Assignment #3: Data Update 2

Lead

According to data gathered from the Government of British Columbia, there is an increase in total classes in high schools in the Surrey school district (district 36) between 2006 and 2019. Alongside the class size increase, there is also a drastic increase in classes with educational assistants.

Excel Workbook Link and Explanation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NgUo81V6LtGHIVe2ilmaCajyB5hrE8Fn/view?usp=sharing  

The raw data examines class size information from 2006 to 2019 in BC. Furthermore, it consists of statistics of the composition of BC public school classes by Province, District, and School level and includes the average class size for kindergarten through grade 12. It also includes the number of reported classes that have assigned Education Assistants, the number of reported schools, the number of reported classes, and the number of reported classes with more than 30 students.

My slice data shows the school year, school name, the number of total classes, classes with educational assistants, total classes greater than 30 and average class size for grades 8-12. I decided to focus on only high schools in the Surrey districts and compare the differences from the years 2006 to 2019 due to the high volume of schools and districts all throughout BC. Furthermore, with the growing population in BC, I would find it interesting to see how the population increase would affect the sizes of classes in schools.

One of the questions you had asked me to address was comparing the number of educational assistants to the number of classes. As per my data, the number of classes with educational assistants in high schools in the Surrey district has increased significantly.

Original Dataset Link

https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/bc-schools-class-size

News Story/Study Link and Brief Summary 

https://www.surreynowleader.com/news/more-than-74000-surrey-students-expected-to-enroll-in-district-this-year/

The news story that I looked at (link above) shows that the Surrey School District was expecting to enroll between 1,000 to 1,200 new students for the 2019/2020 school year. The article also goes to mention how there is a need for new schools to be built due to the increased population. In addition to new schools, the district will also have to hire 78 teachers, 5 principles and vice principles, 107 educational assistants and 19 support staff members.

I believe this is relevant to my data because the district must accommodate the growing population. They cannot simply continue forcing schools to contain a population that it can no longer support or hold. Due to this, opening additional schools seems like the only viable solution.