The Director of the Avon Maitland District School Board says “great progress” has been made for students returning to school after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Lisa Walsh has released her annual report that looks at the work that’s been done by the board and schools over the last year.
She says the last two years have been difficult with lots of “inconsistencies” because of the pandemic, including for students who had to pivot between online and in-person learning.
Dr.Walsh says they are really excited that they have been able to return to a basically normal school year and adds they have been focusing on five key themes with the return to class.
Those are Equity, meeting every student’s needs, Literacy and Numeracy, foundational skills for students, Pathways, finding destinations of choice for students, and Mental Health and well-being.
She adds that there have been lots of implications from the pandemic and they are using diagnostic tools to find out where students’ learning levels are at right now by trying to catch up and closing gaps.
She says it’s impacted that by 2024 and pending no other highly contagious variants coming along, they will have had time to catch up in the learning loss area, they’ll help kids be more regulated in school and continue to work on the culture of how things are done in school.