High school grad rates in province reach 20-year high
SASKATOON The percentage of Saskatchewan high school students who completed their high school diplomas on time is the highest it’s been in two decades, but still lags behind provincial targets.
Last school year, 76.5 per cent of high school students graduated within three years of starting Grade 10, up from 75.6 per cent in 2015-16.
A strategic plan unveiled by the provincial government and the Saskatchewan School Boards Association in 2014 aimed to have 85 per cent of high school students graduating on time by 2020.
Speaking with reporters Friday at the grand opening of Chief Whitecap School in Stonebridge, Education Minister Bronwyn Eyre called the numbers “extremely positive.”
“I think it really shows the power of what happens when we all work together,” she said.
The graduation rate for First Nations, Metis and Inuit students continued to lag behind those of the general student body: 43.2 per cent of Indigenous students graduated on time in 2016-17, up from 41.9 per cent in 2015-16. The government and Saskatchewan School Boards Association want that figure to be 65 per cent by 2020.
Eyre said the government is “working all the time” to try to increase the Indigenous graduation rate, noting that efforts made since 2014 are not reflected in graduating numbers yet, since those students would still be in school.
“It’s progress,” Eyre said. “The only way is up … It takes at least three years in some cases to see the results and so those will only, I expect, increase. I hope they will.”
Saskatchewan’s extended graduation rate, which takes into account high school students who graduate within five years of starting Grade 10, was 84 per cent overall last year and 59.8 per cent for Indigenous students.