New diploma exam weight could affect enrolment at U of A

Though the Government of Alberta’s announcement of reduced diploma exam weight from 50 per cent to 30 per cent may come as a relief for high school students, Elizabeth Corrigan feels she’s missed out.

“I think it’s unfair,” Corrigan, a first-year Kinesiology student, said. “If (current high school students) don’t do so well on the diploma, it’s not going to impact them as drastically as me.”

Corrigan’s social studies diploma mark reduced her aggregate course mark by nearly 20 per cent, and put her overall average just two per cent below the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation minimum requirements. After spending a year at MacEwan University upgrading, she successfully transferred to the U of A for the 2014 fall semester.

Corrigan’s story is one of many at the university, as some students spend years and thousands of dollars upgrading due to poor diploma exam marks. U of A Deputy Registrar Melissa Padfield said it is currently unclear how the change will be implemented by the Office of the Registrar, as the first crop of students to see the new diploma exam weighting will have their marks back in December.

“We’ve been consulting with Alberta Education for about 18 months on this,” Padfield said. “Now we’re going to do a systematic analysis now to see what, if any impact, this will have on grades of incoming students.”

Alberta Education said they hope the changes increase graduation rates, decrease dropout rates and increase eligibility for scholarships. But the functional changes for university admissions remain uncertain, Padfield said.

“It’s too early for us to even say whether or not this will have an impact,” she said. “There’s always going to be a lot of speculation, but we’ve got to deal with what actually is going to happen.
“There is no discussion about changing the way we do admissions. We only admit based on high school grades, and that is how we gauge student preparedness.”

The grade students use to apply to post-secondary will be the same grade on the statement of results distributed by Alberta Education.

Jyoti Mangat, principal at Bellerose Composite High School in St. Albert, said this change could have a positive impact on her students. The benefits for high school students in Alberta could be significant, Mangat added.

“Our curriculum in Alberta is quite rigorous, and I think that this gives the respect that the classroom work is due,” she said.

“A reduction to a 30 per cent (diploma) exam can potentially really help with anxiety, which may help improve student performance by alleviating some of the worry and fear that kids have about the impact which one exam will have on their futures.”

Mangat said the current economic uncertainty in the oil and gas sector along with the exam weight change could make high school completion more palatable for some students, and would give them fewer reasons to drop out.

Which of these factors may be responsible for any changes however, remains to be seen.

For now, many of Mangat’s and student questions remain pending, as the first round of newly weighted diploma marks will require further evaluation when students enrol at post-secondary institutions.

“My biggest concern right now is that no post-secondary institution has responded to it other than ‘wait and see,’” Mangat said.