School District 51 (SD51) continues to help young students succeed by looking at the Early Development Indicator (EDI) report through the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) data collection.
Collected in two-year cycles, or waves, HELP works to bring together academic, government, school and community partners to look at early childhood development across the province.
SD51 Director of Instruction Maxine Ruzicka noted that this was the first year of wave five so this is not the full report.
“Our data is stacked because of our low numbers but this first report gives you an indication of what our first year data looks like,” Ruzicka said.
“As you can tell from looking at it, in essence we are probably very close to the same number of kids that are vulnerable that we have seen in the last wave, which is close to 30 per cent across the Boundary.”
HELP looks at five scales: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, and communication skills.
Overall, the results showed that the Boundary region had a vulnerability rate of 30 per cent in 2011/2012. In the previous data collection (Wave 4), it was 29 per cent.
The EDI results showed that district wide, the highest level of vulnerability was at 14 per cent on the emotional maturity scale.
The lowest percentage of vulnerable children was in the language and cognitive development scale, as well as the communication skills and general knowledge scale at nine per cent.
“When we tracked and looked at that information, in essence the numbers are small in Christina Lake,” explained Ruzicka. “Whether you’re looking at Grand Forks, Midway, Greenwood, Rock Creek, it’s not localized in one area. What is localized is the type of vulnerability, which means what kinds of response do our early years providers and support people need to focus on because of where that area is.”
Ruzicka noted that once the EDI is done this February, the final results should be available at the end of June or early July.