Maple Hill School (MHS)

Maple Hill School is a Group 4 independent school that is home to roughly 150 students from Grades 9 through 12. The school is located in downtown Richmond, BC with the school located on the traditional territory of the Musquam people. The majority of the students at Maple Hill School are International students with roughly 20% of the population being permanent Canadian residents or Canadian citizens. We also have intake at every grade level so students may only be with us for a semester or two and as a school, we would not be able to quantify growth over multiple years for certain students.

 

The purpose of this document is to outline the schools plan to improve student outcomes over a three year period. This is meant to be a living document with frequent addendums and alternations as the school progresses on its journey to make sure all students at Maple Hill School are in fact improving in aspects of their learning.

 

The school will be looking primarily at three areas of learning: literacy, numeracy, and mental health. These three areas will be the focus for this three year plan. Below is the breakdown of how the school is going to first identify the needs of students in these areas and then provide the timelines to implement changes that can hopefully improve results. This will also allow us to identify individual students who require more support and to track their progress.

 

• Literacy: The school will continue to look at our school results for the Literacy 10 and Literacy 12 Provincial Graduation Assessments but this will not be the primary data tool that we use to tackle improving student literacy results. Given the makeup of our school, students are often entering Maple Hill School having already completed some or all of these assessments or are taking these assessments multiple times in order to get a mark of “extending” on the assessment. We also graduate students in every semester and have students writing in every provincial exam period so we do not have accurate school wide data with these assessments.

What the school will do instead is to create our own assessment that we will administer to students once but at two different stages (this is due to the fact that we always gain students in the semester changes). This assessment will focus primarily on comprehension, critical thinking by producing a synthesis essay, and also a creative writing piece. This way, we will be able to track students in different areas that also mimics the graduation literacy assessments but can be given to all students so that we have data on every learner. Assessments will be conducted in December with school meetings to discuss results and implement strategies happening in January. Results will be reported to students and parents after the staff meetings in January..

 

• Numeracy: The school will continue to look at our school results for the Numeracy 10 Provincial Graduation Assessment but this will not be the primary data as this test is only taken once and frequently we have many of our students entering our school in Grade 11 or 12 so we do not receive any new data in this regard apart from general standing in numeracy based courses. The school will implement our own school wide test that looks at various different levels of numeracy which would include focuses on financial literacy, number sense, as well as higher level mathematical concepts that would apply to upper level high school or math contest type of questioning. This way, the school can gauge the numeracy skills of all our learners and still receive what the school believes is valuable data for our high performing math students. The test will be developed and given each November with marks reported out in December after school meetings to go over the data and figure out strategies to address.

 

• Mental Health: The school had developed our own mental health survey in the 2024-2025 school year as the Youth Development Index (YDI) was not running that year. We based our survey off of similar questions from the YDI as well as from previous ministry surveys. The results were communicated out to all stakeholders in the spring of 2025 where a focus area of sleep, phone use, and general mental health awareness and access were identified. We plan on running this survey in February each year and may pair it with the YDI or simply run just our own survey. The YDI offers a comparison of provincial wide data which helps and provides useful data. Regardless, survey results of student questions will be available once the YDI data is tabulated or when our own survey is completed.

 

By following the timelines of these three focus areas, the school should be able to look at our school data and provincial data collected in the 2027-2028 school year and be able to track meaningful positive changes in our results.

 

Test generation, result discussion and intervention discussion is to take place during dedicated professional development days with school staff as well as at staff meetings depending on time.

 

A final summary of this journey will be posted to all stakeholders at the end of the 2027-2028 school year once the school has been able to go over the final data and figure out the successes and failures of the plan if there are any.

 

February Updates:

 

After the tests in December 2025, it is clear that English is a primary concern as 64 students could not pass the literacy assessment we gave them. Based on Literacy 10 and 12 results in January, 5 students no longer need support as they were able to score proficients on those tests. That leaves 59 students who are struggling with English comprehension.

 

With such a large number, we will implement school wide directives that will benefit everyone and continue to encourage students to seek after school help in our after school program to further develop their skills and help them. School wide initiatives will be to introduce an article from sources that are taken from the literacy assessments as more exposure. Students will then complete a mini comprehension task at homeroom time that will be tied to participation. We will reassess when we give them the test again in December 2026. We will also look at the April 2026 and June 2026 data and subsequent provincial exam data to track to see if the interventions are showing improvement.

 

Based on our testing results from our numeracy test as well as the provincial numeracy data, we will no longer be looking at numeracy as a target for continuous improvement.

 

In terms of mental health, it was decided we would pursue the YDI for the 2025-2026 school year and subsequent years. We were unable to run the YDI in February as there was an issue getting access from SFU as we got missed in their initial emails but will be able to complete the testing with all students in April of 2026. We are awaiting the results to see if our focus on sleep, phone use, and general mental health will continue to be a focus. We are so far using the Open Parachute platform as well as locally run workshops from a mental health professional for support.

 

Upon Ministry approval, a copy of this plan will be sent to all stakeholders and uploaded to the school website.

 

September 2026 Updates:

 

The YDI team missed an email so we were only able to run the YDI near the end of the regular school year which meant that we could only discuss the data in a meeting prior to the start of the school year. This meeting took place on September 2, 2026.

From the data in the YDI, staff identified two areas of focus that will be worked on for the 26-27 and the 27-28 school year. 22% of students were identified as having wanted to see mental health support but did not. Of the 22% of students, 32% didn’t know where to go to help.

 

The school will therefore look at making more visible the supports that exist such as Foundry BC which is a 12 minute walk from the school as well as reaching out to mental health professionals that can hold some office type hours several times a year to see if there is an improvement in this statistics.

Also, it was identified that physical activity is not something a lot of our students are getting. The school does offer gym memberships at the Richmond Olympic Oval but the school will be looking at getting more promotion for the  program as well as expanding the types of activities offered in our school clubs to see if this statistic can also be improved.

 

In terms of literacy, it was determined that doing a formal test with students that is not for marks skews our results as so many students either click through or just rush through which does not reflect an accurate assessment. It was determined that in each class for each reporting period, students will be given an article to read that will require them to give a written response that will be marked. Articles will be tailored to the topics of the class but will be of the level and expectations found within the Grade 10 and 12 Literacy Assessments that are created by the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care. The school will track these results specifically and track students as they do the assessment throughout the year as a student will be completing this 4 times. Students taking the Grade 10 and 12 Literacy Assessments will also have their progress tracked in relation to the school assessment.

 

Document last updated September 1, 2026.