High school students across Ontario could soon be moving back to a more normal in-person class structure.
Ontario’s school boards switched to a two-class Quadmester model last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where students took two courses at a time for nine weeks – splitting the regular four-class Semester model in half to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
However, during the Keewatin-Patricia District School Board’s Committee of the Whole meeting earlier this week, trustees said they were awaiting further direction on the next Semester, which runs from February 2022 to June 2022, from the Ministry of Education.
“The quadmester system has pros and cons,” explains Director of Education for the KPDSB, Sherri-Lynne Pharand, in an interview with Q104 late last week.
“Some of the pros are related to COVID-19 and how it reduces contacts. Case and contact tracing is limited because students are only in two periods per day, with mostly the same group of students.”
“However, some of the cons are that credits are 110 hours. So you’re compressing that 110 hours into half of that time, with homework that’s related to that and completing the course in 8 weeks.”
In a Semester model, students had four separate 75-minute classes. In a quadmester, students have two 150-minute classes. Pharand adds regardless of the upcoming quadmester or semester change, the board will continue to look at hosting certain classes in longer sessions.
“The other benefit is for hands-on subjects in our tech shops, outdoor education, art, music and foods classes. The 150-minute block is a good length of time for meaningful hands-on learning. It’s been very beneficial there.”
“But overall, it will be good, especially for the academic subjects, to move back to a semester system,” finishes Pharand.
In June 2021, the Ministry of Education directed school boards to continue with a quadmester system in order to prevent student cohorts from mixing. Since then, a petition against quadmesters and cohorts in Ontario has received over 17,000 signatures.