The province of Saskatchewan is changing what kind of credits students will need to graduate from high school.

The full changes include fewer ELA and social science credits while introducing a financial literacy credit.

Keith Keating, the Director of Education for the Southeast Cornerstone Public School division is positive regarding the change.

"Some of the thoughts are good in terms of the alignment it provides with some of the other provinces in western Canada in particular and those English language arts pieces. The reduction from five to three allows for some further student choice in terms of the credits that may be available to them."

"I think there have been a little more work done and I think there may be a little more work done in terms of what those social sciences are and how those look. But overall, I think some of the changes are very good. The required financial literacy 10 course is something I think that's been looked at for a little while and I think that move is a very positive one."

Teachers meanwhile are looking at the changes and are hoping to learn how that might affect their jobs.

"It's been a pretty short turnaround here in terms of the amount of time we've had to have conversations with teachers. I think there are a number of questions in terms of what that means for those teachers who are teaching those individual subjects and what other options there might be for students who are coming into grade 10 next year."

That could include changing course contents as the mandatory teaching period for those classes goes down.

"I know the ministry is looking at reviewing the content of the English language arts course, as they're typically now done over 2 semesters for grades 10 and 11 in particular, and that financial  literacy 10 will be a whole new course as well, so they'll be construction of outcomes and indicators for that course."

 The decision came as part of the curriculum advisory committee which started back in 2020, which was paused due to COVID.

"That group consisted of teacher representatives, school division representatives, people from post-secondary institutes, people from the workforce, the Sask Chamber of Commerce, it had some representatives from parents and from the Ministry of Education. They made a recommendation to the Minister of Education and then he took some of those recommendations and moved them forward and the other ones, I believe they just left on the table for now."

Keating says that he agrees with the province keeping the number of credits to graduate at 24.

In response to Canada's Online News Act and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) removing access to local news from their platforms, DiscoverEstevan and DiscoverWeyburn encourage you to get your news directly from your trusted source by bookmarking this page and downloading the DiscoverEstevan app and the DiscoverWeyburn app.