Alberta wants province to set report card contents under proposed Education Act change

Alberta's government wants control over what goes on report cards. Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides tabled legislation Thursday that would amend the Education Act to set province-wide standards and guidelines for report cards. Right now every school board has full authority over report card format, grading system and content. Under the bill, school divisions would lose that authority.

At a technical briefing Thursday, an official said schools would still decide the report card template and platform. The guidelines could include more attendance information, consistent grading practices and standardized report card frequency. The exact requirements would be set out in a ministerial order. Nicolaides has said he intends to consult schools and teachers before that order is developed, and the government says it will monitor the impact on teacher workload.

Nicolaides framed the change as a consistency measure. "One of the main intent and drivers behind this bill is to improve consistency regarding expectations of how progress and achievement are reported across all of our school boards," he told Postmedia. "That's our ultimate goal and desire is to make sure that parents, guardians and families have the clearest possible picture about how their child is doing in school."

The bill would also require school authorities to set up a process for unresolved parent concerns, and it would create a provincial parent portal for concerns about a local school or division. Parents with unresolved issues could still use the provincial portal while a local process is under way. The changes would apply to publicly funded school divisions and accredited independent school operators. The bill would also require school authorities to publish professional development day agendas within 60 days after the operational day.

Nicolaides said the portal would help the province spot patterns. "If we start to see a significant number of issues related, generally maybe to the same theme or the same topic, that's a great window for us to be able to collect feedback and potentially inform future policy decisions," he said. He also said a Teacher Advisory Council he set up had been consulted on some parts of the bill but not all.

The reporting we have does not give a bill number, a passage timeline, a vote date or a cost for the portal and implementation. It also contains no response yet from school divisions, the teachers' union or opposition parties.