October 1, 2024
Dear Parents/Guardians of Students in Grades 4 and 7,
Re: Foundation Skills Assessment – October 2024
The Foundation Skills Assessment
(FSA) is an annual province-wide assessment that provides a snapshot of
students’ foundational skills in literacy (understanding and
communicating with language) and numeracy (understanding and working
with numbers). All students in Grades 4 and 7, including French
Immersion students, are required by the Ministry of Education and Child
Care to write the FSA.
The results of the FSA are communicated at
the provincial and school district levels, as well as confidentially at
the individual student level to parents/guardians. The results are a
tool that can be used along with the many other assessment approaches
teachers use in the classroom to support student learning; however, they
are not part of formal student evaluations.
The FSA will be administered at North Vancouver School District schools from October 1 to November 1, 2024. As explained in the Ministry-prepared FSA overview,
the assessment includes online and written questions, a group activity
and a reflection exercise. This overview document, available in several languages, is found under the Resources section of the Foundation Skills Assessment web page.
Since
2013, a protocol agreement between the BC Teachers’ Federation and the
BC Public School Employers' Association enables local teachers’ unions
to distribute information about the FSA to parents/guardians. The
protocol outlines parameters to this distribution of information,
including material distributed by teachers shall be 1) in sealed
envelopes and 2) clearly identified as union produced and distributed.
The union material may indicate a child will be excused from the
assessment if a parent/guardian communicates in writing a preference for
their child to not write the test. However, parents/guardians
indicating they have a preference for their child to not write the FSA
is not sufficient to excuse a student.
There are few Ministry exemptions to writing this assessment. School principals may excuse:
- Students
whose personalized learning standards significantly differ from
provincial curricular standards (e.g., students with intellectual disabilities) and are documented in their Individual
Education Plan.
- English Language Learning students who have not
reached a level of proficiency sufficient to provide meaningful
responses to the literacy or numeracy sections of the FSA.
- Students experiencing extenuating circumstances (e.g., lengthy illness, a family emergency).
Based
on the exceptions identified above, administrators may identify
students who may be excused from one or both components of the FSA.
Students may only be excused from participating in consultation with
their parent/guardian; however a parent/guardian submitting a letter to
the principal will not, of itself, constitute proof of extenuating
circumstances.
I hope this information will clarify any questions
you may have about the Foundation Skills Assessment. If you require
additional information, please contact your school principal.
Thank you for continuing to support our efforts to provide students with the best possible educational programming.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Pius Ryan
Superintendent of Schools
cc: Board of Education
Executive Committee
Principals and Vice Principals
