportunities for future pilot projects and action items. Ward suggested a second-semester Grade 12 class as a pilot project where the students and the teachers would study on RDC campus.
Wild Rose School Division superintendent Brian Celli said there was a time when people could get by on a Grade 9 education, but those times are gone.
“For students to really have opportunities to have the lives they may really want, they need to probably go to some kind of post-secondary,” said Celli.
“So one of the things we need to do is line up the pieces to allow them to do that. To make sure when students leave our institutions, they have what they need to pursue what they want to pursue in the post-secondary realm.”
crhyno@www.reddeeradvocate.com