For the 2025–26 school year, McRoberts Secondary is shifting its School Story focus to Literacy, in alignment with the District Strategic Plan 2020–2025. This transition follows previous emphases on socio-emotional learning, mental health, school connectedness, and Truth & Reconciliation.

Literacy, as defined by the BC Ministry of Education, is the ability to make meaning from text and express oneself in various modes. This includes comprehending, making connections, critically analyzing, and communicating for diverse purposes. Post-pandemic data revealed a decline in Graduation Literacy Assessment scores and Language Arts performance, prompting this renewed focus.

In 2024–25, Grade 8 students completed Performance Based Assessments (PBAs), revealing challenges in vocabulary, understanding main ideas, and background knowledge. A dedicated Grade 8 team, in collaboration with the Literacy Leader, implemented targeted instruction and Bitesized teaching strategies. These efforts reduced the percentage of 'Emerging' readers from 48% to 6% by Spring 2025.

For 2025–26, the new Grade 8 cohort showed stronger initial results, with only 20% in the 'Emerging' category and 20% at 'Proficient or Extending'. The focus has now shifted to improving Summarization and Main Idea Identification.

Education Facilitators are guiding each department to establish literacy goals, fostering cross-curricular collaboration. The aim is to integrate literacy strategies across subjects, enhancing student outcomes and confidence.

The school plans to maintain this literacy focus for the Grade 8 and 9 cohorts over the next three years, with the goal of building literacy capacity across all grade levels.

Throughout this transition, McRoberts remains committed to student well-being, community connectedness, and Truth & Reconciliation. The guiding theme for the year remains: 'Be Kind, Be Honest, Be Humble, Be Proud.'

Over the last two years, we have elicited feedback from our parent, student and staff community to determine our needs as a school.  Specifically, we asked questions around the following:

• How do we foster relationships?
• As a school, what do we value?
• How can we improve our community’s overall sense of connection and wellness?

Based on the data provided, we determined to focus on personal and mental health and awareness, improving a sense of authentic belonging, feeling connected to the local and greater community, and inclusion.

In alignment with the Core Competencies, and the Richmond School District’s Strategic Plan priorities around Equity and Inclusion and Connected Learning Communities, we determined our focus to be:

• improving our community’s sense of balance and wellness, and
• building an inclusive community through rebuilding relationships and connections, and
• building an authentic sense of belonging.

Our goal this year is to continue on the path we started three years ago, and to build students’ social and emotional wellness through classroom activities, school-wide events, and school initiatives. In addition, this year we will focus on fostering connections between staff and students and across grades to rebuild a true sense of belonging. In past years we worked on large school-wide initiatives such as Mental Health May activities and the CHEW (Community, Health, Education and Wellness) Committee 5-Day Challenge.  This year we will also work to develop social awareness and build meaningful relationships through service and extracurricular participation.  

We will use regular check ins with student focus groups to determine if we are making a difference. We will collect evidence at various intervals throughout the year, with surveys, one-on-one and group conversations and anecdotal evidence.  We will know we’ve made a difference when students report that they feel like they have a voice in our school community, they feel “seen,” respected, and connected.  

                 Core Competencies                                                                   SD38 Strategic Plan            

The Personal and Social Competency is described as embodying “what students need to thrive as individuals, to understand and care about themselves and others, and to find and achieve their purposes in the world.”  Within the Personal and Social Core Competency, The Personal Awareness and Responsibility sub-competency involves comprehending connections between one’s well-being and personal and social behaviour, while the Social Awareness and Responsibility sub-competency focuses on the “awareness, understanding and appreciation of connections among people.”

Equity and Inclusion “Equity and inclusion are foundational to learning and leading, and are critical to success, wellbeing, and fulfillment. It is our mission to ensure that all of our students, families, and staff feel welcomed, are treated respectfully, and have a sense of belonging. We acknowledge our responsibility to support all learners so they may successfully complete their education with a sense of dignity, purpose, and options.” (Richmond School District, Strategic Plan 2020 -2025) A Connected Learning Community “Communication and collaboration are crucial within our district, within our schools, and with our partners and communities. We will model collaboration and put in place the opportunities, tools and techniques needed for our communities to connect and to work together.” (Richmond School District, Strategic Plan 2020 – 2025)