Can high school grades be trusted?

By Sandy Farran | November 6th, 2009 | 9:00 am

If you need better marks, some private schools are happy to oblige—for a fee

One afternoon in the spring of 2007, teacher Peter Hill was recording marks when he confided to a colleague that one of his Grade 12 English students was in danger of failing. In fact, Hill explained, he’d been concerned about the grades of several of his English 12 students at University Hill Secondary School in Vancouver, and he thought it strange that none of them had come to him for extra help.

“I was used to handing back essays to kids and if they weren’t doing well they’d come to me after school and they’d want to know how they could improve,” says Hill. “But in this case I handed back the essays and they’d just sort of grin at me, throw the essay away or whatever. And I was like, ‘God, that’s different.’ ” His colleague, a guidance counsellor, told Hill not to worry: the student would likely get a good mark anyway because she was taking the same course after-hours at a nearby independent school. Hill was stunned: “I just said, ‘Huh? What other school?’ ”

It turned out that five of Hill’s students had been taking Grade 12 English at Century High, an independent school that catered largely to international students hoping to attend a prestigious university in Canada or the United States. The students would regularly attend Hill’s class during the day, then take the same class at Century in the evening or on Saturday. “The weird thing is that kids were enrolled here [at University Hill] taking English with me and they were going to Century High, and if they decided they wanted the Century High mark, then it would go on their transcript and it would appear as if the mark came from this school,” says Hill. In British Columbia, that was made possible a few years ago when the province introduced a new policy allowing students to take courses from different institutions. The change was intended to provide choice for rural students, who could take online courses not offered in their home schools and then choose their “best mark” to appear on their transcript. But the policy has led to so-called credit shopping, too.

It bothered Hill considerably that a student could be taking the same class at two schools at the same time, then use the higher marks on her application to university—so much so that he decided to do a bit of sleuthing. He found a B.C. government website that lists class marks and provincial exam results for every school—private and public—in the province. And he found some disturbing information: for the year 2006-2007, 101 Century High students (60 per cent of the class) received a B grade or higher in Grade 12 English; just three failed. When he looked at how the same group of 138 students performed on standardized provincial exams, the results were just the opposite: 108 had failed the exam and only eight students got a B grade or higher. He found similar differences dating back to 2003-2004, when the online records begin. And Century wasn’t the only independent school showing a large difference between marks awarded by teachers and provincial exam results.

Hill decided to blow the whistle. He reported his findings to the local media, and a few days later then-minister of education Shirley Bond ordered an inspection of Century and any other school—public or private—that had big discrepancies between class marks and standardized exam results. In March 2007, the B.C. government issued warnings to ﬁve independent high schools in Vancouver — Century, Kingston, Royal Canadian College, Pattison and St. John’s International— insisting they move quickly to address concerns about large disparities between English 12 marks on provincial exams and the marks awarded students for class work.

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Tags: getting good grades for university • grades • grading • marks

There Are 9 Responses So Far. »

Comment by University student on 6 November 2009:

All hail the public school system and it’s ultimate righteousness. This honestly should be the least of there concerns when huge discrepancies occur within there own program. I have seen people transfer schools after receiving poor grades in 9th and 10th grade to later on graduate with great grade 12 averages and receive national scholarships… The problem doesn’t lie in private schools but the system itself. The system is flawed and there will always be people willing to exploit these flaws for there own personal gains. The simple solution would be to hold students and institutions accountable for these actions. This would be easily achieved by the instalement of a nation wide standarized test like the “sat”.
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Comment by hevangel on 7 November 2009:

Credit shopping was common even when I was in high school almost 15 years ago. We picked the easiest teacher from the easiest school on the most difficult subject. The only way to stop credit shopping is introduce public exam, so that every student is ranked on the same scale.
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Comment by Anonymous on 9 November 2009:

Sign me up, sounds great to me. As someone who goes to the best public academic school in my city, it angers me to no extent how much easier all the other students have it. I could have gone to another high school and seen a 5 mark increase in my average most likely due to a lower standard, and when I’m looking at scholarships for university next year I find myself wishing I did. What are the best (read: worst) online private schools in Ontario so I can get in while it’s still around?
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Comment by Neliya on 12 November 2009:

Taking up language courses in their own community schools and receiving 98& averages is not fair when compared to students who do a honest job at school.

Universities wake up!

Standadized testing to get into universities is ‘THE BEST’ ‘THE HONEST’ and “THE CORRECT & FAIR ” thing to do
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Comment by Hassan Mirzai on 17 November 2009:

Tarring all private schools with the same brush is arbitrary and patently unfair.
I have no doubt that there are improper practices by some private schools. However, the ministry of Education holds the responsibility and has the authority to address this problem by identifying them and revoking their licenses. It is four years since the ministry closed four private schools. Since then, the number of private schools has grown like mushrooms, yet the ministry has not closed any other school during this period.
It is not fair to download the consequences of such practices onto the whole population of private schools.

I suggest that Ministry of Education considers the followings to combat this issue:
• sending their inspectors out more often (currently every two years)
• Sending out their inspectors randomly, without pre announcement (currently they give about three months advance notice)
• Regulating the teaching practices
• Checking teacher qualifications and their relevant experiences

Here is the link to the original Ministry Letter and FutureSkills High School response: http://www.futureskills.com/article/
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Comment by DBellaa on 18 November 2009:

Hassran — No one is tarring all schools with the same brush. Re-read the following paragraph: “Of course, most private schools are reputable. Yet some operations—often referred to as “credit mills” or “credit shops”—are using students desperate to get into university (along with their parents) as cash cows. As long as a student slaps down hundreds of dollars per credit—in some cases as much as $1,500—these schools are happy to oblige with marks in the 80s and 90s, whether the student earns them or not.”
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Comment by Eli on 18 November 2009:

In Germany a new wave of student protests is going on right now: In more than 20 universities lecture halls are and will at least be occupied until Friday. They have the full support of lecturers,profs and the public.
Germany spends less money on education than most other OECD countries (only Spain, Slowakia, Turkey and Ireland invest less in their schools and universities). Other reasons for the protests are the new Bachelor/Master system, tuition fees, psychological pressure, …..
link to a map with all the universities participating in the protests:
http://maps.google.at/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=de&msa=0&msid=116283369278129786033.0004778dfa81fb402d565&ll=49.21042,8.876953&spn=23.014452,46.582031&z=4&source=embed
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Comment by daviddvdd on 15 December 2009:

My brother is looking for a private school to transfer, the first consideration was Century High school though a friend recommend until i read about the article. my brother wants to go to UBC after graduation, my question is if century high school student’s grade is eligible to be accept by UBC. or any other suggested high school to go to? My brother’s english is not good, that’s why he looking for a private school to transfer, otherwise he will be force into a adult high school since public high school does not allow students stay after grade 12 even though students did not pass the english exam.
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Pingback by The Quest for Admissions Fairness : UBC Insiders on 7 January 2010:

[...] you have not yet read the Macleans article detailing pay-for-credit high schools in BC, please take some time to do so. This was referenced a [...]
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