Appendix C - Graduation Planner Configuration

Measuring student progress toward meeting graduation credit requirements requires configuration of one or more graduation contracts and the assignment of the appropriate graduation contract to a student. Note that this is independent of tracking SHSM credit using graduation sets (see Appendix D).

To receive an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) a student must:

• Pass a minimum of 30 credits of course work: 18 of which are identified as compulsory credits and 12 of which are identified as optional credits.
• Pass a high school literacy test, typically first taken in grade 10.
• Complete 40 hours of community service.

The following table summarizes the credit requirements for the OSSD. When setting up the Graduation Planner, the Subject Group and Sub-Group must be defined exactly as shown in the following table.

Although any particular credit earned by a student can be used to fulfill only one requirement, credit that would normally be applied to one compulsory requirement can be used to fulfill another compulsory requirement, and if not used for a compulsory requirement, can be used as Optional credit. For example, if a student takes two 1 credit French classes, one can be used to fulfill the French requirement and the other used to fulfill the Alternate Group 2 requirement. Similarly if a student has five English credits, four of them can be used to fulfill the English requirement and one can be used to fulfill the Alternate Group 1 requirement.

Also, credit from a single course can be split amongst requirements. Using the English example, if a student took 1 credit English classes in grades 9, 10, and 11 and a 2 credit English class in grade 12, one of the credits from the grade 12 class can be used to fulfill the English requirement and the other credit from that class can be used to fulfill the Alternate Group 1 requirement.

In general, Graduation Planner is designed to handle these requirements. However there are two situations that require special consideration.

Credit Limitation

For certain types of credit there is a limit on how much can be used overall toward compulsory requirements. For example credit from co-op courses can be applied to any of the Alternate Group 1, Alternate Group 2, or Alternate Group 3 requirements, but only to a maximum of 2 credits. Anything above that must be applied to Optional credit.

Substitutions

Separate from the ministry specification of which types of credit may be used for which requirements (e.g. that English credits can be used for both the English and the Alternate Group 1 requirements), the ministry allows, up to a maximum of 3 credits, credit from one compulsory course to be substituted for another compulsory credit. For example a student who is exempt from French can use the credit from another compulsory course (e.g. PE) to fulfill the French credit requirement - even though PE credit would normally not be used toward fulfill French requirements.

Substituted credit from a multi-credit course can also be split amongst different requirements. For example if a student is not taking Canadian History or Canadian Geography a 2 credit English class can be used as substitute credit for both those requirements.