Betsy Kline
Castlegar News Reporter
Castlegar’s Stanley Humphries didn’t fare too well in the controversial Fraser Institute’s annual secondary school rankings.
The report, released Tuesday, ranked Stanley Humphries at 213 out of 293 secondary schools across the province.
The current rankings cover the 2012-2013. Schools are ranked based on the average provincial mark achieved by the school’s students in grades 10, 11 and 12 in the courses where the provincial exam is mandatory. Mandatory exams include Mathematics 10, Science 10, English 10, Social Studies 11 and English 12.
Stanley Humphries was ranked at 213 with an overall rating of 5.1. The average exam mark achieved by students on the Provincial exams was 67.5 which is very consistent to the scores from the previous three years.
The percentage of failed exams improved from last year dropping from 10.3 to 9.6.
The report shows that Stanley Humphries has a graduation rate of 92.2 and a delayed advancement rate of 16.6.
J. L. Crowe Secondary School in Trail had very similar average exam marks and failed exam percentages to Stanley Humphries but had better graduation and delayed advancement rates pushing their overall rating to 5.5 and their rank to 182.
L.V. Rogers Secondary School in Nelson scored better than the provincial average in most categories giving them an overall rating of 6.8 and a ranking of 91.
The rankings are widely dismissed by educators and administrators as a limited and misleading measure of a school’s worth.
“The Fraser report should be viewed as a snap shot of results. I don’t agree with using those results for rankings,” said Aaron McKenzie, Principal of Stanley Humphries.
“They do not take in to account socio-economic and other factors that affect a student’s ability when taking exams. When an outside source gets involved in ranking schools the results become muddled and political. The intent of the provincial exams was never for the purpose of ranking schools.”
Top ranked on this year’s list were two private girls schools in Vancouver: Crofton House and York House, both earned perfect scores. No public schools made the top 20.
The top interior school was Kelowna Christian at 20th and the top Kootenay school was Elkford Secondary in 28th for the second straight year. Last year Elkford ranked 37th.