Efforts by local school boards to encourage students not to drop out before they complete Grade 12 are paying off.
Students at all St. Albert schools top the provincial average for staying in their desks long enough to get a Grade 12 diploma.
A study done under the Alberta government’s High School Completion Framework shows that, provincially, the three-year completion rate jumped slightly to 72.6 per cent from 71.5 per cent the previous year.
In contrast, in St. Albert, more than 80 per cent of students in both the Catholic and Protestant school divisions completed Grade 12 in three years.
“The number of students completing high school in our division is always close to 10 per cent higher than the provincial average,” said Glenys Edwards, associate superintendent of planning and instruction for the St. Albert Protestant school board.
The three-year completion rate is 81.1 per cent for students attending Bellerose, Paul Kane and Outreach schools.
In the Catholic system the completion rate was 82.6 per cent for students attending either St. Albert High School or Ecole St. Marguerite d’Youville.
The study also showed that a large number of St. Albert students carry on to attend post-secondary education. The measurement was done six years after the students registered in Grade 10 by tracking their school identification numbers.
Students from the Protestant system beat the provincial average again with 67.1 per cent in post-secondary education after six years, compared to 59.3 per cent provincially.
On average 64 per cent of GSACRD students go on to take post-secondary education.
