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Nunavut flunks national math test

Only 8 per cent of 13-year-olds tested last year meet minimum skill levels in math

JIM BELL

The results of a national mathematics test released last week show that Nunavut students know far less about math than students anywhere else in Canada.

Conducted under the School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) in 2001, the test shows that 13- and 16-year-old students in Nunavut perform at levels well below every other province or territory — even the Northwest Territories.

This is the first time that Nunavut has participated in SAIP tests on its own.

A meagre 8 per cent of 13-year-olds in Nunavut met or exceeded "Level 2" — considered to be the minimum acceptable level of difficulty. In the Northwest Territories, 40.5 per cent of 13-year-old students met or exceeded Level 2.

Only 27.8 per cent of 13-year-old Nunavut students could reach even Level 1 — the lowest of five levels of difficulty against which student performance was measured.

That means most Nunavut students haven’t mastered simple skills such as multiplying two numbers less than 1,000, or interpreting simple information contained in graphs and tables.

But across Canada, 88.3 per cent of 13-year-olds reached or exceeded Level 1.

Canada’s overall results show that 64.4 per cent of 13-year-olds made the Level 2 grade. Alberta students posted the best performance — 70.6 of the province’s students achieved Level 2, as did 60.5 per cent of Alberta’s 16-year-olds.

Nunavut’s 16-year-olds did a little better — 27.6 managed to reach Level 2, compared with 77.5 per cent of 16-year-olds across Canada.

Tom Rich, Nunavut’s deputy minister of education, said Nunavut’s woeful results aren’t his department’s fault, and that they come as no surprise.

"The result with the 13-year-olds is the easiest to explain, but all of it is about what we expected," Rich said.

Rich said many 13-year-olds in Nunavut, especially in the Baffin region, don’t know enough English to comprehend many questions on the test, especially word problems.

"The cultural component is one that we shouldn’t underestimate. That is, how the examples are presented, how the problems are presented and whether or not the students relate to them," Rich said.

He also said Nunavut teachers and students aren’t used to such achievement tests. Most Canadian provinces now use province-wide standards tests, but Nunavut and the Northwest Territories never have.

Rich said Nunavut has a "new" system, especially at the secondary level. Schools in many communities have been offering high school level courses for only a few years.

But why, after being in school for six to eight years, are 13-year-old students in Nunavut so weak in the English language?

Rich says one reason is that most Inuit students study mostly in Inuktitut for their first three to five years in school.

"That language transference issue is a very substantial one. It also has to do with how we approach language instruction, which is why we are having our own internal discussions, looking at the whole issue of how language is taught, and how you develop a strong first language and then move into the transference toward a second language," Rich said.

Another is that many elementary teachers in Nunavut may not have the training they need to teach math skills effectively.

"There’s a teacher training issue for all of our teachers. Historically, we know that elementary school teachers are not math specialists and are not expected to be math specialists, and yet our expectations now in Canada in mathematics are extremely high," Rich said.

Rich said, however, that if the test had been administered in Inuktitut, Nunavut students would have done better.

"I have no doubt about that," Rich said.

As a result of the information revealed by the SAIP test, Rich says Nunavut’s education department will take action in three areas: teacher training, curriculum development, and the production of resource materials.

He said the lack of resource materials is a "real problem" that hampers the ability of teachers to provide instruction in Inuktitut — including mathematics instruction.

Rich also said the department is working on professional development initiatives with teachers aimed at strengthening their math teaching skills.

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