Digital refresh in the works as N.L. updates curriculum for new school year

A new school year means new curricula in French, mathematics and social studies in Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as plans to modernize learning and test through a new online portal for students and teachers.

The provincial government has recently digitized theK-12 curriculum, while updating parts of the curriculum for the2024 school year, including French in kindergarten and grades 1-3, Grade 9 social studies, and applied mathematics 2202 and 3202.

Scott Linehan, an assistant deputy minister in the province's Education Department, said that also includes the hiring of16 math program specialists 15 in the English school system and one in the French system.

"These 16 program specialists will work with hand in hand with principals, with teachers, with students to engage in mathematics on instructional approaches, mentoring best practices on how we can engage with mathematics." Linehan told CBC's Newfoundland Morning.

Data from 2022 for the Programme for International Student Assessmentsshowed students in Newfoundland and Labrador scored below national averages in mathematics, science and reading testing.

The province is also launching a new digital curriculum platform,called Enlightened, for the 2024 school year, which Linehanhopes will make the curriculum a more interactive and collaborativelearning resource.

"If you're a Grade 7 teacher and you have this amazing resource for Grade 7 science, you can put in a tag on Enlightened [and] our team will review that," said Linehan.

"If we vet that and that meets our standards, we think that's an excellent resource, we'll add that to the Enlightened platform. And then the teachers in Harbour Breton, Corner Brook, Goose Bay can all use that resource if they so choose."

The Grade 7-9 curriculum will be available on the platform this month, with the K-12 curriculum available by September 2025.

A personalized approach

Linehan said the Education Department also plans to introduce a new intermediate curriculum,aimed at giving students more choice over the courses they want to complete, for grades 7-9 next September.

"As students progress through their schooling years, the engagement kind of dipsoff a little bit. So what we want to do is we want to raise that engagement. We want students to not only have to come to school, but they want to be in school," he said.

"Students will continue to do the core curricular subjects, English and mathematics and science but we want to cater our curriculum so that students who have a particular interest in other subject areas, other disciplines, could explore that interest a little further."

For example, Linehan said a student more interested in music than art could choose to do more music instead of a visual arts course.

"While we want to ensure that we have a comprehensive programming of a suite of courses for students, we want to give the students a little more, you know, choice and agency in some of the courses that really, really interest them."

Public exams have also been replaced with what the province calls modular exams, which students enrolled in senior-levelcourses will take three times a year.

Under the modular system, Linehan said, students will be tested on subject matter fromthe first third of the year when it's completed, and be worth 10 per cent of the overall grade. That repeats with changes for the second third of the curriculum.

"If students were not particularly pleased with the grade they received on the first term, they can redo [it] and be retested on that third of the year," he said, adding the same would opportunity would be given for the third exam at the end of the year.

"This is really about giving students opportunities to demonstrate their consolidation of learning, so that a score that they previously received doesn't handcuff them going forward."

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