All levity aside, the question of whether the Okanagan’s public schools are meeting the expectations of parents, students and taxpayers is very serious — and complicated

By Laurie Carter

When I set out to explore the state of education in the Okanagan, I had no particular thesis to prove, but I do admit to dragging along some weighty baggage —  a decided bias. My days of personal contact with the K to 12 system are in hiatus. This summer my daughter will attend her 10-year high school reunion and my grandson isn’t yet ready for preschool. I felt far out of touch, except in one area.

As a magazine editor, I can’t avoid this one. Samples land in my inbox pretty much every day in the form of queries, pitches sent by writers and would-be writers outlining their story ideas for Okanagan Life.

Call me unreasonable, but I have a certain expectation that people who want to be paid for putting words to page should be able to demonstrate some facility with the written language. You know, using the basics — like spelling and grammar.

Certainly many of these pitches are excellent, you see the results in every issue of the magazine. But a disturbing proportion are groan- or laugh-out-loud pathetic. We read them to each other in the editorial room when we need a little comic relief. And I’d bet that I could quite accurately predict the age of the writer by the level of skill with those basics.

So there it is, I wanted to see just what the system is turning out, how it’s changed in the last few decades and whether or not today’s Okanagan students are getting as good an education as their parents.

What’s it all About
The BC ministry of education has set three main goals: improved student achievement; a high quality education system; and improved literacy for all British Columbians. The ultimate aim is to make “BC the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent.”

The influence of an increasingly competitive, globalized environment is obvious at this macro political level, but local stakeholders have a more personal perspective.

Becky Thorn, whose two sons attend Westbank schools, says the “goals have to be to get kids through school to the best of their ability,” ideally helping each student to reach his or her potential.

Carol Malmas, with two daughters in the same schools, wants to see the system “provide a well-rounded curriculum for students of all learning abilities and for teachers to have the opportunity to teach without having to spend so much time dealing with behavioural issues.”

Integrating the micro and macro views, Vernon Teachers’ Association president Barry Dorval argues, “We need to be about giving kids the academic, the intellectual, the social tools they need to achieve their goals.” Calling this his skills-based answer, he adds that a central purpose of the system should also be to expose students to a broader world perspective, “building things like tolerance and interest in creating a just society” so they can participate productively in that broader world. At the same time, he says, “we have a responsibility to individual kids to help them, one-by-one, get a sense of their own uniqueness, their gifts, their passions, their strengths, the things they need to work on.”

School District 22 board of education chair, Bill Turanski, a retired educator now in his fifth term as a school trustee, takes the long-range view. Lifelong learning, he says. “We are in the position of having to get students ready for jobs that don’t even exist yet and so they have to be flexible, they have to know how to learn and we have to give them those skills.”

And while acknowledging the broader provincial directives, School District 23 superintendent Mike Roberts says, “My goal is to provide the best education for all — underline all — of the children of the Central Okanagan.” The Rutland Senior Secondary grad, who has spent his entire career as teacher and administrator in this district adds that it’s about “meeting the needs and desires of a whole range of kids from a whole bunch of different backgrounds through public education.”

Not the Little Red School House Any More
The theme of diversity, of meeting the needs of a broad spectrum of students destined for a range of future career paths, both traditional and as yet unknown, and driven by tremendous external forces, has led to significant change in the public school system in recent decades.

“If you think back 20 or 30 years ago, it was pretty much one size fits all,” says Roberts. “You went from kindergarten to Grade 12 and popped out the other end with your diploma and it was pretty much a standard program across the board.”

Now choices, especially in secondary schools, are legion. Lindsay Malmas, a Grade 10 student at Mount Boucherie Secondary School likes “being able to choose courses around our interests and future career opportunities. Also, the large student population is interesting.”

Brendan Thorn, who attends Mount Boucherie as a Grade 11 student, is taking advantage of the chance to knock off some Grade 12 courses this year as well. “They offer so many programs,” he says. “They even have a firefighting program.”

His mom underscores the point. “The school has this huge course selection book. It’s a small catalogue,” she says. “They’re finally looking and saying, not every child is going to go to college or university or trade school — and if they are, let’s give them a leg up.” Thorn explains that students can now take some college or apprenticeship courses in high school. “So when you emerge into the real world, you’re on your way.”

She sees this as a massive change since her own school days, speculating that with this approach, her brothers, who both quit school, might have stuck with it. “I think that basic education is being more realistically matched to the fact that there are different shapes, sizes, colours, academic levels, interests — and they’re saying, we can offer them something. There are probably a lot fewer throw away kids than there were.”

School District 23 offers as many as 15 different post-secondary programs, either through Okanagan College or BCIT, with options ranging from aviation to diesel mechanic, from forestry to health sciences, from home building to cooking. Roberts says, “The neat thing is, because they’re still in high school, most of these programs are provided tuition free.” And he adds that hundreds of students are taking advantage of the opportunity.

Turanski describes the system as unrecognizable compared with the days of his first teaching job, 46 kids in a grade five/six split. He applauds the expanding focus that’s taking education far beyond the walls of the classroom. “We have kids now supporting the homeless, collecting food and they’re very much involved in the community. Their outlook is so much broader,” he says. “We have global education students going to Nicaragua every year. The last group were helping to build an addition to an orphanage …. We have kids going to Cuba, to France — they’ve become global.”

Special Needs
Closer to home, that expanding focus has also deeply affected the overall approach to special needs students. Roberts says that when he first started in 1980, special education was centralized and segregated. “If you were different, if you were a special ed student, more interested in trades, were an aboriginal student, an ESL student, there wasn’t necessarily a place for you in the public system.” He says that such students weren’t overtly told to leave, “but you were kind of encouraged to go out and find a job or you were put into a segregated program.” Now the system is more inclusive.

Taylor Malmas, a Grade 8 student at Constable Neil Bruce Middle School with two special needs boys in her class, views inclusion positively. “It’s fun getting to know them and it helps us to learn patience and acceptance,” she says. “I think it’s good to have these kinds of friendships because we learn a lot from each other.”

But the shift has raised no small amount of controversy. Dorval explains that teachers see both sides of the coin. He says that kids with special needs or a second language present the potential to enrich a class. While he thinks “it’s really helpful for us as a society to grow up, to nurture our children in a way that they see the inclusion of everyone and the gifts that they can bring … it creates a tolerance, an understanding, a valuing,” he fears that all the positives can quickly sour if there isn’t sufficient support in the classroom.

“The impact is mixed,” he concludes. “To the extent that it’s done well, it has enriched us. To the extent that it has been (and unfortunately, I think this has been increasing recently) not been supported adequately, it actually undermines the goals.”

The current system can also be intensely frustrating for gifted children and their parents. Many will be startled to learn that “gifted” is listed among the 12 categories of special needs, which run the gambit from visual impairment to autism to mental illness to learning disability. In the current school year, nearly 16 per cent of special needs students in the province fall into this category (down from nearly 23 per cent in 2003/04). However, parents like Thorn would argue that funding and programs in no way reflect this proportion.

“There are no enrichment dollars,” she says. “As a parent I understand, if there are only X number of dollars, those dollars are allocated to kids that have learning disabilities — they have to be. Yet part of me resents that because my boys have special needs, too. They’re just different.”

During the research for this story, the emphasis among administrators and teachers on special needs students became abundantly clear. Such a noticeable amount of interview time centred on the topic (without a single mention of enrichment or gifted students from any of the educators), that it prompted a closer look at the numbers.

In school districts 22 and 23 (those interviewed), the proportion of students identified as special needs has declined since 2001 from around 11 per cent to about seven per cent. In the same time frame, District 53 has fluctuated between nine and 11 percent. Only District 67 has seen a steady increase, from 13 to 15 per cent.

Techno-Ed
Another area of obvious and significant change is the extent to which technology has been integrated into the educational process. Even the most ardent Luddite would be pressed to argue that computers and information technology don’t warrant an important place in the system. But there is definite controversy over the how and how much, especially when it comes to arming students with take-home PCs.

“Our backpacks are heavy enough without adding the weight of a laptop,” says Taylor Malmas. “They do give us benefits like research and instant test results. Doing projects is easier because of PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office features. However, it’s not like our learning abilities have been increased by having them. We’d still be able to do the exact same things in school without them. I don’t think they’re necessary.”

Nolan Thorn, a Grade 9 student at Constable Neil Bruce, missed the PC program by a year, which doesn’t really frustrate him because he’s heard a lot of negative comments like Taylor’s. There’s also plenty of buzz about the amount of non-educational use the PCs are getting. Apparently bypassing the installed controls isn’t a big deal and he says a lot of time is being spent on gaming and even dropping in to porn sites. Overall, he’s pretty dismissive. “They bought cheap laptops, really slow. I imagine they have enough output for school stuff, but ….”

Not surprisingly, parents like Carol Malmas aren’t enthusiastic either. “I’m not convinced it’s enhancing the kids’ education the way it’s supposed to,” she says. “There is still a lot of work that’s done from textbooks and anything the kids need a computer for, most kids have access to at home. On the other hand,” she concedes, “it can really be very beneficial in areas where families don’t have computers at home.”

And there’s the rub. Roberts admits that the PC program “has presented some challenges.” But he adds that “things are starting to smooth out and we’re trying to adapt the program as we move forward.” This includes going to smaller, lighter laptops and being more selective about who gets the computers as the program is rolled out at the grade 10, 11 and 12 level.

He cites the example of forestry students who spend up to 90 per cent of their time working in the bush. “We want to give them access to technology when in school, but they don’t need it on an everyday basis. It’s refining who has the laptops and when they need to use them.”

This is the approach that Turanski says his district has taken from the start. “We have laptop computers in all of our schools right now. They’re wireless and they can be moved from classroom to classroom and they’re very much in use.” But there’s no take-home program.

Learning Environment
While kids are fundamentally still kids, the world around them has undeniably changed and Dorval says they’re responding to that change. Turanski agrees, “They have a much broader outlook, they’re much better informed and they know what’s going on in the world.” But, he adds, that changing world has brought hazards. “When we went to school, we didn’t have drug problems, we didn’t seem to have the predators … they’re exposed to a lot more dangers.”

Taylor Malmas also highlights the point. “People are very friendly to each other, but then there is the competitive side of all the students which causes drama, arguments, fights and peer pressure …. Another factor of the dangerous part is drug and alcohol abuse. This happens in every grade, not just the older kids.”

Her schoolmate Nolan Thorn says he finds the environment pretty casual and his mom goes a step farther. “I think there’s just so much less respect, I think it’s just more acceptable amongst their group to be that way. I’m not going to say respect is dying, but I don’t think it’s taught as well as it should be.”

Taylor’s mom echoes this thought. “I think the level of respect between teacher and student is different now.” Malmas says that many teachers try to be friends with their students, dressing and behaving in a way that makes it easier to relate. “In some ways, it’s great,” she says, “but it can backfire as well if the kids don’t respect you as an authority figure.”

And while Malmas also voices the opinion that students haven’t changed much, she thinks that parents have. “Too many parents expect the teachers and the school system to raise their kids and blame the schools or teachers when their kids don’t do well or get into trouble.”

Measuring Up
Malmas isn’t prepared to let teachers right off the hook, though. While she decries the amount of time they have to spend dealing with behavioural problems, she would also like to see greater accountability and teaching standards.

“It shouldn’t be acceptable for those who are not effective in their roles not to have to be accountable to a higher standard and to continue teaching without having to improve their performance,” she says. “Most of us are given some kind of regular feedback on our performance. If we are not doing a good job, we either have to improve or move on.”

Teacher rep Dorval argues that there is actually a great emphasis on accountability — although not necessarily at the level of individual teachers. He says that achievement, the current buzzword around accountability, is measured by graduation rates and success on tests such as the Foundation Skills Assessments (FSA) administered by the BC ministry of education. These annual province-wide tests assess reading, writing and numeracy skills among students in grades 4 and 7.

The Fraser Institute uses the results to publish its annual Report Card on British Columbia’s Elementary Schools. “The FSA results are the only objective data available that measure the extent to which BC’s public and private elementary schools are ensuring that their students have acquired the basic skills they need to further their education,” says Peter Cowley, director of school performance studies and co-author of the Report Card. “Regrettably, the province’s teachers’ union would have us believe that these tests are unnecessary.”

Administrators don’t seem too impressed either. Roberts and Turanski both say the FSAs are poor indicators of the quality of a school and that it’s easy to predict which schools will do well and which won’t. It’s essentially a function of the socio-economic level of the neigbourhoods the schools service. Turanski doesn’t put much credence in the scores. “They’re nothing more than a snapshot of one element, one time and that’s all they see.”

Roberts says, “It’s become a comparator of the quality of teaching and it really shouldn’t be used for that.” He offers the analogy of two sports coaches, one with a superstar and the other with a brand new athlete. “Who’s the better coach,” he asks, “the one who has the athlete who maybe scores a few more points or the one that brings the individual the farthest distance? Education is about improvement for all kids, not just the superstars.”

Still, Roberts is quick to point out other comparative data, underscoring the high standing that BC schools have consistently attained in the PISA studies. The Programme for International Student Assessment, run through the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is a triennial survey of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds.

The 2006 survey, reporting on data collected from 57 countries and including all Canadian provinces, ranked BC students fourth in the world in science, outperformed only by Finland, Alberta and Hong Kong. Our students ranked sixth in reading and twelfth in mathematics.
Comforting statistics in the era of globalization — to some degree. However, while the performance of Canadian students remained unchanged in reading and mathematics between the 2003 and 2006 reports, our ranking slipped, indicating that other countries are surging ahead.
In this context, it is perhaps surprising that provincial examinations have been made optional.

Roberts says the change was driven by decisions at the post-secondary rather than the high school level. In British Columbia, UBC is the only university that still uses the provincial exam marks as a qualifier for entrance. Post-secondary institutions are now using a spectrum of criteria including portfolios and interviews, investigating all facets of a student’s background, not just the academic.

Turanski isn’t convinced that this is the best move. He cites the fact that most institutions outside the province still look at marks and he points to concrete examples of the fact that different teachers can apply different standards.

“The other thing is,” he says, “the ministry is always looking for accountability. What do you use for accountability? … Teachers could do a good job of assessment, but they too wonder sometimes, how do we compare with other jurisdictions. Are we on the right track? It’s a mixed bag.”

Many teachers will be glad to see the reduced emphasis on provincials. Dorval says, “teachers feel like they’re doing a disservice to kids if they’re not shaping the curriculum towards the test.” But, he adds, “I’m not sure that doing well on a test is the same as engaging kids in learning.” He contends that the exams force teachers to use a more didactic style and as a consequence, “we impoverish the experience that we should be able to be presenting to kids in high school.”

As a parent, Malmas has no problem with provincial exams, in theory. But she worries that so much depends on the individual teacher. “The problem is that not all kids are getting the same level of teaching or learning all of the curriculum required to do well on these exams.” She says that kids could be getting As and Bs in class but not do well on the provincials.

Whether this is the fault of teachers not covering the curriculum or a function of that disparity in standards that Turanski identified remains a question. And the jury must still be out on the long-term implications of making the exams optional. The province has tried this before, doing away with them completely in 1973. The ministry reinstated the program in 1984.

Big Bucks
On March 14, 2008, the ministry of education issued a press release that led with the statement: “BC school districts will share the highest education budget ever, a $122-million increase over last year, despite the continuing trend of declining enrolment, education minister Shirley Bond announced today …. This is the eighth year in a row that the per-pupil funding has increased ….”

Okanagan school districts — 22, 23, 53 and 67 — have mirrored the provincial trend in declining enrolment with more than 3,600 fewer students attending public schools in 2007/08 than in 2001/02. Yet grants have continued to rise.

So what benefits are filtering down to students?

“None,” says Thorn. “A lot of the things I scratch my head about, like busing. There are no enrichment dollars. When special events come up, there’s fundraising involved because there’s no money for that.”

Malmas agrees. “I can’t say we’ve noticed any value from additional dollars our schools have received.”

Administrators are shaking their heads. Roberts admits that overall funding has increased, but so have costs. While the ministry kicked in an additional $144 million across the province this year, he points out that collective agreement wage increases also happened to be $144 million. “What we’ve seen for the most part over the last three, four, five years I call stable or flat funding in terms of what we can offer.”

Turanski highlights more examples of rising operating costs — fuel for buses, heating, utilities. “We actually often feel we have less money because we need things that we didn’t, computers for example. We didn’t buy computers 20 years ago, but they’re absolutely vital to the program if we’re going to stay in the 21st century.”

The board chair cites data prepared by Sunshine Coast school trustee Norm Gleadow, a former university professor with a doctorate in education, that compares funding levels from 1995/96 through 2006 using constant dollars adjusted for inflation. Gleadow’s report says, “the 1995/96 allocation was $5,599 per FTE (full-time equivalent student) and in 2005/06 it was $5,595 per FTE.”

Getting it Done
Bottom line, regardless of the pressures and constraints, the vital question is whether or not the public education system is achieving its goals, fulfilling the expectations of parents and meeting the needs of students.

The educators we interviewed are united in declaring that today’s kids are getting a better education than their parents or grandparents. Dorval contends that teachers are better prepared, that the system is more diverse and more rigorous. “We are teaching things in Grade 10 courses now that they were teaching in Grade 12 when I was in high school.” He also says that there is “more understanding about the importance of nurturing the emotional aspects of kids so they can be successful in learning.”

Roberts says, “If you look at the percentage of students who graduate, the literacy, the numeracy levels and the inclusion of all learners in the system, you’d have to judge that the system has improved.” He’s also proud of the way schooling now links to life after Grade 12, highlighting the importance of partnerships with Okanagan College, UBC-Okanagan and BCIT that allow students to take advanced courses while still in high school. “We’re certainly doing a much better job of having students blend in from high school to post-secondary.”

Turanski underscores the importance of enhanced preparation for teachers. “When I took my teacher training, we weren’t even told that you couldn’t expect the same from every student. Basically, if a student was failing, it was because he or she wasn’t working hard enough …. Now we have the ability to deal with those students.”

The District 22 board chair also touts the range of activities that go beyond curricular learning. “Students are very much a part of the community and even beyond the community, and that is the most significant thing. We left the classroom; the classroom is no longer the boundary. We go much beyond that.”

Parents are less effusive in their assessment. Malmas thinks “the education system does an adequate job for what its role should be in preparing our kids for their future.” But she qualifies this statement by adding that parents bear the ultimate responsibility. “Raising our kids is our job and the education system should be our support system, not the other way around.”

Thorn says, “Yes, I hope the system is meeting my boys’ needs. I would be remiss as a parent if it weren’t, they shouldn’t be in it. Yes, I think it is.”

As for the kids, Grade 9 student Nolan Thorn wishes that classes could be structured to accommodate kids with a similar work ethic. For him, it’s not so much about being with other high performing students in terms of grades, but in studying with others who are genuinely interested in learning rather than marking time until they’re old enough to quit school.

Taylor Malmas, in Grade 8, is satisfied that the system is doing a good job of preparing her for high school. Two years farther on, her sister Lindsay is still deciding. “At this time, I’m not sure what I may want to do in the future or if school is helping determine that. There is a lot of course selection in Grade 11 and 12 that may provide more interest in a particular direction.”

Closest to graduation, Brendan Thorn says, “I definitely think they give you the tools to prepare you. They definitely give you lots of options. They get people from a variety of fields to show and tell what their job is, what training you need, supply you with websites, counsellors and people ready to help if you have questions. I feel prepared for university.”

Jury’s Still Out
I’ve come away from this story with a new respect for the K to 12 public education system in the Okanagan. I was surprised at the emphasis on diversity, on meeting the needs of individual kids, and truly stunned at the array of choices available to high school students. But I can’t help wondering if this curricular cornucopia doesn’t offer breadth at the expense of depth. Maybe that doesn’t matter — except that I still see those pathetic pitches and ask — what happened to the basic skills.

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Opting Out of Public Ed
Enrolment in public schools is trending downward and the decline isn’t entirely driven by demographics. An increasing number of parents are choosing other options such as home schooling and private schools. Province-wide, private school rolls have swelled by more than 5,600 students in the last five years.

Grant Ozechowski, a 14-year independent school veteran who now teaches at Aberdeen Hall in Kelowna, says one of the major reasons for this shift is class size. Having to deal with fewer students, teachers are able to adapt their instruction to meet the needs of each child. “No student fades into the background,” he says. “These small student/teacher ratios allow private schools to develop closer relationships with individual students and their families …. When students enrol here, they join more than a school, they become part of an extended family that genuinely cares for their well being. This community does not end at the classroom doorways.”

Parents who choose to home school are looking for even greater individual attention. Colleen Erzinger, founder of the Penticton-Summerland Home School Association, says that public education is “generally a system that warehouses children and segregates them by age.”

Currently home schooling two children at the Grade 8 and Grade 10 levels, she says, “I enjoy being with my children and being closely involved as mentor in their learning. I want to give them individualized one-on-one instruction that is thorough.” Erzinger feels that this mentoring approach gives her children time to explore their interests, express their creativity and follow their natural curiosity.

While not commenting on home schooling, School District 22 board chair Bill Turanski says there is no problem with independent schools in the Vernon area because they are mostly religious schools that take any students who want to attend. However, he does have a problem with what he calls high-end schools creaming off the best students. “Students with learning difficulties not wanted,” he says.

He argues that if the trend continues, “something like two per cent per year going to independent schools, then where will the tipping point be? The public school system will no longer have an equitable range of students.”

Ozechowski admits that there are no ESL students at Aberdeen Hall and few students with diagnosed learning disabilities. “However, we have many students who receive special instruction or enrichment,” something that parent Becky Thorn says is notably absent from the public system.

Some would argue that the so-called high-end independent schools cater only to the affluent and that their very existence is broadening the gap between the economic strata in this country. While scholarships and bursaries help some students who would not otherwise be able to attend and diversifying the socio-economic base of the school population, Ozechowski says the most difficult task for independent school educators is finding ways to make the experience accessible to as many students as possible.

School District 23 superintendent, Mike Roberts thinks that independent schools “are to some degree a reflection of the fact that the public school system has, up until fairly recently, been that one-size-fits-all.” As a result, he says it is important for parents to be viewed “as customers or consumers and that we try, within certain parameters, to meet the needs of individual children or meet the desires of individual families.”

Erzinger would argue that meeting the needs of individuals is already one of the strengths of the overall educational system in this province. “We have many educational choices from public to independent to private to distance learning to home schooling and this is beneficial for families instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to education and learning.”

Post-Secondary Perspective
Given my bias about the possible lack of certain basic skill levels among today’s high school grads, I contacted some of the people who are in a position to know.

UBC Okanagan assistant engineering professor Gord Lovegrove says that it seems schools are dropping calculus and introducing calculators earlier, so his students come in without strong algebra/multiplication table skills. 

“Combine that with a whole new breed of learning style — non-linear multi-taskers, relational dominant, non-competitive conditioned — and you have students that need a minor thermonuclear event to get warmed up/engaged in anything other than social events.”

While Lovegrove admires the life skills these kids display, he and his department colleagues feel they need help in making the transition to post-secondary. This year they launched a two-week boot camp to teach math skills, time management and general university survival skills.

The learning style of this millennial generation (kids who started to hit post-secondary education around 2000) is well documented. Mary Ann Murphy, associate professor of sociology with a cross-appointment on aging at UBC Okanagan, says they are more technologically savvy, more interested in social change, more optimistic and more confident, but they also need a lot of stimulation, explanation and reassurance.

“In my experience, the students are more motivated to learn than ever before. They constantly demand more interactivity and the ‘entertainment factor.’ I find myself really taking advantage of our super classrooms where I have full online access … after all, this generation grew up on TV and video games.” Murphy says her students love web-based discussion because it allows them to participate at any time of day, which is a big help since most of them have at least one part-time job.

Francie Greenslade, a member of the Okanagan College English faculty, also sees the impact of busy lives and competing demands. “Sometimes that translates to shortcuts,” she says. “Is this for marks? Will this be on the exam?” However, she doesn’t see students as being less prepared academically. “I’ve been teaching university English for 13 years. It was then and still is a favourite pastime of professors to complain about the lack of preparedness of students. I imagine that when I was a student, the professors complained about the fact that we didn’t know our Latin or our Bibles any more.”

Cindy Bourne, who coordinates learning support for UBC Okanagan, has a unique perspective. With a mandate to help all students make the transition from high school to university, she oversees three centres — math, writing and academic resources — where student tutors work with their peers.

“Writing in particular is a big step for them, academic writing is a big change,” she says. “Now they have to become critically reflective writers … they’ve got to write a thesis statement and if you haven’t done that before …. Critical reflection is often one of the most difficult steps for a first year student — to be asked what is significant about this or to look at an old document and critically reflect on it. In public school you’re not … here we’re really looking for that.”

Bourne often hears that today’s students aren’t reading and writing. Although they’re on the Internet all the time, “their way of writing is different, so we need to have them writing for post-secondary.”

And like Lovegrove, she sees the math problems. Bourne says the math centre is always busy. Overall, she says, “something like 27 to 28 per cent of the student population will need help in something because the learning is so different.”

It may be that the number of students seeking help is as much an indicator that institutions of higher learning have abandoned the old sink-or-swim mentality as it is of lower skill levels, but clearly the skills issue gets mixed reviews.

Photo by Kyle Perison