In legislation introduced this week, the provincial government unveiled changes to the School Act that will give each of B.C.'s 60 school districts the freedom to adopt year-round schooling and extend distance learning opportunities to all students.
Matt Pearce thinks the idea of changing the school calendar to shorten the summer break would help some students retain more of what they've already learned in class. But the president of the Prince George District Teachers Association is dead set against giving students in younger grades the option to complete course studies online using computers outside of the classroom.
Students across the province in Grades 10-12 already have the distance learning option for most courses and Pearce says the success rates are "dismal." By extending that opportunity to kindergarten-Grade 9 students, he thinks the province is making a huge mistake.
"Online learning has proven itself to be a terrible way for children to try to learn," said Pearce. "The success rates for distance learning are around 10 per cent provincewide and that's for the older kids, yet you will never get the province to admit that. The province would love parents to choose distance learning because it would save huge amounts of money [on teacher salaries] but the success rate is horrible."
Education Minister George Abbott said Friday it is very unlikely online courses would be available in the foreseeable future to students younger than Grade 8, but he said the School Amendment Act had to be written to include all students to allow for rapid advancements in online technology anticipated in future years.
"What we're doing by [offering distance learning] to kindergarten to Grade 9 is to say, who knows what's going to evolve in the world of distance learning in the next decade or two," Abbott said. "We've seen dramatic changes in distance learning in the last five years, never mind the next 10 or 20."
The number of distance learning students in public schools has increased significantly in recent years, from 9,190 in 2006-07 to 22,011 in 2010-11. In independent schools over that same time period, the number of online learners jumped from 2,548 to 5,528. In School District 57, there were 238 students taking courses online in 2010-11.
"The most popular teacher in B.C. is a chemistry teacher in Lumby who has all manner of students from around the district and elsewhere in the province taking his distance learning course," said Abbott. "Some students love distance learning as a choice thing and that's why there's been such a dramatic increase in the numbers taking it."
Pearce said he's heard firsthand from a counsellor at McBride secondary school about high school-aged students taking distance courses not offered at that school and only 11 per cent of those students successfully completed the courses. However, a ministry spokesman said there is virtually no difference in provincial exam results from distance education students compared to the results of mainstream students.
Pearce's daughter Tenley, a Grade 11 student who has a 97 per cent average, took her Planning 10 course online to allow her to load up on senior science courses as part of her classroom course load.
"She's a top-notch student and both her parents are teachers who are fairly demanding and she has really struggled to complete the course," said Pearce. "You have to have such self-discipline because you are determining when you're going to teach it to yourself, how frequently you'll get assignments done and when you will take the tests online."
Some B.C. schools already have year-round calendars, including Glendale elementary in Williams Lake, Spul'u'kwuks elementary in Richmond, Kanaka Creek elementary in Maple Ridge, and Douglas Park community school in Langley. Those schools operate on a trimester system with six-week summer breaks (instead of 10 weeks) and two-week breaks in the fall and spring.
