Yellowknife — November 18, 2021
Diploma Exams and Alberta Achievement Tests (AATs) have been disrupted in the Northwest Territories (NWT) over the last two school years due to COVID-19. While recognizing the learning impacts the pandemic has had on students, and balancing the importance of monitoring the education system as a whole, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) will administer these tests with accommodations for the 2021-2022 school year.
These accommodations include:
• A reduction of the weighting of Diploma Exams. Diploma Exam results typically make up 30% of a student’s final mark. For the 2021-2022 school year, the Diploma Exam mark will make up 10% of the student’s final mark.
• An option for schools, with support from parents, to pursue exemptions for individual students who have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This could include significant gaps in instructional time, where distance education efforts were not possible or were significantly reduced.
• An option for schools to pursue a group or class exemption, in the case of schools that are forced to close during a scheduled test administration.
ECE will provide appropriate instructions and documentation to schools to access these accommodations. ECE will review all exemption requests on a case-by-case basis.
Changing the weighting of the exams will help maintain territorial standards, and to collect NWT-wide achievement data, while addressing the learning disruptions that have occurred since March 2020 due to COVID-19. Alberta is making similar accommodations for its students. You can find more on diploma exams here.
For media requests, please contact:
Briony Grabke
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications
Department of Education, Culture and Employment
Government of the Northwest Territories