LAKELAND - The province of Alberta is investing $10 million for early literacy and numeracy support in the 2024/25 school year, as well as implementing mandatory literacy and numeracy screening for students in Kindergarten to Grade 3.
“School boards can use these funds to hire additional staff and help support students who are identified as requiring additional intervention,” said Demetrios Nicolaides, Alberta Minister of Education on Dec. 4.
There will be three screenings over the school year to identify students in need of extra support and assess the efficacy of early interventions. The mandatory screenings will be expanded to include students in Grade 4 and 5 in the fall.
According to Nicolaides, while the screeners can identify 95 per cent of children who will need additional support, they are not designed as a diagnostic tool for why a child is struggling.
“But I think they can raise a level of awareness, and of course, that can be investigated further by parents, with the support of teachers and other staff,” said Nicolaides.
Vision or hearing problems, learning disabilities, or mental health conditions can all contribute to a student’s challenges. Timely access to psycho-educational assessments is a challenge in Alberta, with some parents spending thousands of dollars out of pocket. The NDP put forward a bill in May 2024 to review the legislation and consider financial support.
“[School boards] can use that money to hire speech language pathologists, educational assistants, psychologists or other professionals to help to conduct those assessments and provide that that additional support,” said Nicolaides.
According to Dr. George K. Georgiou, a professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education, the data from the last three years shows the screening and early intervention reduces the number of struggling students, “and they have improved the overall performance of these students, including seeing a reduced number of behavioral difficulties in their classes.”
“We are very confident that this policy will be creating a safety net where all the kids who need early intervention will be accurately identified and be provided with the right type of instruction and follow up,” said Georgiou.
Teachers' association critical
The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) released a statement on Dec. 5 criticizing the multiple mandatory screenings, calling the assessments “unnecessary.”
According to Jason Schilling, the president of the ATA, the average kindergarten class could lose up to five days of teaching because of the screenings.
“The government’s suggestion that the Association played a role in the development of its screening processes and approves of the implementation is wrong and dishonest,” said Schilling.
According to Schilling, the ATA supported research involving a small group of students who were behind the curve on screening tests.
“After weeks of individualized instruction, these students were then retested to measure improvement. Surprise: teaching works,” said Schilling.
Schilling said the ATA’s position is that proper funding of public education and targeted classroom supports, combined with teacher discretion on the need for further diagnostic testing would be more appropriate.
Local Iimpact
St. Paul Education is receiving $34,015 from the early literacy and numeracy support funding, and according to Secretary-Treasurer Jean Champagne, “the Division has made literacy a priority focus, and we are investing considerable additional resources this year.”
According to Keith Gamblin, the associate superintendent at St. Paul Education, those additional resources are in the neighbourhood of $200,000. He said the division received $300,000 of additional funding from the province in July and made the decision to focus a portion of it on literacy after consultation with the principals at division schools.
According to Gamblin, they’ve hired a literacy consultant, a speech language pathologist, and four program assistants for literacy support this year.
“Our program assistants will be focusing specifically on working with kids that are in need of targeted intervention. And so, they'll be doing that full time, working with really small groups of kids and giving them the specific literacy strategies they need to become emergent and fluent readers,” said Gamblin.
He said the literacy consultant will be focused on working with the staff at their schools and supporting educational assistants “to help build skill sets with regard to reading and writing and language instruction and working with teachers.”
Lakeland Catholic School will receive $28,023.
Northern Lights School District and Conseil Scolaire Centre-Est did not respond before the press deadline.
