Carrie Nelson Blogs!: July 2016

... Especially IB World schools. This is because many private schools share similar characteristics with universities. The most obvious example is the rigorous academic environment at IB private schools. Many first-year students entering university from the public education system are overwhelmed by the increased workload and thus witness a drastic grade drop; Maclean's has a fantastic article about this phenomenon. In addition to being unprepared for a university workload, public school students often receive inflated averages at high school which provides an unrealistic assessment of their skill to their detriment. University professors mark much more strictly because they are holding their students to a much higher standard; as evidenced by a real life scenario, in which a grade 12 public high school teacher gave an A+ letter grade to an English essay and an English professor evaluating the same paper assigned a B- letter grade instead. This disparity in grading systems makes the transition from grade 12 to first year much more difficult for students and demonstrates a severe lack of preparation.

Alarmingly, in addition to unrealistic grade assignments in public high schools, Ontario university professors in the sciences are reporting massive knowledge inconsistencies amongst their incoming first-year students. That is to say, in first-year science classes there is a huge diversity in background knowledge of core concepts with many students being insufficiently prepared for undergraduate chemistry and physics courses (which is reflected in their grades).

This is because Ontario has a huge spectrum of high school types and localized learning is leaving students unprepared for, and unaware of, university expectations. That is why I cannot stress how important IB private schools are for offering an international standardized education. This is the greatest solution for preparing students for university, by equipping them with all of the necessary tools to survive first-year courses. Private school students perform better on standardized tests than public school students, and by receiving a rigorous and advanced education they are less likely to experience a grade drop or learning gap when they enter university.

To all my readers, I hope you have a fantastic long weekend! And please let me know, what was your experience like making the switch from high school to university?

Private schools reduce the need for afterschool private tutoring. The ultimate benefits of this are a reduced education cost (depending on the external private tutoring company) and the elimination of a disjointed education experience (a tutor often complicates a child's learning experience because there is no coordination between school teacher and tutor).

In Canada, supplemental private tutoring is growing exponentially. Many parents are sending their children to afterschool tutoring sessions because the large classroom setting in public schools is overlooking struggling students. Private tutors also individualize students through their one-on-one tutelage. Many critics are pointing out this flaw in Ontario's public education system that is resulting in swarms of families having to supplement their child's education on their own time with their own money.

But instead of paying for a private tutor, why not just enrol your child in a private school instead? The guaranteed small classes eliminate the need for hiring a private tutor because no child is overlooked and the teacher has more time to mentor each student. Private schools also eliminate the disjointed learning experience that an independent tutor engenders, because a child will be receiving sufficient attention and education from one reliable source. Especially at an IB World school like St. Jude's Academy, you also know the exact qualifications of your child's mentor; whereas at independent tutoring companies you often do not know the education background of your child's assigned private tutor.

Also thank you for the almost 3,000 G+ views! If you haven't checked out my Google Plus profile yet, you can click here.

Bullying. It has become so commonplace in our society that it feels like an inescapable reality of school life. It is a parent's greatest fear, and too often it can feel like you are helplessly stuck on the sidelines, only able to hope that it does not happen to your child. Bullying is not okay: it is harmful and corrodes the purpose of school, which is to get an education. There does not seem to be a concrete solution for public schools to deal with this alarming issue. Often bullies only get a "talking to" and are rarely suspended, which only cultivates the fear that makes victims reluctant to ask for help from their teachers.

I do not profess to know a permanent solution to this troubling issue, but I do know one thing: Studies by the National Center for Education Statistics show that bullying is less prevalent in private schools than in public schools. A 2015 HILDA survey revealed that twice as many parents of public school students reported their children had been bullied compared to private school parents. Of course there are many different degrees of bullying, so that one definition does not fit all, but it is logical to assume that in at least some capacity, private schools do offer a solution to the problem.

The first way private schools are contributing to a workable solution is choice: if your child is being bullied at a public school and the school administration is unable to offer an acceptable solution, the existence of private schools allows you to enrol your child at a different school and thus escape the bullying.

But once at private school, how can you feel rest assured that your child will remain safe? One answer is small class sizes. Because private schools guarantee small classes, the teachers will be able to supervise students more effectively, and any whiff of bullying will not go undetected like it often does in public schools. Greater and more effective teacher supervision has been proven to be a strong deterrent against bullying, nipping the problem right in the bud.

Another reason why private schools have less bullying—and if they do, are more effective at dealing with it—is the nature of the school administration. Because private schools are independent, they possess more freedom and authority to deal with the perpetrators instead of having to adhere to a lot of bureaucratic red tape. If a case of bullying is proven to exist and has occurred on more than one occasion despite formal warnings, private schools have the ability to expel problem students; they don't expect the victims to solve their own problems by switching schools. Private schools have zero tolerance for bullying, because they have a greater responsibility to students' families (who are paying for their school experience after all).

I hope you enjoyed this post, and that one day public administrations can come up with a permanent solution for dealing with school bullying.

Beginning in 2005, Ontario's provincial policy mandates that all students from Grades 1 to 8 must receive at least 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every school day during instructional time; this is known as the Daily Physical Activity. The DPA is part of the government's "Healthy Schools Plan" and can range from students doing jumping jacks beside their desks to going for a walk, or playing physically active games in the classroom.

On average, regular PE or gym class only occurs twice a week for students under grade 9. In Ontario public high schools, gym class becomes an elective after grade 9 which has resulted in a sharp decline in student gym participation. While the provincial government's DPA initiative recognizes the importance of youth exercise and attempts to institutionalize regular fitness, the program falls short of actually meeting students' physical health needs, and it does not apply to high school students. That is why physical education needs a major facelift in Ontario.

In 2013, the National Academy of Medicine published a report stating students should be doing at least 60 minutes of vigorous or moderate-intensity physical activity at school, with more than half of the activity occurring during regular educational hours. In America, there is a movement to get the Department of Education to actually designate physical education as a core subject like math and reading, which reflects the level of importance fitness shares in a child's cognitive development.

All in all, this means that 20 minutes of classroom physical activity a day, infrequent gym classes, and optional team participation is not doing enough for students' health. There is a predominate culture of viewing gym class as merely "play time" interrupting regular lessons, and students in public schools are not required to join a team sport. However, more and more research is illustrating how important physical education at school is for a student's mental development and physical health (and that's without going into the added mental benefits of fitness, like reduced stress).

This is why lower school students at St. Jude's Academy take PE every day. In addition to regular gym class, each student participates in field days and is encouraged to take athleticism beyond the school. In grades 5-8, St. Jude’s delves deeply into the athletics with skiing, curling, rock climbing and tennis. Instead of going skiing or curling once a year, our students go multiple times in order to become proficient in these areas. St. Jude’s is a member of the Small School Athletic Federation (SSAF). With the SSAF, the school participates in competitive team sports: soccer, basketball, volleyball, and track.

Sources: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/05/23/physical-education-schools/2351763/

Last time I talked about the gender imbalance in STEM classes, programs and careers (in regards to female representation and unequal pay). Now I want to attempt to answer two big questions: why does this matter and what can be done to equalize the trend?

Mostly it relates to the general gender wage gap issue in North America. On average, in the workplace women make 77% of what their male coworkers make despite occupying similar positions and possessing a similar credentials. Getting more women into STEM could reduce the gender wage gap. Not only are there currently more jobs in STEM than in any other industry, but most of these high-tech jobs are high-paying, and STEM is the fastest growing industry today. Attaining STEM gender equality would be a major step towards achieving gender pay equity at large. Think about just a few the amazing scientific advancements and discoveries that we can't imagine living without: the nerve growth factor, the DNA double helix, nuclear fission, the AIDS drug AZT... all of these accomplishments were made by female scientists! And if we continue to limit female students from pursuing STEM programs, imagine all of the other scientific advancements we could be denying ourselves.

Possible Solutions: Addressing stereotypes early on and preventing their effects from snowballing. With standardized testing proving there is no biological impediment to girls thriving in STEM, that means we need social solutions. In our homes and schools we need to encourage girls to pursue a variety of interests, to introduce them to science as equally as the liberal arts, to encourage them to enter STEM programs if that is what they want. We need to nip harmful gender stereotypes in the bud, and teach girls they are just as capable of being scientists as boys. Lack of confidence is listed as the number one roadblock for girls entering STEM. In my personal experience, private schools greatly help to accomplish this goal because, as part of their inclusive nature, all students are expected to engage in all subject matter and are provided with ample opportunities to explore STEM classes and clubs thanks to the better funding in private schools. The private sector is also an important gateway: we need businesses to value female scientists the same as men, and to create programs supporting their female workers until more women start entering the STEM workforce.

If you're interested in learning more about girls and STEM, I highly recommend this fantastic website: https://ngcproject.org/engaging-girls-stem The National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) has a lot of great resources and links to peer-reviewed publications and literature with detailed analyses about this complex sociological issue. In comparison my two posts are only the tip of the iceberg!

My references:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/girls-stem-these-figures-show-why-we-need-more-women-science-tech-engineering-maths-1540590
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamara-hudgins/why-more-girls-in-stem-is-a-win-for-all_b_9379214.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/celia-islam/closing-the-stem-gender-g_b_3779893.html

The STEM acronym represents the four non-liberal graduate streams: science, technology, engineering, and medicine. Gender parity in North America has been a running concern, but only recently has it become a well-known issue that in OECD countries, women comprise a very small percentage of the pool of STEM students and workers. (The 35 OECD member countries are democratic free market nations, mostly in the First World.) To begin with, here are some statistics about the issue:

57% of bachelor's degrees are earned by women, but only 18% of computer science degrees are earned by women

of all physics professors in the USA, only 14% are women
women hold less than 25% of STEM jobs in the USA
28% of the world's researchers are women

STEM statistics for female visible minorities are even lower

in 2012 Yale published a study that proved physicists, chemists, and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favourably than a woman with the same qualifications, and that there is a major gender pay gap for female scientists IF they somehow manage to get hired instead of their male co-applicants

As you can see, it has been well established by many independent researchers that there is a severe lack of women in STEM. Let's look at some of the explanations for this phenomenon:

Social Anxiety or Herd Mentality. In the Yale study, many female university students cited high school stereotypes as a major reason for why they chose to enrol in liberal arts courses instead of STEM classes. The female students were anxious to apply to STEM university programs when they knew they could very well be one of the few women in the entire program, let alone in their courses. Let's look at a Canadian example: in Waterloo's Computer Science program, women made up only 12% of the program in 2011. That's a significant decrease in the female to male ratio when women made up over 18% of enrolment in 2001. And that's despite Waterloo's valiant efforts to support women in computer science. It is very hard to encourage more women to pursue STEM programs and break the trend when they must trust other women to also apply at the same time so that they won't feel isolated in a male-dominant space.

Lack of Support and Role Models. This is mostly self-explanatory, but if girls aren't encouraged to pursue their STEM dreams, they might not even stop to consider STEM as a viable opportunity for their future. Teachers, professors, institutions and society need to help open the STEM door for women, and then they can make the decision whether or not they want to walk through. Confidence is another big part of the equation. For whatever reason, girls are less confident in math and science than boys. Studies have shown that when told that men score better in math tests than women, women tend to score worse; but when told that isn't true, both genders score equally well.

Bias. Think about it from the point of view of a female physics PhD candidate: when you know for a fact that the tech industry is biased towards your male counterparts, that you'll face a greater degree of sexism in the workforce, that you'll probably be the only female scientist in your entire department, that you won't get pay equity... why would you try to pursue a job in STEM?

The irony is that up until university, high school girls in STEM classes perform exceedingly well: in most studies, it is revealed that they attain much higher grades than their male peers. Yet, researchers are witnessing a huge drop off with hardly any of these high-performing high school girls applying to STEM undergraduate programs.

But why does it matter? And what can we do about it? Check out Part 2 of my post, coming soon. I'll also talk about how private schools are helping encourage girls to take on and thrive in STEM subjects.

I highly recommend checking out this amazing info graphic on the subject: http://lifehacker.com/why-there-arent-more-women-in-tech-and-why-it-matters-1738317611

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?_r=0

http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.ca/2015/03/why-arent-more-girls-choosing-maths-and.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/7-things-keeping-women-out-of-science-2013-10

https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/wics/resources-and-information/statistics

The availability, variety, and participation of extracurricular activities is an important aspect of a child's school experience.

Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a lovely week. For today's post, I am writing about the importance of offering, and taking part in, extracurricular activities at school, a benefit that is often overlooked or taken for granted. After all, when parents are deciding to make the switch from a public education to private, or they are searching for a reputable private school to enrol their child in, they are not just choosing a school with a strong academic reputation. The number one thing parents look for after academic credentials is an impressive extracurricular program made up of a variety of sports and clubs.

The are a number of reasons why participating in extracurricular activities is important for students, thus explaining why parents look to private schools which have a history of providing quality sports and clubs and an environment of mandatory participation (extracurriculars are the first aspect of public schools to suffer or disappear because of provincial budget cuts).

CAIS Executive Director Anne-Marie Kee says: "A wider choice of extracurricular activities results in stronger effort in academic programs because [students’] individual needs and interests are carefully thought about and developed". When private schools strongly encourage or even mandate that their students participate in sports or clubs at school, a child's horizons are opened up. They learn more about themselves and their likes and dislikes, develop teamwork and leadership skills outside the classroom, make friends across many platforms, learn organization and time management skills, and hopefully have fun of course! Because many private schools demand participation, no child is "left behind". There is no student who does not "make the cut" and no student is a benchwarmer thanks to the many sports resources and options for them to choose from. Being involved and depended on in a group environment outside of the classroom helps a child feel good about themselves! Sports programs combine with academic work and extracurricular activities to develop "the whole child".

So there you have it: academics and extracurriculars are the axis of a great education experience. Please let me know in the comments what sports or clubs your child is enrolled in!

Sources cited:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/extracurricular-programs-can-make-the-difference/article600793/

In the Ontario public school education system, there exists a phenomenon from 1999 known as "streaming", which you will most likely already know about even if you have never heard the term. "Streaming" is the division of grade 8 students entering the same high school into two distinct course types: applied and academic. At first glance all students look to be enrolled in the same survey courses with the same title (e.g. English and Science) but due to the differentiating course codes students will be taught a different curriculum by different teachers in different classrooms and will never mix with their fellow students within these core subjects. The implications of enrolling in either academic English or applied English are great: students enrolled in applied courses will never be able to apply to university because they are not taking the "correct" English course to qualify. This means all applied students are designated as college- or work-bound after receiving their high school diploma.

In a 2015 People for Education report, Dr. Alan Sears, a leading scholar in citizenship education, shared the findings of his review of grades 9 and 10 history and geography curricula in relation to citizenship education in Ontario. According to the report: "he found substantial differences between applied and academic courses, raising concerns about key content differences between the academic and applied courses".

Now, the existence of two course types is not an issue in itself if college or work is the ultimate end goal of the student and the best fit for their future. What many people are beginning to take issue with is when this critical, life-changing decision is being made: by students in grade 8. What is significant to note from the report is that recent research by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) indicates that "rather than being connected to students’ interests and career aspirations, students’ placements in either academic or applied courses are more closely tied to achievement in grade 8".

So, what is the takeaway? There is international evidence against separating students early in secondary school. Many people consider streaming to be a serious flaw in our public education system. At the very least, requiring students to make this huge decision in grade 8—before undergoing relevant growth and maturity—that will lock them in to a set program is a dangerous setup. Many students could be set on pathways that will not align with career and life goals that only truly emerge as they enter and advance through secondary school. This hefty decision in grade 8 is either influenced by students' parents (which can be a pro if the child is not prepared to make this decision or a con if it results in them having no say in their future), OR is left up to the discretion of the child entirely.

This is why choosing a registered IB school for your child is a great alternative. At St. Jude's Academy, for example, there is no streaming: there is only the IB Diploma Program. As an international program, it follows a model of proven success to put children on the path to university or great careers. The IB Diploma Program is inclusive and does not segregate children into two different education camps. It also allows students to make their monumental life decision at the right time in their life. In their final year, they can choose whether to enter university, college, or the workforce with an IB diploma in hand.

Sources: Hamlin, D. and Cameron, D. (2015). Applied or Academic: High Impact Decisions for Ontario Students. People for Education. Toronto: April 13, 2015.

http://sjapypnelson.blogspot.ca/p/poll-what-do-you-value-most-in-school.html

While sincerely surveying what values are prioritized in the online community, I also want to draw your attention to the character of the entries. Each possible answer represents an advantage of a private school education. In regards to Academic Quality, being a registered IB World School requires a private school to adhere to a strict international standard of education. A Personalized Approach is what your child can look forward to in a smaller class size and an individualized learning outcome with more quality one-on-one time with teachers. This is also a must for students with learning disabilities. The benefits of a smaller class size are amplified by High Quality Teachers who are found in registered IB schools because they have undergone additional certification to meet the standards of the IB Governance. Extracurricular activities are usually more numerous in Ontario private schools, and in order to develop the IB World Model of the "well-rounded student", sports and clubs are strongly encouraged.

http://sjapypnelson.blogspot.ca/p/poll-what-do-you-value-most-in-school.html

In lieu of my traditional blog post, here are some important facts about the private school education system in Canada. Published in 2015, a Statistics Canada study compared the academic progress of over 7,000 public and private school students aged 15 to 23, collecting data from the year 2000 onwards. These are the most notable results:

private school students outperformed public school students by around 8% in the reading test. The gap was higher in the math and science tests. At age 15, private high school students scored significantly higher than did public high school students on reading, mathematics, and science assessments
private school students were more likely to pursue graduate and professional degrees (like medicine, law, dentistry)
By age 23, 99% of private school students had graduated from high school, about 3 percentage points above the figure for public school students
35% of private school students had graduated from university by 23, whereas 21% of public school students graduated from university by the same age

Other interesting statistics:

Ontario private school enrolment made up only 1.9% of the student population in 1960. By 2006, it was 5.6% indicating a gradual increase
private high school students are more likely to attend postsecondary school by 5 to 9 percentage points
Including St. Jude's Academy, there are only 7 schools in Ontario that offer all three of the World IB programs: PYP, MYP, DP; and there are only 13 certified IB schools in Ontario total

These facts support an increasing awareness of the benefits of a private school education. Did any of these facts surprise you? Please leave a comment below!

Facts and figures from Statistics Canada and the Fraser Institute

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