Manitoba Students Outperformed All Other Provinces in Mathematics – Winnipeg

The latest national assessment shows that Grade 8 students in Manitoba are outperformed in math by their peers in all other provinces, and are well below the national average.

The 2019 Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) shows that Manitoba students were 35 points behind the national average and five points lower than the next lowest province, Newfoundland and Labrador.

“In Manitoba, 83 percent of students have reached or exceeded Level 2 in math (Level 2 is the basic or expected level of math proficiency for Grade 8 students),” the report says.

“Four percent of Manitoba students achieved the highest level of achievement (Level 4), which is lower than the nine percent of students achieving that level in Canada as a whole.”

Despite the sub-optimal results, it wasn’t all bad news.

Overall math scores have been rising steadily since 2010 (although they peaked in 2016), and the percentage of students achieving the highest level of performance has increased from 1% to 4%.

“We’re kind of going in the right direction, but we really need to improve the scores overall,” said Anna Stokke, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Winnipeg.

“One of the provinces that has seen the biggest increase since 2010 is Prince Edward Island, and they’ve instituted provincial testing for Grades 3, 6, and 9, and I think we need to do something. thing like that. We need to check every year and make the overall scores – the percentages – publicly available so that we know what’s going on. “

PCAP found that there was no significant difference between students in Anglophone or Francophone school systems, however, boys performed better than girls – a notable difference from the pan-Canadian level, which did not. found no gender gap.

Beyond standardized tests, Stokke said parents concerned about their child’s math skills could help.

“The first thing I would recommend for parents is to make sure your kids remember their schedules. It’s absolutely imperative, ”Stokke said.

“They should know these things automatically, so help your child to do that. And just make sure they know those foundational skills. Make sure they know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

“When they’re in grades 7 and 8, you want to make sure they’ve mastered the fractions; add and subtract fractions, multiply, divide fractions. It would be better if they learned it sooner, but it’s covered late in our curriculum.

In an emailed statement to Global News, Education Minister Cliff Cullen said that Manitoba students’ access to quality education is essential to government priorities.

“While these results are not optimal, we are encouraged by the work that is being done with our education partners to achieve better outcomes for students,” Cullen concluded.

Reading and Science

The results of Manitoba students in reading and science were also far from desirable.

Reading scores were 24 points lower than the national average and showed only a marginal overall increase from 2010. French-speaking students’ results declined.

Girls posted “significantly” higher results than boys, on par with the trend across the country.

The overall science score was 12 points lower than the national average, but for French-speaking students, the difference was almost twice as large.

That said, the results for both groups were significantly higher than in 2013.

Girls performed much better than boys, but the results were unchanged from 2013, while boys improved somewhat.