ATM: Understanding the Information in the AERR
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An important part of assuring our FSD community that we are working in the right direction is in the Annual Education Results Report (AERR). This form of assurance is mandated by Alberta Education and requires school boards to engage and interact with their school communities to ensure they are responsive to the communities they serve.
The AERR composed by Foothills School Division utilizes the data provided by Alberta Education as well as our own internal measures, to determine how we are achieving our mission, vision, purpose, and Education Plan. The results of our AERR inform how we proceed in the future, guaranteeing that we are striving to see education at the centre of a flourishing community.
Our AERR is released by November 30 of each year; before you dive into this year’s wealth of information, we want to share with you some context to better understand how and what data is collected.
Each year, Alberta Education sends directly to all parents with children in grades 4, 7 and 10 the Alberta Education Assurance Survey which asks for the parent’s interpretation of the quality of education provided by their school board. In this survey parents respond to questions about each “Assurance Domain” including Student Growth and Achievement, Teaching and Leading, Learning Supports, and Governance. The data from parents in our division help to build the ‘Overall Summary’ table on page 10 of the FSD 2023-2024 AERR. This survey data, along with PAT and Diploma exam data from Alberta Education complete that table.
In addition to the provincial survey, FSD built its own FSD Assurance parent survey. The FSD survey uses the same questions as the Alberta Education survey but also adds FSD-specific questions to help us assure our work is responsive to our own community. The FSD survey is sent directly from the division to all parents in FSD.
Why do we appear to duplicate the work?
A little information about surveys and survey results: Much research exists on surveys, and typically it is important to obtain a 25% to 30% response rate to allow the results to be generalized across the survey population, or in this case, across our parent community.
The Alberta Education survey has a response rate of 5% from our FSD families. The FSD survey has a response rate of 30% from our families—we are gathering a lot more data. We celebrate this local response rate and invite you to keep this in mind as you look at the data in our AERR.
As you explore this year’s AERR, you will agree that there is much to celebrate locally in the work we continue to do in responding to our FSD community.
We invite you to read our AERR here.
Chris Fuzessy
Superintendent of Schools
Caroline Roberts
Assistant Superintendent,
Learning Services
