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Renfrew County Catholic District School Board congratulates students on their success in the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test
With an 86% result, students at the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board scored above the provincial result in this year’s Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test. Provincial, board and school results of the OSSLT, written by grade 10 students on March 29th, were released publicly on June 13,th 2012. The provincial result was an 82% pass rate for first-time writers who completed the test.
“We are very pleased with the 86% result for our board overall and attribute our improvement to increasingly precise and focused whole-school literacy. We want to acknowledge the hard work of our students and the professionalism and dedication of our teachers and support staff,” commented Michele Arbour, Director of Education.
“The RCCDSB congratulates all students who passed the OSSLT, which is a key requirement for graduation,” said Jaimie Perry, Superintendent of Educational Services for the RCCDSB, “and we will immediately look at ongoing interventions particularly for our pupils who were not successful on the test.”
A high degree of literacy is a fundamental goal of the RCCDSB. “One of our Catholic Graduate Expectations calls on pupils to be effective communicators who read, understand and use written materials effectively, and who present information and ideas clearly and honestly, and with sensitivity to others,” Perry further explained. “We view a high degree of literacy as foundational to a pupil’s effective participation in society. Raising student achievement and closing the gap in achievement continue to be key aspects of our board improvement plan and form the core focus of our board’s program team, principals, teachers and support staff.”
Bishop Smith Catholic High School Principal Mark Searson noted,” We are so proud of the work of our students who wrote the test and our staff who prepared them. This year at Bishop Smith, we undertook a school-wide Literacy SMART goal around our students’ capacity in inferencing. We had all our grade 9 students write a common literacy assessment that was designed by our Moderns department at the start of the school year. The data from this assessment and past OSSLT results indicated that inferencing was where we needed some emphasis. We are excited to see that our school-wide literacy focus, involving every teacher and every subject, has resulted in literacy gains on this particular measure.” Brennan Trainor, Principal at St. Joseph’s High School, Renfrew, echoed these sentiments: “We had a clear goal around literacy across the curriculum at St. Joseph’s and we are overjoyed to see our students’ and teachers’ hard work paying off on the OSSLT.”
June 13, 2012
For further information, please contact:
Michele Arbour, Director of Education
Renfrew County Catholic District School Board
499 Pembroke Street West
Pembroke, ON K8A 5P1
Phone: 613-735-1031 or 1-800-267-019l