Measuring What Matters: What Is Missing From the Framework for Enhancing Student Learning

Every year, BC school districts submit a Framework for Enhancing Student Learning (FESL) Report. These reports are meant to increase transparency, track outcomes, and show how districts are improving learning. The systems for accountability already exist. Yet instead of examining the conditions that shape whether students can access education, the FESL often functions like a polished brochure that highlights successes while leaving the students most harmed by the system invisible.

The government’s policy statement promises improved outcomes for all students, particularly Indigenous learners, children and youth in care, and students with disabilities or diverse abilities. It also commits to collaboration aligned with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

On paper, this is the kind of commitment families have been asking for. In practice, collaboration often feels symbolic and reporting focuses more on optics than on naming the structural inequities families navigate every day.

The FESL organizes its reporting around three main areas.

Intellectual development: measured largely through literacy and numeracy results drawn from tools such as the Foundation Skills Assessment. Many disabled students cannot meaningfully access these assessments. When students opt out or are excluded from the testing environment, their experiences disappear from the narrative rather than prompting questions about accessibility.

Human and social development: measured through surveys of students in Grades 4, 7, and 10 about belonging, safety, and connection with adults. By Grade 4, many disabled and marginalized students have already been pushed out of consistent attendance through shortened days, exclusion plans, repeated early pick-ups, or informal suspensions. These students are not just missing from the survey. They have been systematically removed from the environments the survey is meant to measure.

Career development: measured by graduation within five years of entering Grade 8. By setting the starting point at Grade 8, the measure excludes the many students who have already been segregated, denied access, or pushed out in earlier grades. Their absence is treated as neutral even though it reflects years of structural exclusion.

As part of reporting in these areas, districts must include participation rates for each measurement tool and separate their data for Indigenous learners, children and youth in care, and students with Ministry designations. The FESL attempts to measure indicators of learning, not just participation, yet it does so without examining the conditions that determine whether students can access learning in the first place. This structure encourages compliance with selected tools rather than critical reflection on whether environments are accessible or whether the tools capture the experiences of all learners.

The challenge is compounded by the Ministry’s narrow designation categories. These designations do not reflect the full population of disabled students. Many students who experience disability-related barriers do not qualify for a designation and therefore do not appear in the FESL’s data breakdowns. Their experiences remain invisible.

What is missing from the FESL is not the framework itself but the decision to use it to report on the conditions that shape access. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Accountability measures and annual reporting are essential. The issue is what districts are required to report. If the government changed the indicators districts must include, the FESL could shift from a curated summary to a meaningful tool for transparency.

Recent policy changes show that the Ministry can adjust reporting requirements when it chooses to. Districts are now required to submit K to 12 Literacy Reports as part of the FESL cycle, with mandatory reporting beginning in 2026. This demonstrates that the government can revise reporting expectations and require districts to include additional information. If new literacy reporting can be added to the framework, then the Ministry can also require districts to report on inclusion markers.

A more accurate and honest accountability system would require districts to publicly report on indicators that reflect real access to education. Many of these indicators are currently undocumented, inconsistently recorded, or kept out of official reporting channels altogether. Bringing them into the FESL would illuminate exclusion that is often hidden, minimized, or informal. Accountability would mean ensuring the following indicators are publicly reportable:

• students sent home early

• prolonged gradual entry beyond the kindergarten transition period

• shortened school days

• formal suspensions

• informal suspensions

• removal from classrooms or segregation from peers

• restraint and seclusion

• exclusions tied to disability-related care needs or staffing shortages

• student absenteeism rates

• staff absenteeism and leave rates

Putting these indicators into public reporting would not create new problems. It would reveal problems that already exist but rarely surface in district-level accountability structures.

The FESL does offer some value. It can provide insight into district initiatives, priorities, and stated goals, and parents can learn how their district describes its work. But these reports are far from a full account of how students are actually doing. They highlight what districts want the public to see, not the conditions families experience every day. Parents and caregivers should read their district’s report, but do so critically. These documents may contain useful information, yet they function more like false advertising than a complete picture of student outcomes. If your lived experience tells a different story than what your district claims, hold them accountable to their own words.

The Framework for Enhancing Student Learning could be a powerful accountability tool, but only if it reflects the actual learning conditions shaping students’ experiences in BC schools. That requires transparency and not polished narratives. It requires reporting on exclusion and the barriers that prevent many students from participating in learning.

Without meaningful reporting on these realities, the FESL cannot show whether BC’s education system is working. It can only show whether districts are meeting the reporting requirements the government has chosen to measure. When those requirements ignore exclusions, the public receives a distorted picture of success and the students most affected by systemic inequities remain hidden.

This is the core issue. BC has increasingly sophisticated strategic planning processes, review cycles, templates, dashboards, and reporting mechanisms. Yet none of these structures create systemic change if they do not address the conditions that push students out of learning in the first place. Strategic plans without systemic change simply refine the language of improvement without altering the realities students live every day. A district can meet every reporting requirement and still leave its most marginalized learners unseen, unsupported, and uncounted.

Families deserve a public education system that is accountable to the truth. Transparency about learning conditions is the foundation for understanding whether equity commitments are being met. Until the FESL requires districts to report on inclusion markers and the lived conditions of schooling, it will remain a document focused on appearances rather than outcomes.

BC has the structures to do better. It is time to require districts to report on the realities that matter most.