As of March 13, all students in the province will be getting a 50 percent passing grade regardless of their marks.  Including grade 12 students.

In other words, failing students will finish their year with a pass.

The good news is that students who have an average higher than 50 percent, keep their grade and if they would like to raise that mark they can.

Kyle McIntyre, Director of Education for the Chinook School Division explains,

“Once we make contact with all the families, then we're going to be able to tailor fix or design a supplemental learning activity for all children prekindergarten to grade 9 and of course, our conversation with our high school-aged students will be trying to determine whether the students want to accept their present mark, accept a mark of 50 (percent) or continue to work and achieve the learning outcomes identified by each course.”  

Assignments will be provided to students by their teachers throughout the remaining school year, but it is not mandatory to participate.

McIntyre adds that for grade 12 students, circumstances are more challenging, especially if students are planning for post-secondary education. He describes,

“Our high school students that are transitioning from grade 12 to some kind of a post-secondary opportunity, it would be imperative for them to continue with their studies because of a lot of stuff you have at university, of course, you are going to need that foundational knowledge that they would gleam through all the different learning outcomes of the core courses of Saskatchewan high school.”

Teachers will also be adapting to a different teaching approach so a comprehensive and foundational plan will be implemented.  McIntyre outlines,

“This is going to be a new endeavor for many of our staff.  It will be a new endeavor for many of our students and our parents and so we want to make sure that we have some foundational pieces in place. To make sure our teachers are successfully delivering the supplemental activities and we want to make sure that the parents and kids are aware of what's going to be coming and we want to find out the best way to support every single family and student, because not every single family or student has access to a computer or the internet, so our initial conversation next week with families will be to determine what is the mode of delivery you want to receive your learning packages in, do you want to continue and how best do we continue to work with you and your children given the parameters that we have with the COVID-19 virus.”

Chinook School Division explains what families can expect to see next week,

“We are going to offer a variety of supplemental learning supports for families, of course, there is going to be some stuff that's going to be posted on our Chinook website. For families that do have access to the internet to access, we will be using technologies like Google Meet, Moodle and continue with some of our distance learning opportunities for those families and students that are custom to that, we'll also be printing off physical packages for some of our hutterian students and for some of our rural students that don't have access to technology or to some of our families that would prefer to have hard copies of the supplemental activities.”

The school divisions will continue with core functions and have confirmed that there will be no loss of benefits or layoff notices.