Since the high school programmes existed at Mentor and TSS, we have employed a “mid-year evaluation” (you can call them examinations if you want, but the Ministry of Education says they aren’t). The format of this “major test” (the Ministry says we call them this) varies in each of the programmes and on a course-by-course basis but for the most part, TSS and Mentor high school have used a mid-year evaluation schedule that saw the students write one evaluation per day for 8 days. There are pros and cons to every system, of course, and after an extensive review, TSS chose to maintain their system and the Mentor programme decided to try something new.

The Mentor high school students’ new mid-year evaluation schedule had a maximum of 2 tests each day for 4 days. The main intent of the new schedule was to maximize teaching days and the main concern of a more stressful 4-day workload was alleviated by building some relaxation into the test situation (time at the beginning and end of each test to do some quiet review or just “chill” was something borrowed from the TSS system).

In both the TSS and Mentor programmes, our goal is to give our students the best chance to display their accumulated knowledge AND preparing them for their post-secondary studies. In the same vein, we have formal mid-year evaluations/tests/examinations (the Ministry doesn’t have any vocabulary rules under Grade 9!) for our younger students to prepare them for high school. These evaluations have undergone similar tweaking over the years and with every change, we think it is positive.

What do you think? Mentor Grade 10 to 12 students and parents would be the best ones to comment on the most recent change, but we would love to hear from everyone on this so please hit “reply” if you have any comments.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College & TEAM School