PARENT-FRIENDLY EDUCATION: REPORT CARDS, ONLINE UPDATES

The British Columbia government is moving toward standardized report cards in all public schools to become more parent-friendly, the Vancouver Sun reported last week.

Education Minister Christy Clark says she plans to have ready by the start of the 2004-5 school year a standard report card that parents will receive at least three times a year. It will seek to give them an easier-to-understand evaluation of their children's academic performance by abandoning so-called "edu-speak." One option Clark says she is considering is a return to letter grades for students in kindergarten to Grade 3, if she can be persuaded through a consultation process that this would help alert parents to any difficulties their children may be facing in those critical school years. "We want to boil that down into basic information that parents can use," Clark told the Sun.

Clark says she was prompted to develop a new report card after hearing from parents who were frustrated by the current use of language that educators can understand - but not most parents. "Some parents have shown me report cards that just contain words of encouragement with no suggestion about how their students can improve. Parents want to know how [their children] can improve because that's where they can be helpful," she said. More than that, she adds, there is no province-wide consistency in the standards being applied to assess a student's progress.

Terri Watson, president of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, welcomes Clark's initiative. "It is appropriate for parents to know more about how they can help their kids. Whether or not it will be easy to make that standard across the province is another story," she told the Sun.

Meanwhile, the Edmonton Journal reported last week that the Northern Lights School Division northeast of Edmonton has taken parents' awareness of how their children are doing at school to a new level.

Last year, the division, headquartered in LaRonge, introduced a software program that allows parents to access an almost daily update on their children's grades, attendance and homework assignments from home. Now at least one other Alberta school division is looking into acquiring the same program - known as StudentsAchieve - for itself.

Bonnyville mother Janet Olson says the program makes her "much more part" of her two children's education. "It's like being able to talk to the teacher every day without having to actually talk to the teacher," she told the Journal. "When my kids heard mom coming upstairs and tattling on them, it was not always so great for them. But it was also easier to celebrate their successes on a daily or a weekly basis because I finally saw all their marks."

"I think parents are fundamental partners in the education of children," Mary Lynne Campbell, superintendent for the Parkland School Division, told the Journal. Parkland, located west of Edmonton, plans to implement the program over the next two years.

B.C.'S FIRST-TIME MOMS GETTING OLDER

The age at which women in British Columbia give birth to their first child continues to rise, the BC Vital Statistics Agency's newly released annual report reveals.

As Victoria's Times Colonist reported Friday, the average age of first-time moms stood at 29.6 years in 2002, up from 29.5 the previous year. One in five babies were born to a mother aged 35 or older. At the same time as the age of mothers keeps rising, the number of children being born in the province continues to fall. In 2002, BC recorded 39,893 live births - the first time that figure has slipped below 40,000 since 1979. The live birth rate of 9.63 births per 1,000 population is also the lowest since 1950.

And there was also an overall increase in multiple births to three out of every 100 live births. This is because older women are more likely to have become pregnant through assisted reproduction, such as in-vitro fertilization, and that in turn raises the likelihood of them giving birth to twins or even triplets.

Dr. Jan Christilaw, chief of special women's health at BC Women's Hospital Health Centre, told the Sun that she attributes the increase in the average age of first-time mothers to the fact that women are now more likely to plan their pregnancies around a career.

The report also revealed that British Columbians are waiting longer than ever to get married. The average age of brides in 2002 was 32.4. For grooms it was 35.1. This is about three older for both compared to ten years ago, when the average was 30 and 32.8 respectively. Of the 58 couples who were married on a typical day in BC last year, 35 involved couples where both were marrying for the first time.