Kamloops-Thompson school district staff are going to review the recently released completion-rate data to see if there’s a better way to keep track of how many district students are completing Grade 12.
Superintendent Tarry Sullivan said he “hesitates” to accept the province’s numbers as the truth.
“We believe that there are some major anomalies with the data,” he said, calling completion rates one of the best indicators of how a school district is performing.
“For us to be able to evaluate how good are programs are at doing that, we need good data.”
Completion rates are different than graduation rates.
While graduation rates track the number of Grade 12 students in a district and record how many graduate at the end of the school year, completion rates measure the percentage of students who graduate within six years of starting Grade 8 for the first time.
SD73 has a completion-rate target of 85 per cent.
According to the provincial figures, 76.1 per cent of district students graduated in 2009-2010.
The Revelstoke school district had the highest completion rate, at 97.9 per cent.
The Nisga’a school district had the lowest, at 35.9 per cent.