Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have some difficulty with the motion. I think the social passing has a negative connotation when you’re dealing with students, students in the class. I think the phrase is referred to as peer placement. This is the practice of the department to do peer placement. The alternative is to have, as an example, a 10 year old sitting in a class with six year olds in Grade 2 if that’s the level that they’ve achieved. Alternatively, they move with their peers and they’re placed with their peers, and you support that individual and the teachers are essentially teaching multiple grades with the students that are the same age.
I know that when I was in the school system, the kids that were held back didn’t finish school. In a small community, when somebody fails, the whole town knew about it. And that somebody was in Grade 2 for a second and third time, they never finished Grade 2. And kids that achieved Grade 5 by the time they hit puberty, didn’t continue on in school. This is what this motion is saying they want to go back to.
This motion doesn’t fix the problem of students not achieving Grade 12 and not being at a Grade 12 level when they achieve Grade 12. This motion doesn’t achieve students that will be at the Alberta curriculum level when they graduate. What this motion does is it holds back students. Older students will be mixed in with young kids. That’s what will happen with this motion. If we don’t peer place students, then you’re going to have to deal with the parents. The parents who are sending their kids to Grade 5 who are 10 years old, want to know why there’s a 15 or 16-year-old student in that class as well. Those are the things that we have to contemplate when we’re doing something like this.
There are systems built in where you have education assistance designed to address this specific issue, designed to address that the students that are operating at a lower grade function but they are all the same age. These education assistants are supporting and are able to help these students to try to achieve that level
without sticking out like a sore thumb. There are only two options with this: If we don’t have peer placement, then we hold the student back. It’s not a third option here. There are two options. Either he remains in Grade 2 or he advances to Grade 3 with the rest of the students and he continues doing Grade 2 work in Grade 3 so that student doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.
We have to watch out. We have to care for our students. We have to make sure that we’re protecting the students as well. And the parents. The parents that want to send their children to school and expect that if they have a 10-year-old going to Grade 5 that they’re going to be in school with others in the classroom that are 10 years old also, not students that are 16.