S.00-36
• ?
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC
?
MEMORANDUM
To: ?
Senate
From: ?
J. Munro, Chair
Senate Committee on Academic Planning
Subject: ?
B.C. Grade XII upgrading
(SCUS Reference: SCUS 00-2)
(SCAP Reference: SCAP 00 - 10)
Date: ?
March 17, 2000
Action undertaken by the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Studies and the
Senate Committee on Academic Planning gives rise to the following motion:
"That Senate approve as set forth in S.00 -3E that upgrades of B.C.
Grade XII marks may be made in accordance with Ministry of
Educa
t
ion policies, except that the final mark in a provincially-
examinable course may not be increased by taking a college course
deemed to be its equivalent."
0
SCUS
00-2
Memo from
.
??
N. Heath, Director of Admissions
Simon Fraser University
To: SCUS
Date: 1999 12 10
I sub
i
ect: ?
BC Grade
12
upgrading - revisited
Suggested Motion
Upgrades of BC Grade 12 marks may be made in accordance with Ministry of
Education policies, except that the final mark in a provincially-examinable
course may not be increased by taking a college course deemed to be its
equivalent.
Discussion
Admission averages in general are competitive and are very high for certain
disciplines. (For example direct entry to BUS requires an average of 88%).
Competition is even stronger for entrance scholarships that are sometimes
determined on marks alone. Consequently, many students in secondary school and
recent graduates participate in an unseemly rat-race to gain high marks by whatever
means they can. Traditionally, some students remain at secondary school or take
courses at a school district adult education centre to improve their records, to gain
entry to a competitive program. Some feel that it is unfair to students who take
each course once only to be compared and ranked in with those who have
attempted their courses more than once.
In 1999, the Ministry of Education ruled that ABE courses in colleges could be treated
as the equivalent of certain Ministry —authorized Grade 12 courses and could receive
graduation credit towards the Dogwood or 'Adult Dogwood'. These courses are
tuition free. This has created increased opportunity to upgrade for students whose
averages are not competitive. However there is a widely-held suspicion that the
course grades are not strictly comparable.
SCUS addressed this issue earlier this year and ruled that repeated courses may not be
computed into the average for a B.C. secondary school graduate. However, SCUS
recognized that it is impractical to identify most of these repeats because the Ministry of
Education transcript shows only the highest passing mark achieved in a course.
However, the proposed solution has prompted loud protests from secondary school
counsellors as well as from those responsible for college ABE programs. It is pointed
out that we permit repeats in SFU gpas and in computing transfer admission
averages, so our policy is inconsistent. Further, to deny the opportunity to upgrade
is to undermine or even negate the purpose of Adult Basic Education programs in
colleges.
BC Grade 12 upgrading - revisited
?
1999 12 10
A more defensible solution and one that would be more palatable to the school
system, although not to the ABE community is:
Upgrades of BC Grade 12 marks may be made in accordance with Ministry of
Education policies, except that the final mark in a provincially-examinable
course may not be increased by taking a college course deemed to be its
equivalent.
This means for example that, although we are obliged to take an ABE Provincial
level mathematics course as if it were BCl2 Principles of Mathematics course if the
student takes it for the first time, we do not need to replace the grade of a secondary
school course with the grade of a (probably) different course taken at a college. This
takes care of most of the potential problems of 'mix 'n match' upgrading.
Rationale
The ABE courses, while deemed to be generally similar (80% or better match of
learning outcomes), are not assessed in the same manner as examinable grade 12
courses.
Also, the grading scale used by the Ministry of Education and by the various colleges
will be different in some cases.
Practicality
The transcript course coding for external courses on BC secondary school and adult
records will generally show that a course has been taken elsewhere, permitting us to
distinguish between repeats of the same course at within the school system and
courses taken at colleges.
nh Dec 1999
2
