K to 12 Student Demographics and Achievements data set

Description

The Ministry of Education and Child Care data tracks students’ academic achievements, their schools, and demographic changes over time for public and private schools across British Columbia at an individual record level, starting in kindergarten through to high school graduation. Data is offered from three sources: Student Demographics and Achievements, Student Achievements, Student Assessments, and Student Learning Surveys.

K to 12 Student Demographics and Achievements

The K to 12 Student Demographics and Achievements file offers student-level information on demographics, program enrollment, completion rates, examination/course marks, and student credentials. School-level information, such as school type and authority, are also included.

K to 12 Student Assessments

Students are assessed through the Foundational Skills Assessment and Graduation Assessments.

The Foundational Skills Assessment (FSA) is an annual province-wide assessment of all BC student's literacy and numeracy skills in grades 4 and 7. Data is provided at an individual question level. Please note that other grade levels may be present in the FSA data due to split classes or other exceptional cases.

Graduation assessments are provincially written in grades 10 and 12, assessing literacy and numeracy skills. Completion is required for graduation from secondary school.

K to 12 Student Learning Surveys

The Student Learning Survey is an annual province-wide census of grades 4, 7, 10 and 12 students, their parents and staff in public schools, assessing their school experience. The survey began in 2016/17 and is based on the Student Satisfaction Survey (SATS) which ran from 2001/02 to 2015/16.

Fields available

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Demographic data	Demographic data, and its changes over time. This includes school and/or school district changes, Aboriginal identification, behavioural changes and learning ability.
Enrollment information	Student level data with program and other demographic data derived primarily from September 30th enrollments (or February if September enrollment does not exist).  Student level data related to enrollment to specific programs and services provided by school. This includes Aboriginal education programs and services, career programs, French language programs, and English language learning (ELL) services.
Completion rates	Student-level information about Completion Rate cohort members.
Grades and results	Student level credential results from the K to 12 system, including enrollment throughout grades K to 12. Foundational Skills Assessment (FSA). Student-level results between 1999/2000 to 2006/07, and 2007/2008 to 2016/17.  Data is provided at an individual question level.  Provincial Exam Scores at student level. Grades. Teacher assigned grades at a student-level for grades 10 to 12 that may be used to satisfy both required and elective credits for graduation by course/program. Final marks for courses that are associated with required examination or optional examination.
Student Learning Survey (SLS)	Items and record level response to SLS survey question.  Survey began in 2016/17. Data includes information about the school, school year in which the survey was completed. This survey is based upon the Student Satisfaction Survey (SAT).  This survey is filled out by students in grade 4, 7, 10 and 12, their parents and staff.  The key changes between the SATS and the SLS is as follows: Change in focus. Many SATS questions were removed and replaced with questions designed to better enable the evaluation of education transformation, and measurement of human and social development skills. Some key SATS questions were retained for longitudinal analysis purposes. Identification of responses by Personal Education Number (PEN). To enable the joining of survey responses to other student data (e.g. demographics and achievement) within the Education Data Warehouse (EDW), survey responses are identified by the student PEN (SATS was anonymous). Masking of 'sensitive' questions. Select questions have been flagged as being anonymous, which means that the PEN is masked in the source systems. Each respondent completes only one survey, however, for anonymous questions, a separate survey ID is generated for that section (as if the respondent had completed two surveys). Data not available for: Open-ended responses. Parent and teacher responses.
Student Satisfaction Survey	Student satisfaction survey item and record level response to survey questions. The student satisfaction survey (SATS) is administered annually in all BC public schools starting in 2001/2002 to 2015/16.  The survey gathered the opinions of students, parents/guardians and school staff on achievement, human and social development and safety. It includes topics such as achievement, school climate, healthy living and safety. The data from this survey is anonymous. The responses from this survey are not included in the collection.

Inclusions

• Students in public and independent schools across British Columbia.
• Schools that are or have been under the BC Ministry of Education’s jurisdiction.

Exclusions

• Students and schools fall outside of the BC Ministry of Education’s jurisdiction.
• Federally funded band schools run by First Nations bands.

Quality/accuracy of information

• Data regarding schools and districts may have quality issues, when errors are identified in the data set they are corrected where possible.
• Changes in the Student Satisfaction Survey to the Student Learning Survey (see notes below).

Important additional information

The data files are grouped by academic years.

Data changes over time

• The FSA was previously administered to grades 4, 7, and 10, with grade 10 being dropped in 2002/2003.
• Changes in data over time, such as the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) has been separated for data users by year (1999/2000 to 2006/2007, 2007/2008 to 2016/2017, and 2017/2018 onwards), as these represent different iterations of the assessment over time.
• The Student Satisfaction Survey (SATS) changed in 2016/17 to the Student Learning Survey (SLS).  The SATS is anonymous and cannot be linked at a record level. The SLS is broken into non-sensitive questions which are linked to the student level record by Personal Education Number (PEN), and sensitive questions which are anonymous.

References

Ministry of Education’s Metadata application (“Metabadger”).

Data not currently available

• Course level marks (received in from grade 8 through 12) for all distributed learning schools, summer schools, and all public schools, including continuing education and alternative education centers. 
• Class size detail.
• Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreements at school district level (includes drafting, completion, signing and expiry and spans 2003/2004 to 2008/2009).
• Record level attendance information for early learning program called ‘Strong Start.’  Foundation Skills Assessment item-level data mart on individual student responses by question. This includes whether responses were correct and the mark the student received. This data is not included.
• The Ministry of Education’s Transcripts and Examinations (TRAX) studentlevel data results by cognitive level. This data is not provided at this time.
• Independent school funding levels.