Concern over high failure rates

Provincial exams are supposed to test your knowledge and understanding of the material covered throughout the entire year.

Although this year was an extremely tough year as we worried about grades that will appear in college applications and trying our hardest, we, the students, never gave up trying to improve.

Terrified as we are by final exams, the Ministry of Education further complicated our task by creating exams which were more difficult than usual.

I am a secondary four student at Laval Liberty High School and so far, I heard that the failure rate in History of Quebec and Canada throughout the province is extremely high, much higher than in recent years.

Does that not imply that either our history teachers are teaching us wrong, (which is not likely since this is not the failure rate for one school but for the entire province) or that the Ministry of Education failed to prepare a fair exam by making it harder than previous ones?

I, being one of the students who took this exam, was appalled to learn of the atrociously high failure rate. Not only am I scared that I will have to go to summer school and re-do the History course and the exam, but if the failure rate was so high for that one exam, does that mean that for all the other exams, the failure rate might be just as high?

Students cannot afford to have such low marks, especially if we've done our part, but the exam is simply not fair. We cannot afford to fail, our education is on the line and enough is enough, we need to figure out a way to fix this mess before it gets out of hand, for not only the secondary 4's this year but for all the years to come. Educational mishaps like this can be and must be prevented. It's the least we deserve.



-Melissa Savastano

Seconday 4 student,

Laval Liberty High School



Photo:AngHist