The Kamloops Thompson School Board has unveiled its guiding document for all of the work that they do with regards to students.

Chair Kathleen Karpuk says the District Learning Plan takes the lead from the years old strategic plan which lays out its priorities. Karpuk says this is how it operationalizes that strategy. “We take a look at that plan every year and decide how close we are to those goals. So we look at where are, where are we going and then how are we going to get there. And that’s what this plan and this document is about. And so as you go through it you’ll find that we measure foundation skills. How well are students doing in areas such as numeracy and literacy?”

Karpuk says stats in those areas have increased and it has also seen progress made in graduation rates. She says it measures things like foundation skills such as numeracy and literacy. “You’ll notice that our results have increased. We look at our graduation rates, again those have gone up. We look at parity for aboriginal students, that’s been increasing. You can see that, on the chart of our aboriginal students, we’ve gone from a graduation rate of just over 40% to a graduation rate of 79%.”

Karpuk says one issue that it needs to improve on is that students feel they aren’t being prepared adequately for life after graduation. She adds that the province as a whole doesn’t score very well in that area. “This is an ongoing process. We look at where we are. We review what we’re doing. We asses whether or not it’s working. We decide whether or not we need to make changes, add some extra resources, shift our methodology and then go through the cycle again.”