Are NB francophone high school students being set up for failure?

Atlantic Institute for Market Studies [AIMS] Director of education policy, Robert Laurie, gives us a grim reality check on the current state of our public education system whereby he examines the relationship between teacher assigned marks and provincial examination. In this study, he discovers a very disturbing "grade inflation" trend which exists amongst twenty-one New Brunswick francophone high schools right across the province. Furthermore, he argues that this unfortunate trend in the public school system is usually accompanied by lower than average results on provincial math examinations.

Setting them up to fail? shows a clear link between grade inflation and student performance on provincial exams, that link raises many urgent questions. AIMS acting president Charles Cirtwill elaborated:

“It is time for the education establishment to set the record straight. The unfortunate relationship between high grade inflation and low exam marks is too strong to ignore. Are teachers overcompensating for poor preparation and poor performance on provincial exams? Or are expectations so low that kids are not being prepared to meet a fair, reasonable and objective assessment?”

Very good questions, indeed. And ones that we will definitely need to find answers to. Moreover, this discovery may just be the tip of the iceburg as something tells me that this phenomenon exist right across the province in both francophone and anglophone high schools. Which begs the question: if children and young adults are being given false hope (through grade inflation), doesn't this completely undermine the entire education system to its core in New Brunswick? Not to mention, if it is allowed to continue, it will certainly seal the fate of many young NBers, in that, many of them will be ill-prepared upon entry into a very competitive global society and will likely become tax burdens down the road.