April 19, 2004
Graduation Requirements

R. Lee: I will continue my question now on the graduation requirements. Actually, I understand that the graduation portfolio is one of the requirements that the student has to satisfy so that by the time the student reaches grade 12, before graduation, he has to satisfy certain requirements. The question that I think I'm getting from a lot of parents is that they are not quite sure how those requirements will be evaluated. They are quite concerned that if the students have not satisfied those requirements, they won't be able to graduate. They don't know who is going to do the assessment of the portfolio. Can I get an answer for that? Thank you.

Hon. T. Christensen: It'll be teachers that are doing the evaluation. There are a number of criteria by which the students will be evaluated on both a quantity aspect, as to whether or not they fulfilled the criteria, but also quality, in terms of how they've fulfilled the criteria. Rather than try to go on at length about it here and explain it, I'd be happy to provide the member with a good deal of information about exactly how that is expected to work — and it has worked, certainly in terms of the portfolio requirements for this last year when we've been piloting them.