Returning to personal learning, Guelph’s public school board began a pilot project to collect and publish school absenteeism rates among staff and students.
The Upper Grand District School Board said the data is intended to give a sense of the impact of COVID-19 on schools now that positive cases will no longer be reported by public health.
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The province recently announced that local health units will no longer report positive cases or conduct detection for positive cases related to staff and students in schools.
“Consequently, schools will no longer give notice when there is a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19,” the council said on its website.
The pilot graph for daily absenteeism tracking was released this week, with students returning to the classroom. It is available on the board’s website.
The graph has a column showing the total number of students enrolled for personal learning at each school along with staff, including teachers, educational assistants, administration and support staff assigned to that website.
The other column shows absences compared to the average. This includes all students who are absent and have not reported a non-COVID reason for their absence. It also includes staff who are off for COVID-related reasons.
The council said the average absenteeism rate was calculated for each school based on attendance data from September 2021 to December 2021.
“This figure is used as a baseline to compare daily absences, not to overestimate potential COVID-related absences,” the board said.
“For example, school A had an average daily absenteeism rate of 10 percent from September to December 2021. On 17 January, the school had an absenteeism rate of 15 percent. That number that would be reported under this column would be a percentage point increase of five. ”
The maps also indicate when a school is 30 percent above the average absenteeism. The council said it would notify Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health when a school reached this threshold.
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As of Wednesday, nine schools were marked as above 30 percent.
It is unclear how long the pilot program will last, but the board said it could develop as needed.
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