By Amber Mything
There may be an interesting future ahead for the graduating class of 2003.
Or should we say graduating classes?
With the elimination of Grade 13, or Ontario Academic Courses, this year’s seventh and eighth graders will graduate from high school in the same year.
The eighth graders will be the last Grade 13 class ever.
This will pose some interesting questions as to whether universities and colleges can handle this stress.
“Since we were already reforming the [high school] curriculum, we felt it was the perfect chance to work it [the elimination of Grade 13] in,” says Daniele Gauvin, a communications officer with the Ministry of Education.
Grade 13 has been around since the beginning of the twentieth century. Originally called Senior Matriculation year, it was designed to prepare students for university.
Since the mid-1980s, it has become less and less relevant, according to the Ministry.
Around that time it decided to update the high school curriculum.
The Ministry set up committees to determine what sort of changes the curriculum needed.
In 1995, they announced the elimination of Grade 13 and some minor curriculum changes. Finally, in January, the Ministry announced a brand new curriculum.
“The emphasis is on the total numbers of credits now, not the number of years and months,” says Gauvin.
She says the Ministry is trying to write a curriculum that ensures students are prepared for university, without that extra year.
But Peter Biesterfeld is still worried. He has four children, including two who will be affected by the elimination of Grade 13 and the other curriculum changes.
“My gut reaction is, I would prefer my children to have that extra year.”
Michael McCartney, the vice president of the Carleton Student’s Association, understands Biesterfeld’s concerns.
He’s worried Ontario students won’t have enough time to save money for university.
“It’s going to take students another year to save up for university.”
He’s concerned students may have to take a year off or apply for government loans to make up the difference.
Another concern is the “double cohort effect.”
Many worry the stress two graduating classes will put on universities and colleges’ admission rolls will force students out of the post-secondary programs they want.
Currently, there are 139,929 students in Grade 7 and 135,303 students in Grade 8 in Ontario. Usually, 71 per cent of qualified high school graduates attend college or university in Ontario. This means there may be 195,414 Ontario students wanting to attend post-secondary schools in the province.
“We have to make sure the [post-secondary] system is able to accommodate the numbers,” says Larry Capstick, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation.
“There are far too many questions and far too few answers.”
Capstick says the federation is trying to get feedback from parents and teachers to outline some of their concerns about the curriculum changes. But so far, he says there is too little information to form any kind of a game plan.
Susan Gottheil, the assistant vice president for enrolment at Carleton University, says discussions outlining how the university will address these problems will probably begin within the next few months.
She says the discussions are important because some programs might not be able to handle an increase in enrolment.
This could mean these programs set quotas on the number of students they will accept.
For example, computer science has a limited number of sites suitable for classes, so it couldn’t accommodate large numbers of students.
Gottheil says Carleton is looking at expanding the class schedule to include weekends, increasing classes available through Instructional Television and offering classes over the Internet to deal with the potential influx.
But it will cost money.
The Ministry of Education has said it is looking into investing the money it saves from the elimination of Grade 13 into helping post-secondary institutions deal with the increased numbers.
The amount of money and the extent of help that is needed remains to be seen. The summer of 2003 could be an exciting one.