After cancelling then reinstating provincial exams for Manitoba students, the NDP government was called out during question period Monday for postponing a Grade 12 English exam.
Education Minister Nello Altomare said the mandatory Grade 12 English Language Arts test, which was set to begin Monday, had to be postponed over concerns about the content of the assessment material.
“This past Friday afternoon, provincial officials in my department made the decision to simply just postpone the exam,” Altomare told the house.
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Education Minister Nello Altomare said today during Question Period the mandatory Grade 12 English Language Arts test, which was set to begin Monday, had to be postponed over concerns about the content of the assessment material.
“They did that out of an abundance of caution regarding identification of certain Manitobans that was used in the reading material for the exam. In order to protect their privacy, we did the right thing. Exams are not being cancelled, just merely being postponed.”
Instead, an estimated 8,500 English Language Arts exams with new material will be administered by June 21.
Progressive Conservative education critic Grant Jackson demanded to know how long the minister had known there was a problem with the exam material.
“The minister has pulled the rug out from underneath teachers giving them no time to readjust,” said Jackson (Spruce Woods).
Altomare fired back, saying the test was “inappropriately” created and produced under the former PC government, and that it “didn’t receive proper permissions.”
“For four years in a row, the former government cancelled exams,” Altomare said. The former school principal said it cut staff in charge of assessments from 24 employees to six and halted exams past the pandemic years.
“Our government brought them back because we know how important it is for students to be prepared for the working future.”
Liberal MLA Cindy Lamoureux (Tyndall Park) accused the NDP of being disorganized.
“Under this government’s new education minister, students have gone from having provincial exams be cancelled, then reinstated and now postponed due to their disorganization,” she said. “There is a lot of confusion as to what the next steps will be. What does this minister have to say to our educators in terms of what the next steps will be, rolling out ELA exams this year?”
The test material that was developed and vetted by the education department in 2018-19 had been kept under wraps before it was distributed to school divisions and schools ahead of this year’s exams, said deputy education minister Brian O’Leary. That’s when the department was alerted to a problem.
“It was someone’s story,” he said. “The use of it could result in a significant breach of privacy and possible safety concerns.”
They tried contacting the author but weren’t successful and decided to pull the exam.
“It was pretty much the only option we had,” said O’Leary.
carol.sanders@ freepress.mb.ca
Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter
Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.
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